Last weekend, I finished reading Pete Carroll’s book, “Win Forever.”
The book makes for a fun read. Especially for Seahawks fans wanting to–no needing to extend the afterglow of the Seahawks Super Bowl win.
For Seahawks fans who happen to be small business owners, however, the book also provides lots of actionable insight into management practices and techniques that produce great results.
I don’t want to spoil the fun of reading the book for anyone so I’m not going to exhaustively list Coach Carroll’s management and coaching ideas. However, I think we can discuss here a couple of truly useful, massively inspiring insights that small business owners can take away from the book.
Management Experience Leads to Expertise and Excellence
One theme of Carroll’s book, for example, is that when you or I do something over and over again and really work to get better, we develop true expertise. And then that expertise can produce excellent outcomes.
The story in Carroll’s book mostly covers the decades before he lands the head coaching job in Seattle. But as Coach Carroll shares his story, you see he continually works and learns to do a better and better job.
The inspiring takeaway for me in Coach Carroll’s book then is this: We can and should work to get better and better at running our small businesses. And even if you or I have been doing what we do for decades, we should still work on this.
That’s kind of neat, right?
Another way to look at this: You or I may do our best work and experience the best outcomes with the efforts we make next year or in the next five or ten years.
Note: For the record, I think this phenomenon of extensive and deep management experience leading to excellence pervades the Seahawks organization, including ownership, front office and coaching staff..
True Talent for Helping Talent Self-actualize
One other inspiring takeaway from “Win Forever”: I submit that Coach Carroll shows we’re all surrounded by a lot more talent than most of us realize.
Sure, obvious talent is easy to spot. Top-round draft choices. People already making $5M or $10M a year for doing the job (or playing the position).
But not all the star players are always visible. And if that’s true for NFL teams, surely it’s also true for small businesses.
That’s another neat idea to think about. You probably have talented people already on your team who can do a better and better job if you’ll help them “maximize their performance” to quote Pete. What a cool way to view the people in your life and work.
Finally, two semi-related points for the more serious Seahawks fans out there: First, if you have a chance to re-watch the big game, you might find it pretty interesting especially if you watch after you’ve read Carroll’s book.
I’m not sure if I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I did do a re-watch. And the re-watch really underscores the strength of the Seahawks, the coaching and the players.
No kidding, Denver is lucky the score wasn’t 50-0. (Sorry Broncos fans)
Another point (and I’ll need to stop after this because otherwise people will start to talk): If your cable television channel lineup includes the NFL network, try to catch the “Sound Effects” episode that covers the Seahawks Broncos Super Bowl game.
What the “Sound Effects” show does is mic up coaches and players on both teams during the game and then show the key plays for the game from this angle.
The “Sound Effects” format gives you another window into the way Carroll and his coaches manage the game and the way they nurture talent.