Success, Failure and Learning

I am always interested in learning. I want to learn why
teams win and why teams lose. Over the years I have found it interesting when and
how coaches and teams learn. I am reminded of an incident about twelve years
ago with the Tampa bay Mutiny in the MLS. The previous week we had lost a match
one nil and the head coach went ballistic after the lose. The following week we
won a match one nil and the coach was ecstatic, jumping up and down and praising
everyone in the locker room. Walking off the field after practice of the game
that we won, one of our forwards a veteran player from Italy who had player for
several top teams in Serie A and on the Italian World Cup team said to me: “
Prof (In Europe the fitness guys are called Prof) we win everything good, we
lose everything bad, not so.” He was spot on in the “win” we had played
terrible, no team concept, poor execution of basics but had been lucky and
scored on a mistake. In the lose the opposite was true. We had played brilliantly,
great team play, crisp passing and execution but the other team scored a lucky
goal. The coach had missed the opportunity for two teachable moments.

The moral of the story, if you look at great teams and
coaches, they maintain an even keel. They learn from both the successes and the
failures. Improvement is all about constant learning. The great ones focus on
the process. Sure winning ugly is still winning, but generally it does yield championships.
Consistency is what is rewarded, consistently both mentally and physically.