Practice makes perfect

I am a huge college football fan!  Our family can legitimately claim allegiance to some of the most storied college football programs in history (as well as some of the not so storied ones).  One of our daughters attended the University of Alabama during an incredibly successful run (they won the national championship twice and appeared in the national championship title game all four years).  I've posted several times about the Crimson Tide football team and, in particular, their head coach Nick Saban (see "Chemistry is Culture", "Roll Tide!", "The Process", and "The half-time rally").  Saban has won seven national championships as a head coach (including his first when he coached at LSU), the most in college football history.  He has been the focus of at least one Harvard Business School case study (see "Embracing the Process"), as well as at least two books on leadership (see The Management Ideas of Nick Saban and Nick Saban and The Process).  Whether you like him or not, he will go down in history as one of the greatest college football coaches ever, due to his unprecedented success in arguably one of the most difficult and competitive periods in which to be successful as a college football head coach.

What is the secret to Coach Saban's success?  He calls it "The Process" and describes it as follows, "The process is really what you have to do day in and day out to be successful.  We try to define the standard that we want everybody to sort of work toward, adhere to, and do it on a consistent basis.  And the things that I talked about before, being responsible for your own self-determination, having a positive attitude, having great work ethic, having discipline to be able to execute on a consistent basis, whatever it is you're trying to do, those are the things that we try to focus on, and we don't try to focus as much on the outcomes as we do on being all that you can be."

The process boils down to these simple rules (as listed by Patrick Zeis ):

1. Focus all of your energy on the present moment.
2. Remember that everything matters ("attention to detail")
3. Eliminate distractions and outside noise.
4. Relinquish your attachment to outcomes
5. Develop toughness and discipline to face adversity
6. Compete against yourself while being accountable to others
7. Refuse to get comfortable

Today I want to focus on rule #2 above - "Remember that everything matters" or "Attention to detail."  I see a lot of parallels to the High Reliability Organization principles of "Preoccupation with Failure", "Reluctance to Simplify", and "Sensitivity to Operations" here.  Simply stated, Coach Saban prepares his team for any and all contingencies ahead of time so that when they encounter a difficult situation, they know exactly what to do.  Case in point - watch the play in the final seconds of this year's Iron Bowl match-up against their in-state rival Auburn University (see video clip here).  With his team losing 24-17 on a fourth down and forever (actually, it was fourth down and goal from the 31 yard line due to a couple of really awful plays on 2nd and 3rd downs), Crimson Tide quarterback Jalen Milroe somehow found wide receiver Isaiah Bond in the end zone to put Alabama up 27-24 (after the extra point)!  During the post-game interview, Saban said, "Believe it or not, we actually practice that play every Friday."  He went on further to say, "When we do walk-through, when we do special-situations. We get in that formation, everybody runs down the field and runs pairing routes in the end zone. Jalen made a great throw, but IB really kind of got himself into position where there was some room to throw it. He pushed inside, the DB was inside of him and then he came back out and Jalen threw it back out to him. It was a great catch, and a great throw, but that is a play that we actually work on."

In other words - an important, perhaps even critical, part of "The Process" is practice.  High Reliability Organizations understand that you cannot simulate every possible contingency, but they also recognize that practicing and simulating for specific situations that may be encountered is critical to successfully navigating a world filled with complexity and chaos.  It is that "attention to detail" that helped prepare Alabama's offense for executing that play under the most difficult of circumstances with the clock winding down.  Even Coach Saban recognizes that there is always a little bit of luck involved, but the best organizations create their own luck by preparing for as many possible scenarios as possible.