Bill Walsh and Projects

Posted by Rich Crowley in innovation, Project Management

I’m a big fan of many sports. I don’t watch them on TV as much as I used to but I love big sports events, whether they be team events like the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup play-offs, or major tournaments like the Masters, Wimbledon, etc.

The people involved in sports at the highest level are a constant source of interest to me. While there have been many personalities who have changed the game they were involved with, one of my favourites is Bill Walsh.

Bill Walsh came to fame as head coach of the San Francisco 49’ers although he had enjoyed success as a coach long before arriving there. While there are many opinions about his innovations, he is considered one of the key people behind the West Coast Offense. In short, the West Coast Offense is about moving the ball through the air instead of on the ground.

Prior to this innovation, conventional football wisdom was that you needed to establish your running game first in order to establish your passing game. Walsh turned things upside down and decided that with a less talented offense, he would use his passing game first, but rely heavily on short passes to give him enough yards on first and second down that he could then either run or pass on third down. Brilliant.

Another Walsh innovation, and the one that I think applies more directly to project management, is that he scripted the first 25 offensive plays from scrimmage prior to the start of the game. No matter how the game unfolded initially, he would stick to these plays to establish his game plan. After that point, he would assess the game and manage in an unscripted way from that point on.

I liken this to managing a time-driven project where there is enough ambiguity about how to execute it that the best thing to do is just make some progress quickly by focusing on what your team can do best out of the gate, and then adjust once the game is on.