Business Lessons from Lombardi: Part 2
Lessons from Lombardi
It’s about Winning: Lombardi saw the importance of winning in any game; in life and so on. He couldn’t accept defeat as final and he had a single-minded focus when it came to winning football games. As a leader, it is important to understand that people want to be part of a winning team; which requires a winning attitude. Lead by example, being positive while at the same time persistent. In whatever thing you want to do, there will be resistance and you need that winning attitude to breakthrough and reach your goal with your team.
What it Takes to be Number One: Lombardi famously stated “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time.” This speaks to the culture of an organization, whether the organization is a football team or a manufacturer. A winning culture is an attitude that needs to lived and breathed by every single employee, every single day.
Outwork Everyone: Lombardi knew that the price of success was hard work, hard work, and hard work. He lived and breathed it with his teams, and this discipline helped them win their championships. You cannot bypass hard work; hard work is the shortest path to success. Show your team the value of hard work by personal example; and as you lead by hard work, your team will follow.
Teamwork is Essential: Lombardi recognized the importance of teamwork and he made sure each and every player understood that “there is no I in team”. No matter how you say it, 2 + 2 = 5; two heads are better than one, synergy, Lombardi saw that teamwork was the only way to win, whether it was in the game, or in life.
KISS: Lombardi’s Packers had only a handful of plays and none of them were overly complicated. He had no laminated cards nor did his players have flip over wristbands listing dozens of plays with multiple options. However, the few that he did have were constantly and passionately enforced and practiced until it became second nature to every single player. Simplicity all but eliminated all misunderstandings and confusion so that everyone was literally “on the same page”.
Chase Perfection: Several former Packer players have described Lombardi’s practice regime of how they would run one rather simple offensive play dozens of 
times in a single practice until every individual player executed his assignment flawlessly. Over and over and over again with not a single mistake being overlooked or tolerated. Games were exactly the same: mistakes that weren’t tolerated in a loss weren’t tolerated in a win either. Lombardi’s premise was that no team or individual has ever come even close to perfection by accident; the only chance of ever reaching perfection is to actively and constantly chase it.
Look in the Mirror: I would again challenge you to take a look at these Lessons from Lombardi and find any one of these that doesn’t, or shouldn’t, apply to your organization. BTW, ESPN recently voted Lombardi the greatest coach in NFL history.
As the great Vince Lombardi once said, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
Previously published in The PCB Magazine – I-Connect007.com