If you want to change your life and stop wasting time on stuff that does not serve any purpose, read on! This post gives you answers to why some NFL teams are successful while others are not.
You might know of the term scrum. It is something that happens in rugby*. Because of the similarities in the shape of the ball, many Europeans see an NFL player they tell me “It is Rugby, right?”. After which I correct them and say that “This is Sparta Football” while I casually refer to their favorite sport as “Soccer”. A scrum moves as one, together being a whole organised unit that has one common goal.
I hear you thinking:
Are you gonna tell us that a great team is about unity?
Yes. But much more than that. It is a way of doing everything in life! Anything that is a project, big or small should be done in a scrum way if you want to do something efficiently. It makes things fun because it gives results, it works and has been proven to work! I am 100% sure that the Patriots are using a lot of scrum principles in their daily life and I implore anyone who wants to be on a successful team, be it in sports, at work or doing construction in or around the house, to do the same. You will see a dramatic increase in productivity!
I recommend reading Jeff Sutherlands book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time I have been doing scrum for a while now at my job but this book is opening my eyes!
How is this relevant? When there is a team that is good, or a team that is really bad, there are tons of stories and people go far into the specifics of why. These examples you hear in the media are just the symptoms of something. A bigger picture that gets overlooked.
- “It is drafting”
- “It is this guy; he is awesome/ he is bad”
- “It is the Greenbrier”
- “It is special teams”
You have heard all of these arguments. All byproducts of a system that is not scrum. Brady is great. Sure. But does he ever say it? He could have been the son of Zeus, but if there was anyone on the Patriots that was not doing their job in the way they did it, the Falcons would be the champions. If the coaches don’t tell the players what to look out for and how to react. Or if maybe the players are not able to act upon that information, then Brady would fail too.
When you will read on you will see that there are a number of principles that have a direct relation towards the difference between how a successful team like the Patriots is run and a team like the Rex Ryan Bills are run. It is the application of the business philosophy that is scrum. Per principle I will explain what it means and in what way it improves an NFL team like the Saints.
No Heros
It is not one of the core scrum principles but I think it is the one that is most supported by things we know. You should not need a hero to save the day. Heros are great and we all love them but you should not rely on them. If you do you are doomed to fail. The Patriots apply this in so many apparent ways.
- They trade away their number 1 pass rusher and still win the Super Bowl.
- Players who leave the Patriots are seldom as good somewhere else.
- Trading up to get a better guy is not their way.
- Players who do not function on other teams are performing a lot better when with the Patriots. That is why they love to trade. Get a talent in a scrum system and double his productivity.
I fear this says some things about the Saints; The Patriots love to trade with the Saints. If the Saints would implement scrum they would see a bad player on the Saints would not work in their team. As for now they do not.
No Assholes
A team just does not work when there are assholes on it. If you have one, make them stop or get rid of them. On the Saints Drunk History Podcast our friends Ralph (8 whiskey) and Andrew (5 Abita) narrated the story of the horrible Ditka years. During this period players got their retina’s detached and were shoved through a second story glass windows. How great was the team when Galette started to show his true colors? Have you ever heard of a successful team with Richie Incognito on it? He has been to the Pro-Bowl 3 times but never ever played in a playoff game in 11 years of playing in the NFL!
Also, no ego’s. Nobody is “The Man”. On the Patriots, one of the players – Prima Donna’s – I used to love when I started watching the NFL was Chad Ochocinco. After he got signed by the Patriots, I think he did not send a tweet or posted anything on MyFace or YearBook again, as Belichick talks about in this video.
For the Saints this means something good actually. They do this to a certain extent. Brees is the GOAT but he does not brag about it. They kicked off Galette and none of their WRs are ever going to the Pro-Bowl. Even saints Defensive MVP Cam Jordan, though I have never met him, looks like a real down-to-earth guy. The positive here is that if there is even a whiff of something wrong from a character perspective with a player, Sean Payton has shown to stay far away from that. That meant missing out on someone like Matieu, but I love the philosophy on this.
Working overtime is failure
If you need to work longer you fail. Reasons are that you are tired and not only does your production go down, you make mistakes more often. A curve will tell that focusing just above 40 hours a week will be the optimal time spent for any job. If you spent more you will less productive. In the next week you will spent time correcting last weeks mistakes. So getting enough rest is important.
Germans have way more days off a year then Americans do. Is their production less or higher per person? That is why we should get more European Football players like Kasim Edebali. Haha no that is just bullshit. Americans have a higher GDP then Germans, but I bet it most is made by the 1% who golf 20% of their time as the POTUS does.
Though deferring tasks to other people so coaches can take more rest would be a good idea. Take for instance all those bad 2-minute time-management decisions that could be made by a low level coach whose only job it is to be in change of time-out advise.
Also, I bet Kyle Shanahan would have loved to get a few more hours of sleep before he called that pass play.
Fix mistakes now!
If you see a problem and you put it on the side to fix something else it will take up to 20(!) more times as much time and energy to fix it. This is real people! “Believe me folks! It is real. It is so real. It is absolutely real. Bigly!” That is how a certain person would put it I believe. But in contrast to the credibility of that person, this statement is 100% true. If you come across a problem now you know what is wrong. Your mind understands the situation. Putting the problem aside and then trying to fix it afterwards takes time to get the process in your head again.
So instead of trying to fix the team after the season, fix it during the season. You now identified the problem and you know what you need to change it. If you need to get a new coach at the end of the season he also might not give you what you actually need and you have to fix it the year after. This is also known as “The Cleveland Browns”. The Saints did very well and hired Kevin O’Dea to fix an active “bug” that. It got fixed!
Small Teams and scrum master
This is actually something that is done in a functioning NFL team already. A scrum team consist of 7 people, give or take 2. You need enough redundancy so not 1 person is too important. If someone in a too small team is away on vacation production will stop. Because the human short memory can only remember about 4 different things at a time, there would be too much chaos if a team is too big. NFL teams consist basically of 5 teams. 2 on defense; front seven & secondary, 2 on the offense; offensive line and skill positions and special teams. They each have a different unit coach and those coaches are themselves part of a team of coaches.
In scrum the coaches would called the scrum masters. Their job is not to produce but to facilitate. Take away any and all impediments the team may have. A player has an injury, make sure the medical staff contacts him. A player has trouble grasping a certain technique, get him together with someone who can teach him that.
This means your coaches can be knowledgeable, but the success of a team depends on their ability to facilitate. If you lack that skill and you have a twin you are most likely a son of Buddy Ryan.
Observe-Orient-Decide-Act
This scrum principle comes from the US military. Fighter pilots in Vietnam were trained in what to do when going into a dangerous area. Observe what you see happening, take a look at the situation, decide what to do and do it! That is also the description of each snap in the NFL, but in a management perspective it means you look at every aspect that you face, you look around what to do to fix it, decide on the best method and then do it.
Every NFL organisation does this at some point. Usually at the end of a season. They for instance fire a coach. But deciding when to fix something should be done not only then but more often. Nor should it be done only when things go bad. Like hiring a new Special Teams coach in week 10 after a special teams disaster. The special teams had been bad before, even in games that were won. Had they tried to identify that, the Saints would have won the Broncos game.
Essential to that is the frequency at which you do that. This is where the term “sprint” comes in.
Sprints & Retrospective
A sprint is a massive burst of energy towards a (common) goal. They usually take from 1 to 4 weeks. In the NFL it is fitting that a sprint is 7 days. At the end of a sprint you do the retrospective. This is where you look back at what went good. What do you want to do more. What held you back and how do you solve that. Rather then solving all at once, focus one one or a few things and solve that in the next sprint.
Having a lot of Thursday/Monday night games or even a game when you travel to London is not optimal. It breaks the weekly rhythm of a sprint. So even though I am going to see the Saints in London and I love it that they are coming, it is not optimal.
Make something that works and demo it!
Do not put too much in a sprint. Define what you want done and do that. For instance: Make a car that you can drive. Sure at the end of the sprint you have no roof or doors, but it can drive! The next sprint you put in the roof, doors after that. You have something that works after each sprint. If you have half a product you have nothing. Have a demo in which as much stake holders are present. With feedback you can make adjustments towards your goal.
If you do not improve on the things you focus on, on a week-to-week basis you start to get a demoralized NFL team. They give up. Nothing can be accomplished and the season is over. Give the players and coaches some examples of success. You might lose by 20 points, but if you were able to stop the run game you accomplished that. A successful demo! Now lets work on pass defending in the next sprint!
Someone, and I believe it was a relative of Kevin Held once said something like: “Do not half-ass something. Either complete ass it or do not do it at all.”
I hope I got you at least interested in scrum. I would recommend it. If I may share a last anecdote that is also in the book mentioned. A guy, a fellow countrymen of mine, once did a complete house make-over using scrum. All contractors worked together, saw each others problem and helped each other. Impediments were removed. It was done in 6 weeks. A neighbor, living in a virtually identical house did the same. It took 12 weeks and it costed twice the money. He did not use scrum. So if you are smart… Scrum!
*Featured image is the All Blacks, the New Zealand rugby team performing the Haka. Photo from http://www.stuff.co.nz/
If you do not know what the Haka is; here is one one the most recent ones.
https://youtu.be/ueoybsiLNAc
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