Repeatable Success Isn't an Accident
This week, Paul Martin looks at leadership through the lens of an elite organization that didn't inherit success; instead they engineered it.
Full transcript
Generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Martin Rehab M&A Advisory. I am Paul Martin, founder and president of Martin Healthcare Advisors. And today we're going to study a leader who just accomplished something that is extraordinarily rare. Coach Curt Cignetti just led the Indiana football team. It even sounds funny saying that, the Indiana football team. It's always Indiana basketball. But the Indiana football team, he led them to a 16 and0 season, a national championship, making them only the second team in college football history to win that many games and have zero losses at that level.
And what's so interesting about this coach, and we're really going to study him today, but he didn't inherit a powerhouse. He literally built a championship program and he has done that repeatedly across many different levels of college football. So today we're going to break down I feel like I'm an ESPN analyst. We're going to break down how he actually did it, some of the specifics behind his and the team success, and what business owners like you guys can take away and learn from in the way he built and ran his elite organization.
And he's done this many times. So, what makes him so different? Look, Cignetti has won three distinct levels of college football. He's done it in division two, FCS, and the power five. And very cute, few coaches have ever done that. And that really tells us that his results specifically are not, you know, environment driven. They are process driven. And we can all take those lessons and apply it to our own businesses. First thing is, you know, he runs the entire program. Cignetti is not an offensive guy or a defensive guru.
His edge is that he runs the entire program as one system. No silos, no unit operating under different standards. Discipline is a word he uses constantly and it is uniform across the entire organization. All the way from offense, defense, special teams to the co the coaching staff all the systems around. He runs it as one entire program and we have that same opportunity to do that in our businesses as well. Let's talk about recruiting. Very interesting. He recruits production over potential. He literally stress test tests coachability of a player early in his discussions.
What he wants to see is how people and players will respond to hard coaching, not how they talk about leadership in interviews and use fancy words. He wants to see them under pressure. You know, at Indiana University in Pennsylvania, he partnered with ROC, the ROC, to put players through real stress situations. This was not punishment. It was a way to ident identify who are our true leaders and that was based on what do they do in terms of their behavior under pressure and that is something that you know we can do in our recruiting looking for those candidates who have been under some pressure and having them talk us through how they behaved under that pressure.
So his practice design I thought was very interesting. His practices are shorter but more precise. He would rather have fewer perfect reps than many sloppy ones. And that discipline shows up on game day when his team Indiana rarely beat themselves. It was something that the analysts were saying before every game. They do not beat themselves. And I think we can take a lesson from that as well. You know, do we want folks to have 10, 12 hour days or do we want them to learn how to be efficient in what they're doing and be very focused on moving themselves through that day so that they then have that, you know, more balance, right?
This is one of the most interesting things about him and I really enjoyed watching him on the sideline. His sideline demeanor. He is calm and the word I love, he's diagnostic and he's corrective and the players trust him because emotion never overrides evaluation. What are we going to do on the next play? I heard him say many times,"Wh should I be a cheerleader on the sidelines when we score a touchdown? I'm expecting that we're going to score a touchdown." And I think that calm, diagnostic, and corrective behavior kept his players also focused as well.
So, why do these turnarounds stick? And I really truly believe now you know I'm not a direct fan of Indiana but I think what he is installing which is standards before talent that is a discipline that shows up before the wins. You know, it started with the discipline with that team two years now. Now they're getting the wins, no losses, and that's why his turnarounds seem to last instead of collapsing after a short run. I think, you know, certainly the discipline, but also the players that he has chosen are those that will stick with this team.
I know everybody knows we have the portal and look in physical therapy private practice we have a portal right physical therapists and support staff can leave anytime they want and go somewhere else unless they're under a non-compete they can go to one of your key competitors. So, you know, setting those standards and keeping those standards strong is really important as he built a football team for the long haul and as you are building a business for the long haul. So, why does this really matter? You know, whether growth for you is internal or it's external, the lesson is readiness.
Cignetti built programs that are predictable, they're coachable, and they are transferable. Although, I will add that one of his former coordinators was the defensive coordinator at Miami. And while we can look at the two teams and we can all make our analysis and you know certainly through the entire season, Cignetti and Indiana played with much more discipline than the Miami team did. And I'll tell you what, I was really impressed with that Miami team and their ability to keep coming back and keep coming back. But in the end, that signetti ran program, discipline, predictability, and that becomes transferable as we bring new players in and new staff in.
I think we can really learn from this. So, what's our real takeaway here? Look, Coach Cignetti is special because he can repeat success. Repeatability only comes from systems, standards, and disciplines. And he brought all of those to that program. And it will be really interesting to see how he's able to repeat this now that they've won a first national championship. And for our businesses, our businesses, we can look at being repeatable as we open our first clinic and we put all the systems and the disciplines into that first clinic.
Second, it's just a repeat. Third, it's a repeat. Fourth, it's a repeat. 15, 20, it's a repeat. And so, I am really hopeful that some of these points that we brought up about Coach Zignetti today can really have an impact about how you will run your business in the future. And if you have any questions on what we have talked about today or anything else that I can talk to you about as it relates to this current industry, just click below. Let's talk. Thank you for joining in and I look forward to seeing you very soon.
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