Zero Points for Winning. Minus Points for Losing

Recently I read a book “The Score takes care of Itself” written by legendary American NFL (Football) coach Bill Walsh. This was given to me by my Boss to read. . It was a management book about how he converted San Francisco 49ers, which was one of the worst teams in NFL history to winning several Super Bowl’s. It is not necessary to know about the game in order to read and benefit from the book as I did not know much about the game either. The main gist of this book is how Coach Walsh came up with detailed set of guidelines for each and every member of the 49ers team, including players, coaches, administrative and support staff. He called this Standard of Performance. He clearly explained each member of the organization about his responsibilities and expected them to follow it religiously. Now I have my own doubts about this type of management philosophy, but I will not dwell on it on this post. Towards the end of the book, I came across something that I could relate to very much. The Coach’s words reflected my state my mind. What was said was “Zero Point for Winning. Minus Points for Losing”. When you start winning, the bar keeps rising (both by you and your managers) and nothing other than winning is acceptable. You reach a point where you no longer enjoy winning; you are just relieved that it’s done. I feel the same way nowadays in whatever small things I am doing. There is no celebration after a major release, just plain relief that it went through any major issues, while on any objective assessment considering the scope, effort and constraints, it would be considered a successful release. The fun has gone out of work, it has become more of an obligation.