A vignette from Michael Lombardi, podcast guest and football great General Manager about his mentor Bill Walsh, appears in his book Gridiron Genius, sticks with me. In particular, the part at the end of this passage about the picture frame.

To me, one way mastery differs from just doing enough is that when we master an art or craft, we love the details. Before mastery, they may seem drudge work. A novice painter may not focus on each stroke of the brush. A master sees that the art is in those details.

Here’s the passage in Lombardi’s book:

In short, Walsh took over a team with no high draft picks, no quarterback, and no hope. Three years later, that team won the Super Bowl.

It got there by following Walsh’s formula, what he calls his Standard of Performance: an exacting plan for constructing and maintaining the culture and organizational DNA behind the perfect football franchise. Let’s face it, the word perfect and the very idea of “building the perfect organization” are either clichés or fantasies to most coaches. Not to Walsh. Perfection drove him endlessly and, sometimes to those around him, maddeningly.

His obsession with perfection meant he constantly pushed his people, regardless of experience or position in the organization, to learn more. He was naturally curious, always searching for ways to fix his team or just better accomplish the simplest task, and he demanded the same thing of his staff. He never wanted us to follow familiar paths to knowledge. He was trying to build a lasting, self-perpetuating culture to counter the groupthink that was then pervasive in the NFL and still is today.

Walsh, in other words, was trying to “disrupt” football long before anyone thought to use that term in business, let alone sports.

From his lectern in the passenger seat [of the car Lombardi drove him in when Lombardi worked for him], Walsh told me, “If we are all thinking alike, no one is thinking.” He was a master communicator, deftly asking questions he already knew the answer to as a lead-in to another lesson. “Have you heard of Tom Peters?” he once asked me. My first thought was, Is he that punter in the draft? When it quickly became clear that I had no clue who Peters was, Walsh began an impromptu dissertation on the merits of In Search of Excellence, the book that Peters, a famed management consultant, wrote with Bob Waterman. Walsh loved the book and urged me to head to the store immediately to buy a copy. (There was no Amazon back then.) Which, of course, I did. And reading Peters spurred in me a lifelong love of his management philosophy, as Walsh knew it would.

In the book, Peters and Waterman offer a list of eight attributes that drive organizations to become excellent. The similarities to Walsh’s Standard of Performance were no coincidence. Walsh himself said, “Running a football franchise is not unlike running any other business: You start first with a structural format and underlying philosophy, then find people who can implement it.” But if football was his business, building the finest organization was his goal.

The best way I can describe Walsh’s philosophy is that he thought of a football team as being like a brand-new automobile, believing that the finished product could only be as good as the assembly line that created it, all the way down to the tiniest bold and the smallest detail performed by the seemingly most insignificant worker. Everything needed to mesh on and off the field. No part could survive without the others. It was a process Walsh was constantly thinking and rethinking as he built his culture of success.

His meticulousness was evident everywhere, from his spotless sneakers to his impeccable office. Once, as I was walking down the hall in the team facility, I heard him yell to me, “Are you just going to ignore than photo?” Unable to discern the offending picture, I asked him which one he meant. “The one that’s tilted sideways” was his straightforward reply. To this day, if there is a picture hanging out of line, I am compelled to straighten it. Walsh was extremely demanding in a quiet way. You never wanted to be the source of that disappointed look on his face.

I think of the vignette about the picture frame many times I pick up litter. I can’t believe people pass litter by without picking it up. I don’t mean every piece, but at least a few a day. I mean, I understand why, but have left that culture. I would consider living that way, where you don’t pick up a single piece of litter and have all the excuses in the world to leave them, distasteful, to say the least.

Michael guest spoke in a leadership course I taught at NYU, “Senior Seminar in Leadership” in its sports management department. A year or so after he spoke, I emailed him:

I couldn’t help but share something that reminds me of you all the time: the vignette in your book where, if I remember right, Bill Walsh, asks, “Are you just going to leave it like that?” about a tilted picture on the wall. You didn’t tilt it. Most others wouldn’t notice it. It wasn’t your job. Still, it could be improved and you were there.

I hope this email isn’t too long, but I wanted to share how your writing continues to influence me. I expect to lead teams acting on sustainability to achieve greatness like you’ve experienced.

What reminds me of that vignette is a place in my life most people have given up on, blame others, and abdicate responsibility on: litter.

I don’t know if I told you, though my email signature links to it, that I pick up at least a few pieces of litter every day. I don’t pretend I’m solving this global problem, but I’m not going to do nothing either. I consider it practicing the basics of sustainability leadership. As much as I can’t stand or understand how people can litter, manufacture so much packaging that becomes litter, or buy so much packaged stuff, I also don’t understand how people can pass it by without doing anything about it. Everyone has their excuses to pass it by, but I keep thinking “Are you just going to leave it like that?”

I think of this practice like practicing the basics in any performance-based activity. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. How do we as a culture reach sustainability? Practice, practice, practice. Just as Yo-Yo Ma practices scales, I practice sustainability. It’s how I learn to reduce my garbage at home to taking four years (and counting) to fill one load of trash. How else can I help all Americans reduce their trash and pollution?

I think of attention to detail as what develops character, integrity, credibility, honor, and authenticity. Also joy, self-awareness, love, and other properties of mastery. People in sustainability lacks these properties of leadership.

Thank you,

Josh

I love mastery. I can’t help returning to Martha Graham’s quote that inspires and gives me direction in this area. I think she, Michael, Bill, and Tom were talking about one thing.

The dancer is realistic. His craft teaches him to be. Either the foot is pointed or it is not. No amount of dreaming will point it for you. This requires discipline, not drill, not something imposed from without, but discipline imposed by you yourself upon yourself.

Your goal is freedom. But freedom may only be achieved through discipline. In the studio you learn to conform, to submit yourself to the demands of your craft, so that you may finally be free.

…

And when a dancer is at the peak of his power, he has two lovely, powerful, perishable things. One is spontaneity, but it is something arrived at over years and years of training. It is not a mere chance. The other is simplicity, but that also is a different simplicity. It’s the state of complete simplicity, costing no less than everything.

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