How to Create a World-Class Organization: The Bill Belichick Approach

Why are the Patriots such a great organization and how are they consistently top performers in one of the most competitive sports?

Today we’ll take a look behind the scenes at why this organization is so incredibly successful and what this success stems from. We won’t get into the weeds on football stats and comparisons but we‘ll get into leadership, evaluation methods, and much more that carries over into multiple other areas of life.

Much of this success stems from Bill Belichick, the head coach of the Patriots organization known for his intense focus.

I compiled these highlights from a recent podcast featuring Michael Lombardi, a former coach to the New England Patriots, a football player, an NFL executive, analyst, and a sportswriter who had the pleasure of working closely with Bill Belichick.

Do not have a bias towards your beliefs

Bill and other members of the organization are on a constant journey to disprove their beliefs. Without this, evaluation suffers. It’s easy to get sucked into nice stories and narratives that we tell ourselves but you have to constantly look for evidence in the opposite direction to take a truly unbiased approach. This is key to understanding any number of the infinite, complex situations in life or business.

If Bill likes a player, he reverse engineers the situation. He starts looking for reasons he doesn’t like the player. He will gather 3–4 reasons against his liking and then take a step back to evaluate each individual piece. Bill takes an absolute zero approach in determining each moving component of his organization by isolating the pieces to gain a true understanding of each movement.

Having experience doesn’t mean that you can cut corners, it means you have the most amount of work to do.

Build a long-term foundation for a great organization by enabling creativity and curiosity.

It sounds simple, but not many people really do it. Bill Belichick will tell you what to do and what he needs. He doesn’t tell you how to do it. This enables evergreen, an approach that provides a structure for continued, long-term success.

Why is it evergreen? Because you are in full control of your own job, assignments, and responsibilities. People get tired and worn down when someone is consistently micromanaging them and heavily controlling how they do things. People need freedom and empowerment to do what they can do best. This keeps people fresh and enables them to pursue creative strategies that raise the organization up.

If you do your job well you’ll get more to do, if not you get less to do. The best leaders enable environments of curiosity and creativity. We must have this in life, otherwise we fall short.

Eliminate politics and motives of mid-level managers.

Incredibly important, maybe the best point in this article. Bill sits down with his quarterback, Tom Brady, without the offensive coordinator. This is the equivalent of the CEO sitting down with an analyst for a weekly review. By doing this, Bill eliminates any personal motives of the offensive coordinator (or mid-level manager) and gets a direct connection to the team and organization — nothing is compartmentalized.

This flattens out the organization and eliminates layers of complexity and personal motives before they happen. By eliminating this ‘triad’, all of the politics are tossed aside and it allows you to diagnose leadership qualities of your lieutenants.

Repetition = Results

It’s easy to do meetings like the above for a week or two then forget about them. For this very reason, Bill and Tom will sit down every week at the same time to do a review. They figured out that this works as a part of the process so it’s now ingrained.

“There is no silver bullet. We’re going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.”

-Ben Horowitz, Andreesen Horowitz

Manage the clock

It matters in sports, it matters in life. You never realize how brief an hour is until you waste one binge-watching a TV show or playing games. Bill doesn’t waste a second in the building. Everything is meticulously planned. His focus and concentration are what separates him from everyone else.

It’s plain and simple, there is no secret. Put your head down and do the work. Don’t convince yourself it’s harder than it is. Bill uses this work ethic to build the culture by who he is. His values, ethics, and code trickle down through the organization.

What’s the difference between Bill and you?

Self-awareness. Bill Belichick and Bill Walsh, both have had incredible self-awareness. They cannot be tempted out of their state. They cannot be convinced otherwise or distracted. There are Bill’s priorities and the rest is noise.

Successful people never allow themselves to be bored. Feeling bored? Pick up a book, curiosity never stops. Feed your insatiable appetite for curiosity.

Why is it so hard to execute in business, life, and sports?

Sometimes we’re looking for complexity — take the simple solution. Stop trying to show how smart you are and start making some serious traction. This can be a success-killer, kill the ego and look for the results, not the short-term reward gratification.

When you execute, don’t avoid the tough things like confronting players or coworkers and having honest and open conversations.

Simple game-plans win.

The best don’t come up with new game-plans and moves. They apply what they know and act based on what they know about their opponent. When you plan, prepare, and premeditate your game-plan, the desired outcome is drastically in your favor.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. -Leonardo da Vinci

“Give me 6 hours to cut down a tree and I will spend the first 4 sharpening the axe.” -Abraham Lincoln

How can you kickstart a really successful career?

Look inside and figure out what you really are. Define yourself. Scout inside out, not outside in. Right now you want everything. Put 3 things on your menu and work on them.

Concluding Notes

It all comes down to leadership in building quality organizations. Start with you.

Get good at this, it’s a great long-term strategy. Be coachable, give people the benefit of the doubt, listen to what they say, take feedback gracefully, and keep working at defining who you really are. It’s like taking a giant 1,000 lb. slab of marble and chiseling away to figure out what kind of masterpiece you’re going to get. There are no shortcuts.

In the crucible of you must win or you must lose, it comes down to quality of leadership. Understand this and you win. In business, watch their shoes, not their mouths. Don’t get your information from the media.