Don't fall for the story📖

The underdog

During the late 70’s, America saw one of the most competitive era’s of football.

With teams such as the Pittsburg Stealers which proved to be a powerhouse by winning four Super Bowl titles in the span of five years, or the Dallas Cowboys who won two Super Bowl titles in 1971 and 1977 and made multiple playoff appearances under coach Tom Landry. Or even the Miami Dolphins who had a “perfect season” in the year 1972 where, under head coach Don Shula, became the first and only team in NFL history to complete a perfect season with a record of 17-0.

It’s pretty clear this was a fantastic decade to be a football fan. Unfortunately, not all teams experienced the same success.

Such is the story of the 49ers.

Based on the Bay Area of San Francisco, the 49ers had went to what was probably their worst streak ever and winning the unspoken award of the worst team in football history, or perhaps even in professional sports.

Between the years 1977 and 1978, the team had a combined record of 7-23, including a 2-14 record in the latter.

The team had not seen a consistent success since the early 1970’s and as you might’ve guessed it, fan morale was low, more so for the players.

It wasn’t until 1979 when, a new coach and team manager by the name of Bill Walsh, took them from being the worst team ever to winning three Super Bowls under his tenure.

How did the worst team ever managed to shift entirely and win the most prestigious award in football history thrice?

It’s all about the details…

Atomic Habits

The story of how Bill Walsh took the 49ers from being the underdog to becoming one of the strongest teams in American Football is more boring than you might imagine.

But, there’s a lesson to be learned here.

The year Bill Walsh took over, he had to deal with a team who had adpoted, by fate, a loser mentality.

Team morale was low, fan morale suffered the same fate, and it appeared there was no way out of the whole they’ve put themselves in.

On the other side, Bill had a clear idea of what he wanted to do, but the road wasn’t gonna be easy.

His first season with the team, they lost another fourteen games.

Having trouble with the players and his team, he nearly resigned midway through his second year.

Yet, after twenty four months of taking over, there he was, Super Bowl champion and leaving a spot for himself in football history.

A true genius.
Or was he?

Unlike other coaches who focused on plays, offensive maneuvers, deffensive strategies, and so on, Bill took a different approach.

He knew that minimal improvements would create, in the long term, massive results.

As James Clear puts it: Tiny changes, remarkable results.

When Bill Walsh took over the team, he was never focused on winning per se, but rather in small improvements.

That is:

• What should be done

• When

• How

Walsh had only one timetable and it was about instilling this standards.

At the most basic level and throughout the entire organization.

His strength was focusing on seemingly trivial details, which he knew would change entirely how the team performed:

• Players could not sit down on the practice field.

• Coaches had to wear a tie and tuck their shirts in

• The locker room must be neat and clean at all times

• No smoking, no fighting, no profanity within the facilities

• Quarterbacks were told exactly where and how to hold the ball instead of relying in improvisation

• Linemen were drilled on thirty separate critical drills

• Passing routes were monitored and graded down to the inch

• Practices were scheduled to the minute

All of this, and more, were part of what Bill called the “Standard of Performance”.

A work philosophy designed, not for control, but to instill excellence.

Walsh was so confident about his strategy, he knew the Standard of Performance would eventually contribute to victory, that’s why he never made it his goal. But he was also humble enough to know that when victory eventually happens, it was not something he could predict.

Though not everybody shared his same vision.

During his second season, a coach complained to the owner that Walsh was too caught up in the minutiae and had no goals to win.

Bill later fired that coach for tattling.

Few, if not none, were truly able to grasp Bill’s vision, yet he remained strong and confident he would bring results.

Writing your own narrative?

When people asked Walsh whether he had a timetable for winning the Super Bowl, do you know what his answer was?

No! - he said

It was never part of Bill’s plan to win the Super Bowl.

In fact, he later stated that “when you take over a team that bad, such ambitions would have been utterly delusional”.

Bill was smart enough to not fall prey of writing your own narrative.

But what does this mean?

Narrative:
It’s when you look back at an improbable or unliklely path to your success and say: “I knew it all along”

But reality, what happens in the real world, is entirely different.

Of course you didn’t really know allong - and even if you did, it was more about faith rather than knowledge.

Who really wants to remember all those times when you doubted yourself? That’s not what history wants to write about…

Crafting our own stories is a very natural and human impulse. Unfortunately it’s quite dangerous and deceiving.

Writing our own narrative leads to arrogance because it turns life into a story. It turns reality into fiction.

Bill knew that his Standard of Performance was responsible of his success, but that’s too boring for a headline isn’t it?

People want the sexy story. They want to know that his takeover and the team turnaround was part of his plan all along.

But he knew otherwise.

That’s why, repeatedly he ignored when the media called him “genius”. Because he knew there was no genius behind his success, only excellence.

Don’t fall for your story

When you make the mistake of accepting the story, you deceive yourself into believing something that’s deeply untrue.

These narrative may not change the past, but they do have the power to negatively change the future.

Same thing happened to Bill’s team.

Shortly after winning the Suepr Bowl, they allowed to let the story go to their heads, believing that their unliklely victory occurred because they were special. Only to fail terribly short after by losing 12 out of 22 games.

This is what happens when you prematurely credit yourself with powers you don’t yet have control of. - Ryan Holiday

Only the team focused on the task at hand instead of the story, did they begin to win like they did before.

That’s why, when you ask business magnates like Jeff Bezos about their success, they’ll tell you “there was no aha! moment”.

Bernard Baruch, American financier said:

When aspiring to something, never try to reverse engineer what other people did. And when achieving your own, you must resist the temptation of pretending everything unfolded as you wanted.