The Project Management Wisdom of John Wooden
In case you don’t know, John Wooden is widely considered one of the greatest coaches in the history of sports, and in college basketball in particular, leading UCLA to ten national championships during the 1960’s and 70’s, winning numerous coaching awards, and the reverence of some of the best players to ever step onto a basketball court.
Let me ask you the following question: why don’t we spend more time learning from people who have achieved tremendous success doing the types of things we are trying to do? In my mind, in our businesses we also have a team and a goal; we also have competitors; we also want to win.
When I look back on my career as a project manager, I see immediately how the principles that John Wooden embodied are eminently applicable to project management. I also recognize that much of my success in building teams and successfully delivering projects has really happened when I aligned to those principles.
Let’s start with this: Wooden didn’t focus on winning or losing games. He didn’t worry about the score. He never pushed or demanded results from his athletes. How, then, did he manage to become one of the winningest coaches in history?
I imagine that many people will find this shocking and counterintuitive. After, all in business life many people think the key to getting results is by holding people “accountable”, and by setting deadlines and specific performance targets, and by constantly pushing people.
The “Real” Definition of Success
The secret is that John Wooden did care about success, but in the following way: he saw himself not as a coach first, but as a teacher first, with his mission being to make every one of his students as successful as they could possibly be. He further described success like this: “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” and “Just try to be the best you can be; never cease trying to be the best you can be. That’s in your power.”
In short, Wooden showed trust in his players, provided constant inspiration for them to do their best—in everything they did—and let them do the rest. In Wooden’s mind this started with what he considered “the fundamentals”—which were mundane things that most people skip over or pay little attention to.
That included such things as teaching every player how to tightly lace and tie their shoes; tuck in their shirt and maintain a neat appearance; and to communicate politely and professionally. He gave each player these three rules: “No profanity. Don’t criticize a teammate. Never be late.”
His drive to help his players become better people spilled over into every aspect of their lives—including their performance on the basketball court. For Wooden, there were no objective goals that had to be hit in order to impress him. All he wanted was for everyone to try their very best—not even for his sake, but for their own sakes. His job—and the job he entrusted to the entire team—was simply to strive for this goal.
The Most Practical Advice You Will Ever Receive
Far from being merely philosophical, this is the most practical advice anyone can follow. If we examine things honestly and objectively, there is a great deal outside of our control. We cannot control events outside of our influence; we cannot control how long something takes or how difficult it is. We cannot control whether or not someone makes a mistake. We cannot control the results of our efforts, regardless of how mighty they are. More significantly, we can’t control what other people think.
What we can control, however, is doing our best regardless of the circumstances. That is the only thing we really have control over—and I’m not the only one to come to this conclusion. I am reminded of this quote by Kent Beck, one of the seminal contributors to the Agile movement, in the book Extreme Programming Explained:
“If you have six weeks to get a project done, the only thing you control is your own behavior. Will you get six weeks’ worth of work done or less? You can’t control others’ expectations. You can tell them what you know about the project so their expectations have a chance of matching reality. My terror of deadlines vanished when I learned this lesson. It’s not my job to “manage” someone else’s expectations. It’s their job to manage their own expectations. It’s my job to do my best and communicate clearly.”
My point is this: whether we’re talking about college basketball or managing web and software development, human beings and human nature is still the same, and the underlying principles of what works and what doesn’t work is remarkably the same.
I encourage you to ponder and make the connections for yourself. To that end, I’ll conclude by leaving you with a few more of John Wooden’s words of wisdom:
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”
“Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who’ll argue with you.”
“The best competition I have is against myself to become better.”
“It takes time to create excellence. If it could be done quickly, more people would do it.”