Two Great Coaches: One in Sports, One in Business

From the basketball court to the factory floor, coach John Wooden and management guru W. Edwards Deming share an unexpected philosophy and background.

Though, Wooden and Deming never met, both absorbed and learned their winning ideas of continual improvement, teamwork and cooperation living and working on the rural American frontier in the early 20th Century—Wooden in Indiana, Deming in Wyoming.

Unfortunately most modern Americans have forgotten or never learned these ideas.

Now, instead of "continual improvement," the American motto is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and "If something goes wrong, find someone to blame.” Today competition--not cooperation—is king. The primary motivator in business is not to please the customer, but simply to increase profits—whatever it takes.

Both men approached teamwork and cooperation as the way to help people become greater than the sum of their parts: as a person, as a family, as a team—any enterprise. They came from a sharing culture of community barn building.

Deming learned continual improvement from watching the County Agricultural Agent teach farmers in Wyoming each year better methods of farming than the year before. As a result of these agents spreading continual improvement methods across the country year after year, America became the leading producer of food and fiber in the world, which is the historical basis of America’s economic power.

John Wooden in Indiana learned teamwork and continual improvement in much the same way. When he was 12 years old, his father gave him a creed, which he tried to live throughout his life. It had seven points:
• Be true to yourself
• Make each day your masterpiece
• Help others
• Drink deeply from good books
• Make leadership a fine art
• Build a shelter against a rainy day
• Pray for guidance and give thanks for you blessings every day.

Wooden went on to become the first player and coach in the Basketball Hall of Fame. He attained the greatest win record of any coach in any sport: 10 national basketball championships for UCLA, which included 88 straight victories.

Deming went on to draw up his famous 14 Points that transformed the way manufacturing was done worldwide. Wooden, based on his seven-point creed, built what he called a Pyramid of Success.

It seems ironic that these almost century-old ideas are still what we need to succeed in today’s rapidly changing complex world.