Afternoons with Coach Wooden Changed Me as a Leader

I first met John Wooden, the most successful college basketball coach of all time and ESPN’s Coach of the 20th Century, when I worked for a company on the verge of a death spiral. It was a $250M business that was losing money. We were growing 10% in a category advancing at 20% and losing market share rapidly. I was having difficulty getting employees to recognize we were in serious trouble. One of our issues was related to values and I was recently moved by a book on the subject written by John Wooden. I thought, wouldn’t it be great to have Coach Wooden speak about values to kick off our company’s strategic planning process.

I called UCLA and they told me to write John Wooden a letter and they would forward the request. Several weeks later, I was at a conference when my assistant rang to tell me he called. “Who?” I asked. “John Wooden,” she replied and I could feel her smile through the phone. My instructions were to call him at this number, at this time, on this day. I called and he invited me to spend an afternoon with him to explain why I wanted him to address our team. He agreed to the speaking engagement and knocked our socks off.

Although most of the people at our company had heard of Coach Wooden, many were not aware of his background other than the fact he had been the Head Basketball Coach at UCLA. At Purdue University, he was the college basketball player of the year, a three-time all-American, played on a national championship team and then went on to become a high school English teacher. He was a renaissance man who recited poems by heart and quoted his favorite lines from literature. It was easy to understand why he was so much more than a sports figure. Coach Wooden was a teacher at his core. I became one of his students as we struck up a friendship in the decade before he passed away just short of a century old.

Unlocking Your Potential

Coach Wooden and I had lunch every few months and spent many afternoons at his condo in Encino. There were books everywhere on shelves and stacked on the floor. We discussed his two heroes frequently – Mother Teresa and Abraham Lincoln. He also had a very wicked sense of humor that did not necessarily come out in public. Privately, his observations were very entertaining, especially about contemporaries such as former coaching rivals Bobby Knight, Digger Phelps and Jerry Tarkanian.

It was fascinating getting to know someone as an adult whom I had great respect for as a basketball fan growing up in Palos Verdes and receiving an MBA from UCLA. Prominent people often don’t live up to your perception of them, but Wooden far exceeded my expectations in every respect. I also had the great fortune of studying under Peter Drucker, the giant who invented the concept of management consulting and my professor at Claremont McKenna College.

Coach Wooden never focused on or talked about winning which surprised me. His entire focus was performing to your potential. He believed if you perform to your potential, which is a higher standard than winning, success or winning will be a byproduct. This novel approach won Wooden a record 10 national championships in a 12-year span as the coach of UCLA.

From a psychological perspective, most people are operating at about 25% of their potential and most companies probably less than that. Although it is not possible to realize 100% of potential, if you can move your organization’s performance from 25% to 35-50% of its potential, it will make a huge difference in your business. Over the last 40+ years, I’ve developed a process to empower leaders to help people and organizations unlock their potential. The method centers on three basic elements: transparency, accountability and ownership. 

The Power of Focus

The two things Coach Wooden and Peter Drucker had in common are humility and laser focus. Their teachings shaped my own leadership philosophy and approach as a C-Level executive for brands such as Nature Made, BioAstin, Nutrex-Hawaii and Renuzit, as well as in marketing roles with Del Monte, Purex, Van de Kamp’s, Doritos, Tostitos, Lay’s, and Rold Gold. There were a series of incidents throughout my career where laser focus validated my mentors’ logic and what I internalized led to building profitable businesses.

I flew to Washington, D.C. shortly after I was hired as CEO of Hawaii-based supplement manufacturer, Cyanotech, to accept an award from the U.S. Department of Commerce for excellence in exporting. As I was flying back to Hawaii, I thought we shouldn’t be getting this award. We were not at critical mass anywhere. We were a bulk ingredient supplier in 80 countries and not significant in any of them. We lacked focus. I realized we could build a more significant and profitable business selling to consumers through retailers. We shifted our focal point to building a consumer-branded product, expanded to the contiguous U.S., and doubled the business in a brief period of time.

Focus enabled us to turn an $80M breakeven business into more than $180M in revenue and $32M in profit for the Dial Corporation’s Household Division. Focus helped us take Van de Kamp’s from a distant number three to number one in the frozen seafood industry. Pharmavite grew to $500M in sales and a $34M profit improvement after we reduced SKUs from 3,600 to 600.

Enter Vistage

Perhaps my most compelling endorsement for focus lands me where I stand today as a CEO coach, Vistage Chair. Vistage is the leader in executive peer advisory opportunities. I’m finding nearly all of the CEOs I work with are struggling with focus issues right now. I’ve been walking members through teachings of my mentors to help them harness the power of focus. Focus requires you to make tough decisions and understand what you are, but more importantly, what you are not. If you try to be all things to everyone you usually wind up being nothing to anyone. That is a formula for failure.

One of the reasons I became a Vistage Chair is to pursue my passion for helping leaders and businesses make progress toward their ultimate potential. That is the true definition of success according to Coach Wooden and I couldn’t think of a more fitting tribute to him. As Coach said, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” Contact me to learn how Vistage will lead to powerful results for you and your business.

About the Author: More than 40 years as a C-Level executive and marketer inspires me to help leaders pave the way for maximum innovation, collaboration, and motivation at the highest level through Vistage. I can be reached: [email protected].