Learning lessons from the Ol' Ball Coach

Do you know Steve Spurrier? He’s a former Heisman Trophy winner as a quarterback for the University of Florida in 1966, and he later came back to coach his alma mater and lead them to the school’s first six Southeastern Conference championships and a national championship in 1996. After a less-than-stellar two-year stint in the NFL with the Washington Redskins, he came back to the college ranks and coached South Carolina for 10 seasons before stepping down as coach in the middle of the 2015 season. He finished his college career with a 228-89-2 record.

In honesty, he may be more famous for his quips. When a fire at a dorm on the Auburn University campus destroyed 20 books, he said, “But the real tragedy was that 15 hadn't been colored yet." When asked about the University of Tennessee missing out on another Sugar Bowl during his successful Florida coaching tenure, he replied: “You can't spell Citrus without U-T.” At a football season kickoff luncheon in Shreveport, La., just last August, he made this statement about talent on a team: “You can have a bunch of good ballplayers and not win, also. All you LSU fans know about that, I’m sure.” Ouch.

He’s a winner, and he’s pretty clever when it comes to offensive game planning and holding a crowd’s attention. He’ll be doing the latter during his keynote address at FABTECH’s Industry Night at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on the evening of Nov. 6.

I had the opportunity to ask him some questions about his football coaching experience and how that might apply to leadership in the private sector. Here are some of his nuggets of wisdom.

“Like any profession, you learn from the people that you are around. I learned a lot from other head coaches, maybe about what to do and what not to do.”

You can’t beat experience. If you don’t have some, then you need to lean on others that do. Some company leaders lean on mentors, older family members, bankers, or advisers from nearby universities or government agencies. It’s always best to learn from the mistakes of others to eliminate the possibility of repeating those same mistakes. (Here’s a shameless plug for the FMA Annual Meeting, which will be held March 5-7 in Nashville. It’s a great opportunity for someone to learn from other fabricators experiencing similar pains and successes.)

“They asked my former quarterback at Florida, Danny Wuerffel, if his coach would get mad at him if he changed the play at the line of scrimmage. He said, ‘No. He gets mad if I don’t change the play because if there is a better play out there, he wants us to get to it.’”

Spurrier knows the importance of evolving to meet adjustments made by the opposing defense, and he knows the most expedient way to do that is with on-the-field audibles by the quarterback. Fabricators know they are working at higher levels of efficiency when their employees take ownership of processes and are involved in continuous improvement efforts. Getting to that point, however, takes good coaching.

“The people that are the supervisors, CEOs, or the bosses, they are trying to do what the head coach is trying to do: Get the most out of their people. We’re trying to inspire them to be the best they can be and encourage them to have a wonderful attitude.”

Leaders can’t lead from behind a desk and use e-mail to communicate with the team. They have to be visible and make themselves familiar with the folks doing the work.

“The biggest mistakes that a lot of leaders make is allowing disgruntled employees, assistant coaches, or just someone that can’t quite get with the program to hang around. If there is a negative person in the group, you have to weed them out.”

Spurrier said he only had to do that once or twice, but it was necessary to maintain success or establish an environment to succeed.

“My favorite moment as a coach was when we achieved a conference championship. I always thought that was about as big as you can get … Those were really special moments for the entire team.”

Spurrier said individual accolades for players were nice, but he liked the team achievements the most. Having everyone working hard to achieve a major goal is a major accomplishment. It energizes an organization and provides great motivation for achieving future goals.

“If you aren’t good at it, you don’t last very long.”

He was talking about coaching. Metal fabricators know this by the competitors that are no longer around. Survival is success.