in 
Winning
Winning 
Smith won more games (875) than any other coach in college-basketball history. His teams at North Carolina were characterized by unselfishness, preparedness, and basketball intelligence. It's not surprising that Smith has a few cogent thoughts to offer on the matter of leadership. He begins by explaining what leadership means to him. Then former players comment on the concept as Smith applied it during their careers. Next, he tailors his lesson to a business application. Among the topics he explores are teamwork, winning, losing, planning for the future, building confidence, and setting goals. "Successful-coach-offers-business-advice" books are a publishing staple, but too often they consist of little more than commonsense platitudes mixed with some playing-field anecdotes. Smith breaks the pattern here, thanks in large part to his understanding that business isn't basketball, and direct correlations between sport and real life are often specious. It's apparent that Smith would have found success in virtually any field he'd chosen as his life's work. Readers will sit up and pay attention because the coach has something to say. Wes Lukowsky Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Monday
03Mar
Winning Is A By-Product
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 12:33PM We believed if we kept our focus on our main tenets, success would follow. Our North Carolina players seldom heard me or my assistants talk about winning. Winning would be the by-product of the process. There could be no shortcuts.
Pg 29
Monday
03Mar
Winning Shouldn't Be The Ultimate Goal
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 12:37PM Making winning the ultimate goal isn't good teaching. Tom Osborne, the great former coach of the University of Nebraska, said that making winning the goal can actually get in the way of winning.
Pg 29
Monday
03Mar
Don't Introduce Something New Until We've Nailed What We Are Working On
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 12:39PM We taught and drilled until we made the things we wanted to see become habits. The only way to have a smart team is to have one that is fundamentally sound. We didn't skimp on the fundamentals. We worked on them hard in practice and repeated them until they were down cold. We didn't introduce something and then move away from it before we had nailed it.
Pg 31
Monday
03Mar
A Leader's Job
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 12:43PM A leader's job is to develop committed followers. Great leaders inspire their teams to believe so deeply in their mission that they become immersed in what they're doing.
Pg 33
Monday
03Mar
Teach Your Employees Instead Of Doing Their Work
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 12:46PM There was an owner who spent four hours each month in one-on-one meetings with each vice president. He taught them how to run the business. He coached them to step back and think about the business, not just operate it. They brought problems to him, and together they solved them. He delegated, allowing his subordinates to use their full talents as managers.
He worked fewer hours but accomplished more, and his happiness increased. As for the vice presidents, they said the days spent with the owner were their most profitable and enjoyable of the month. Their commitment became deeper.
Pg 38
Monday
03Mar
Ritual Of The Foul LIne
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 12:52PM The best way to win is to make it a by-product of the process. In any competition, the participants are better off if they get their minds off the final outcome and onto a ritual. For example, when one of our players went to the foul line in a close game, I wanted him to be thinking about his ritual, not about the consequences of missing.
From the mid 1960s on I asked each player to have a ritual on the foul line. It didn't have to be uniform throughout the team. I encouraged each player to develop his own. One player might decide to bounce the ball three times before shooting; another player might not dribble at all. I just wanted them to do the same thing each time they went to the foul line.
Their minds would be on the ritual, not the outcome. It helped relieve the pressure of the moment.
Pg 39-40
Monday
03Mar
Be Angry After A Poor Performance
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 12:59PM I expected our players to be angry after a poor performance. I wanted them to feel that they couldn't wait to get back on the court and work to make amends. That's the way competitors usually react to playing less than their best, and that is healthy.
Pg 48
Monday
03Mar
Is It Easier To Learn From A Loss?
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 01:02PM Is it easier to teach and learn after a loss? Yes, because losing is such a motivating force. Players want to get back out there and show everyone that they're better than that.
After a loss everyone realizes the need for improvement. Feelings are hurt, competitive juices are flowing, and the team realizes it needs to listen, learn and improve. Losing sticks with you. We didn't lose many games at North Carolina, but I nevertheless remember the losses much more vividly than I do the victories. Crisis brings each of us face-to-face with our inadequacies. Losing brought about disappointment for all of us. It's a powerful emotion.
Pgs 48-49
Monday
03Mar
Revenge
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 01:09PM Some coaches say revenge is not an effective motivating factor because the emotion is short-lived. I'm inclined to disagree in some instances.
Pg 50
Monday
03Mar
The Bigger A Job The Bigger The Losses
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 01:16PM It's an absolute necessity for a leader to be able to handle losing. The bigger a person's job, the more losses he or she will have, and the more costly they will be.
Pg 55
Monday
03Mar
If The Players Did What I Asked And We Still Lost, It Was My Fault
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 01:18PM I tried to make sure the players got credit for our victories. The losses were on me. That was the way I believed it should work. If the players did what I asked of them and we still lost, then it was my fault.
Pg 65
Monday
03Mar
Don't Carry Ineffective People
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 01:22PM Good leaders don't carry or protect ineffective people or those whose skills don't match the job. However, the most effective leaders are always focused on how to help the individual as well as their organizations succeed personally.
Pg 70
Monday
03Mar
Thought Of The Day
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 01:25PM In addition to the Emphasis of the Day, we had a Thought for the Day that ostensibly had nothing to do with basketball. It was a philosophical text that added some perspective to the players' basketball experience. At least that was my intention. These thoughts could be taken from books, magazine articles, newspapers, my church bulletine, or audiotapes as well as other sources.
An example might be: "Don't let a day pass when you don't do something for someone who can't repay you."
Pg 76
Monday
03Mar
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 01:33PM We worked hard on fundamentals in practice. It was where we set our standards. We repeated things until they became habits. I believed that once we introduced something new, we should cover it in practice for several days to make sure the players got it.
We hammered it home: repeat, repeat, repeat until we got it right. We didn't make our drills competitive until they were learned. The players would have concentrated on winning instead of learning. Once drills were learned, we made them competitive.
Pg 77
Monday
03Mar
Players Are Not Allowed To Respond To Criticism
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 01:36PM We didn't have a lot of chatter in practice either. It was a learning session. If I criticized an act, the player wasn't allowed to respond. He would have spent the time trying to convince me that he wasn't wrong. "That might work with your parents," I'd say, "but not with your coach." I told the players, "I will be in my office after practice. If anybody doesn't understand something we did today, com on by."
In my years as head coach, maybe three or four players took me up on it.
Pg 77
Monday
03Mar
Criticism Must Be Clear And Specific
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 01:40PM Criticism must be clear and specific. It serves no purpose to tell the players: "We need to get out there and hustle. They want it more than we do." They're looking for more leadership than that.
Pg 77
Monday
03Mar
Don't They Ever Get Tired?
Monday, March 3, 2008 at 03:43PM The result of all this work and planning, and smart substitutions, was that we could run all night. We were expected to sprint tot he bench at time-outs, sprint from one end of the court to the other for foul shots, sprint to the bench when a substitute came in. All this running from one station to another could have had a demoralizing effect on our opponents. That was not happenstance. Coach Smith wanted our opponents to look at us and ask, "Don't those Carolina guys ever get tired?"
Pg 82
Monday
10Mar
We Take What We Want
Monday, March 10, 2008 at 03:46PM Some coaches like to say that their teams "take what the defense gives us." Well, Coach Smith taught us to be stubborn in this area, explaining, "Our opponent doesn't give us anything that is good for North Carolina; therefore we choose to take what we want."
Pg 82
Monday
10Mar
Practice
Monday, March 10, 2008 at 03:50PM Before attorneys make final arguments to juries in important cases, the most effective ones rehearse what they are going to say as well as what they're not going to say. They practice and critique themselves and one another. They do their best not to leave anything up in the air. They don't like surprises. They don't go to the courtroom and fly by the seat of their pants.
Pg 85
Monday
10Mar
Recruiting
Monday, March 10, 2008 at 03:51PM While I was getting recruited other coaches who were recruiting me were telling me I would start and play a lot, have the ball in my hands for four years, things like that. Coach Smith said I might have to play on the junior varsity team my first year. My mom fell in love with Coach Smith and the way he approached recruiting. I was Phil Ford, Jr., and she called me Little Phil.
"Little Phil, none of these coaches who're coming in here know for sure how you'll do in college basketball against the bigger boys," she said, "How can they tell you how much you'll play until we see how you'll do against college players? If you go to North Carolina and learn and improve, and it turns out you're ready to play a lot your sophomore and junior season, you'll know that Coach Smith won't be in someone's living room promising your playing time to a high school player." Basketball fan or not, Mom had this recruiting stuff figured out.
-Phil Ford
Pgs 92-93