Creating a Winning Culture in High Performance Football: the Building Blocks of Brilliance.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In High Performance Sport

Regular readers of this blog will recognise the phrase “High Performance Environment” - it something that has appeared many times in SCB blog posts and discussions.

A High Performance Environment is more or less things you can buy to increase the opportunity for athletes and coaches to perform to their full potential, e.g. facilities, equipment, sports science support, supplements etc etc ad infinitum.

However, creating and sustaining the worlds best high performance environment is of little value if your team is not winning.

A high performance environment: i.e. having the fundamental elements of best practice in high performance sport, is merely the framework – the skeleton on which to hang a winning culture.

You need both: the high performance environment provides the opportunity for athletes, coaches, management and staff to perform to a high standard: a winning culture drives the standards and behaviours that take full advantage of the high performance environment.

A high performance environment provides the potential for success: a winning culture turns potential into performance and performance into victory.

WG

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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Comments

9 Responses to “Creating a Winning Culture in High Performance Football: the Building Blocks of Brilliance.”

  1. Jeremy Boone on February 2nd, 2010 1:41 pm

    Wayne,
    Brilliant as usual! I actually just addressed the Cybex Annual International Sales meeting with a similar message…”The NEW Minimum Standard in Professional Sport.”

    Without you probably realizing it, you are actually talking about the three value dimensions of Sports Axiology:

    1. Systemic Value- is about the What? (sets, reps, volume, duration, equipment, facilities, etc)

    2. Extrinsic Value- is about the How? (best training plan, best game plan, best player, best option, etc…)

    3. Intrinsic Value- is about the Who and most unique qualities (winning culture and individual qualities of the people that make it up)

    It is the Intrinsic Value Dimension that is missing!!

  2. Ben Rattray on February 2nd, 2010 2:00 pm

    holy crap im dizzy from that presentation.

    like that you used prezi, but think it could be used better, not sure how, but sure it can. perhaps dont make it so dizzy for starters.

    don’t coaches know this stuff? are they dumb?

  3. Jeremy Boone on February 2nd, 2010 10:56 pm

    Ben,
    Unfortunately at least here in the States coaches do NOT know this stuff. It has nothing to do with being ‘dumb’ and everything to do with our current performance environment (culture)!

    Jeremy

  4. Jeremy Pryce on February 3rd, 2010 2:06 am

    You are of course right. Environment nowadays is the minimum.

    But what is your definition of culture? Mine would be “how we interact with those within the group on a consistent basis.” In other words, the way we do things (speak and act) within our group. The challange would be to get that right and have everyone within the group to buy into it.

    Jeremy

  5. Wayne Goldsmith on February 6th, 2010 6:01 am

    Hi Jeremy,

    Thanks for the comments. I don’t worry about definitions too much because they limit my creativity and stiffle my mind into one paradigm and construct. I tend to go into all environments “cold” and try to understand where they are and what I can do to enhance their performance. I believe each performance environment is unique, so I treat all situations as different and special rather than go in with a fixed construct and get them to fit my model and philosophies. Success is a moving target.

    But I agree with you that culture is linked to the consistent “living” of words and actions – in high performance sporting terms – “living excellence”.

    WG

  6. Wayne Goldsmith on February 6th, 2010 6:03 am

    Thanks Jeremy.

    Have no idea what Axiology is but a lot of this is common sense – however, as we know, common sense is not all that common.

    Thanks,

    WG

  7. Wayne Goldsmith on February 6th, 2010 6:08 am

    Thanks Ben.

    Have worked a bit more on the PREZI techniques – appreciate the comments.

    Coaches are not dumb – just poorly educated in terms of understanding how to win. We teach them about heart rates, lactates, carbohydrates, proteins, acceleration profiles and a lot of irrelevant science but who teaches them how to win? Who teaches them to create and sustain a winning culture? Much easier to have them attend a course and teach them about Phosphofructokinase than it is to teach them how to think, create, learn and seek continuous improvement.

    WG

  8. Wayne Goldsmith on February 6th, 2010 6:11 am

    Thanks Jeremy.

    Too much coaching is about what we do and not how we do it – so coaches get bogged down in measureables like sets, reps, heart rate, laps, times etc rather than taking a good look at all the intangibles like attitude, commitment, performance standards and of course culture.

    Unless coach education and development changes dramatically, I can’t see things changing for a long, long time.

    WG

    WG

  9. Jeremy Boone on February 6th, 2010 12:30 pm

    Wayne,
    Completely agree with your last comments! Not only is the ‘how we do it’ missing, but also ‘who is involved’ as well (which is as important if not more in my opinion). By ‘who’ I simply mean the ability to recognize the unique qualities in others and then choosing ‘HOW’ best to leverage their strengths.

    Regarding your earlier reply, in my experience coaching is grounded by common sense (yet most don’t seem to have) but grown through science, education, and meaningful research built around winning.

    You are obviously someone with very high clarity in your thinking pattern paired along with strong values. This combination often results in what seems to be common sense to you but not so among the massses!

    Your amazing track record is CLEAR proof!

    I believe the entire coaching community can highly benefit and should be exposed to your work… resulting in your helping to build clarity in others in the ‘what, how, and who’ of coaching excellence.

    Thanks for all you do Wayne!

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