Storied NFL football coach Bill Belichick has spent his career managing complex plays on the field and complicated team dynamics in the locker room, but the core of his management philosophy comes down a handful of simple principles, he said in remarks today at the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) trade show in Dallas.
Young Bill first learned the coaching trade by tagging along with his father, the head coach at the U.S. Naval Academy, from the ages of 8 to 18. His job was to travel on scouting trips and break down game film, recording basic details like the down, distance, and players’ positions. But his deepest lessons came from the Navy players themselves, who demonstrated unselfishness, teamwork, camaraderie, and energy, Belichick said in a session titled “Preparing a team to face the next demand.”
Through his career, he was on squads with a gallery of great players and coaches who often had even bigger personalities, such as the New York Giants greats Lawrence Taylor and Bill Parcells, Belichick said. That sometimes made for a volatile combination that made it difficult to unite a team behind a single goal, or—by Belichick’s own admission—to keep his eyes on the big picture instead of getting mired in details.
But Belichick said he found success by falling back on the classic Navy dictum that set a sailor’s priorities as “ship, shipmate, self,” in that order. And by the time he achieved his ultimate record of winning eight Super Bowl rings, he had adjusted that to a football perspective of “team, teammate, self.” And that approach ultimately boiled down to the coach’s well-known pair of leadership ideals: 1. Do your job, and 2. Put the team ahead of your personal goals and aspirations.
Likewise, Belichick approaches recruiting with a similar stance, saying it’s more important to have overall team goals in mind than to fixate on finding excellent individual players. “I’ve always lived by the axiom, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.’ So the first thing is to get a map,” he said.
Today Belichick is in the process of moving on from his long-time job at the helm of the New England Patriots, and the famously taciturn speaker was noncommittal in sharing his future football plans with the RILA crowd. But he did say that his work continues with the Bill Belichick Foundation, a nonprofit group that raises money for youth sports.
