Want to win big?

Don’t play the game.

Change it.

The enduring lesson from a 90s NFL team on radical innovation.

Run to setup the pass

That was the offensive philosophy of every NFL team pre-1999. The logic goes like this:

1. Use the running game to get defences on their heals.
2. Then, expecting a run, the opposition will not rush your quarterback so much. This means more time.
3. More time to throw for your quarterback means more passing plays called.
4. More passing with more time means more completions for longer gains in the later part of the game.

Time for a throw is huge to a quarterback in the NFL. It allows more time to think, more time to scan for option and more chance for receivers to get open. Therefore, this philosophy seemed to make sense and had success. But it was a core assumption, not a core truth.

Pass to setup the run

In 1999 Mike Martz, the offensive coordinator for the St Louis Rams, walked into the head coach's office and asked a simple question: why does the run have to setup the pass?

He wasn’t pulling this idea from nowhere. Like most innovation Martz’s was based on on noticing a small detail that others seemed to miss and asking, ‘what if… ?”.

The observation came in the previous year when coaching the Washington Redskins. When they were on third down and long – a situation when the opposition knows you will pass and have to try for longer gains – the Redskins had huge success.

Martz had the chance to prototype his philosophy at the Redskins. He convinced the head coach to run the plays previously confined to third and long whenever they wanted. They ran them on first down from deep in defence. They ran them on third and short close to the opposition end zone.

Dick Vermeil, the Rams head coach, was convinced. Especially as they’d just signed a gun quarterback. Probably even more because if didn’t significantly improve his losing record as head coach with the Rams he’d be looking for another job at seasons end.

They entered the 1999 season with a philosophy nearly exactly the reverse of the above:

1. Pass early and long, going for big gains.
2. Have the big gains lead to early scores and an established lead.
3. Start running the ball in the second half to hold possession and eat up the clock.
4. Maintain the early break or stretch it as your opposition is forced to take bigger risks.

So what happened?

The Rams didn’t just go from a poor team to good. They won the Super Bowl and an era of success dubbed ‘the greatest show on turf’.

And this was all without that gun QB. He got injured in the pre-season. The replacement was Kurt Warner, a veteran journeyman who’d never played in the NFL. Warner won the NFL MVP that year and is now on the fringes of being inducted into the hall of fame.

The Knowledge Funnel

“In this current economy, the winners will be the re-thinkers, not the re-trenchers.” – Roger Martin

So what does this have to do with innovation? Well, the biggest most disruptive innovation usually come from challenging a core assumption that is no longer, or never was, totally true.

Let me explain this with Roger Martin’s knowledge funnel from The Design of Business. The funnel describes innovation happening by moving knowledge from mystery, heuristic and algorithm.

At some point in the football history a coach noticed that if he called running plays early it put the defence on their heals, giving more time for the quarterback to throw long later.

This moved it from mystery to heuristic; a rule of thumb. Over time and multiple iterations coaches perfected the strategy moving it from a heuristic to an algorithm.

Hit them from the blindside

The algorithm space is an efficient place to be. It’s also dangerous. Despite all the success a mindset shift also happens. The core assumptions strengthen. It starts as ‘this works’; the run sets-up the pass. Then people start to think ‘only this works’. You have to run to setup the pass.

Great business innovations come from reaching into the mystery and finding something to move to a heuristic. But not just any heuristic. A heuristic that directly challenges the core assumption that the current algorithm an industry is based on.

Climb a different mountain

The metaphor I use for this is mountains (inspired by this paper). First someone describes a single mountain. It has a peak, and everybody is trying to race to the top of it.

But someday someone comes along and describes a bigger mountain. It might be steeper. It might be more treacherous. But it’s taller. Much taller. And those climbing that mountain don’t need to get to the peak to be higher than those on the first.

Then all the competition starts trying to climb. Before 1999 the NFL was on the first mountain. Then the Rams defined the new peak. From 1999 until now every NFL team has followed the newly defined strategy.

But there is always a new mountain.

So if you want to go big. Don’t play the game. Change it.

Find the next mountain.

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I also have plenty more stuff like this on my retired blog.

This post is inspired by and takes reference from this article, this journal paper and this book.