Several years ago I first heard about the playbook in an NFL football context when Bill Walsh, the highly successful head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, spoke of it in an interview. The coach was asked why he had these large sheets of paper with him on the sidelines, which was rare as other successful coaches like Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys and Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins didn’t use them. Coach Walsh went on to explain that he boiled down his team’s “playbook” each week, based on the opponent, into a number of scenarios and options that he could call out on game day. He went on to say that in tight pressure-cooker games he often felt so frazzled that he really needed this game day playbook to help him pick the right plays, versus keeping everything up in his head and hoping he would select the right play at the right time. Plus he went on to say that this way he, his other coaches, and the quarterback could more easily be on the same page. Well, we all know about the success of Coach Walsh, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and a number of other players and coaches associated with the Super Bowl victories and success of their era.
Today, those large sheets are commonplace on virtually every sideline for college and NFL teams. Others have followed certainly because of the success of those 49ers, respect for the true brilliance and offensive genius of Bill Walsh, and the fact that it really made a lot of sense because it worked. The playbook and game day sheets helped win games for teams by allowing for better preparation; stronger strategy that plays to the team’s strengths and opponent’s weaknesses; and greatly improved decision making.
Around this time I was running a $200+ million channel for a large global corporation that was growing at 20+% a year. Yet I wondered if a playbook could help me, because we were essentially running the business day-to-day, albeit we did go through the strategic planning drill once a year. So my senior team developed a set of scenarios, both positive and negative, that we could face that year and beyond. Next we developed a number of responses we could take for each situation. At the time, we developed about 35 scenarios that helped us, which we later added to. Unlike the NFL, we only released our responses and actions to the sales team when we needed to deploy. These deployed actions were like plays signaled-in from the sidelines – plus we provided the sales and marketing leaders with “game day” options that were condensed down from our much larger playbook. And, of course, much of the playbook was vetted with finance and others on the channel leadership team.
On October 19, 1987, commonly referred to now as Black Monday, the Dow Jones fell by 508 points or some 23% and the largest single day crash of the market, even to this day. This event sent businesses into a shock and the demand for most goods and services dropped significantly. Shortly after this our finance team came around to ask us where we could make cuts to our expenses. THIS EVENT provided a great opportunity to use our playbook. The challenge was finding a play that could help us turn around the rapidly deteriorating business conditions. We settled on a key initiative that was called “Steal One” that we felt would fire-up the 700+ channel partners and their customers. “Steal One” was launched within 10 days of October 19th and not without some controversy: this response was viewed as very aggressive and a lot to get done in a short time. When the year was tallied, this channel finished up 16% and was the only one of 18 units in this large corporation to not experience decline. Interestingly, besides the sales climb, our profits also grew at about the same rate. So we finished a very scary year with resounding success. And in the end we conquered what has since been termed a “Black Swan“ event.
Fresh in all of our recent memories are situations that began to unfold after midyear 2008, and which we’re still trying to climb out of. So ask yourself: How you and your team could have been better prepared for this scenario and others that may occur on the horizon? There’s a lot we can do to gain control of events like these and provide the leadership our teams need. How many companies have something like a playbook where scenarios and various options are documented?
What we can learn from NFL teams like the 49ers and modern day successors, the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts? This is a whole new generation of successful coaches and players that have captured our interest, imagination, and excitement. Would these teams think of going into a year without a playbook?
As business advisors we’ve found that the playbook is useful for those clients that embrace it, and, quite frankly, we wonder why 100% of our clients wouldn’t have one, like in the case of the NFL. Along the way we have helped produce some amazing successes in the past year and worked dozens of playbooks.
The playbook helps avoid the scenario of being totally reactionary. I haven’t found one CEO or other leadership team member that likes cutting headcount and stretching out its payables, to name a few of the items that are normally swung into action. However, when a crisis comes about the CFO is usually asked to pull a rabbit out of his hat by slashing expenses. While some of this may be necessary, I offer to you the playbook that has revenue generation and market access improvement solutions to brace a fall – and possibly even lead to increased profits and market share. It’s commonly referred to as “turning lemons into lemonade.”
Here are some key points to think about concerning the playbook based upon my experience:
- Playbook vs. Strategic planning. The playbook is something separate from strategic planning, but should be called for in the process. The playbook is a book or document that contains a lot of scenarios and actions that can be deployed and implemented in short order, compared to strategic plans which help guide the business and reflect the megatrends, vision, and mission of an enterprise.
- Playbooks vs. Tactical plans. The playbook is used only in situations or business conditions that are unusual in nature and those that are largely unanticipated. In most cases the playbook is closely guarded by key members of the leadership team.
- Best time to develop a playbook. In the NFL most of the work on the playbook goes on in the “off season” which is typically the 1st and 2nd quarter of each year. It comprehends the thinking of lineup changes and new coaches and supports the personnel and direction of the team. My experience is that playbook work is a parallel and complimentary process to strategic planning and is best done in the 1st quarter of each fiscal year, with some rollover into the following quarter.
- Getting started. The first playbook is usually the toughest, but it can start out simply and move on from there. We have clients with playbooks that range from 20 pages to 100+ page multi-tabbed binders/electronic folders. We’ve learned that to be effective, the process needs solid facilitation and guidance, with a strong commitment by the CEO for its necessity.