Paul Gustavson - Running into the Wind: Bronco Mendenhall; 5 Strategies for Building a Successful Team

The Five Smooth Stones concept was previously published in Five Smooth Stones: Strategy and Organization Design Guidebook by Paul Gustavson and Alyson Von Feldt (San Jose, CA: Organization Planning and Design, Inc., 2009). 2009 by Organization Planning and Design, Inc.

Photo credits: Pages 74, 110, 134 by Mark A. Philbrick/BYU Photo; pages 51, 97, 229 by Jaren Wilkey/BYU Photo.

Building and Sustaining High Performance Teams DVD by Bronco Mendenhall and Paul Gustavson by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gustavson, Paul, author.

Running into the wind : Bronco Mendenhall : 5 strategies for building a successful team / Paul Gustavson and Alyson Von Feldt.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60907-162-2 (alk. paper)

1. Teams in the workplace. 2. Organizational behavior. 3. Mendenhall, Bronco, 1966 I. Von Feldt, Alyson, author. II. Title.

HD66.G875 2012

658.4'022dc232012029548

Printed in the United States of America

Worzalla Publishing Co., Stevens Point, WI

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my late parents, Arle and Doris Gustavson,who taught me about principles and inspired my careers work

PG

For Jacob.

This book has been for you since its inception

AVF

Praise for Running into the Wind

For Bronco Mendenhall, this book shares his values and virtues as a husband, a father, and a man of strong faith who can touch and shape all with whom he associates. He provides the leadership, motivation, and energy for student-athletes to balance their lives and develop athletically, academically, and socially. His daily life reflects his unselfish attitude and also emphasizes that always doing what is right is a path that can lead to lifetime success for student-athletes and their families.

Urban Meyer, Ohio State head football coach

An engaging book that will take readers deep into the heart and mind of Bronco Mendenhall where theyll see firsthand Broncos extremely unique approach to running a college football program. Not only will this book give readers insight into Bronco, it will also lay out Pauls renowned organizational principlesFive Smooth Stonesthat Bronco learned and applied, and that also can guide any leader to organize and move teams to successful outcomes.

Stephen M. R. Covey, New York Times and Wall Street Journal #1 best-selling author of The Speed of Trust and coauthor of Smart Trust

BYUs record is a reflection of Broncos relentless quest to create the optimal environment for his players and staff to achieve their shared vision. This quest took him far from the field of football and into the science of sustainable high performanceresearching the mindset and systems behind the leading global organizations and thought leaders to create BYU Footballs winning culture. There is a lot to be learned from this rare, winning combination of aligned leadership and a team optimizing its performance on and off the field.

Mark Verstegen, president and founder, Athletes Performance/Core Performance

What a fun and insightful book! Like chocolate and peanut butter, this book brings together two great subjectsfootball and management. It weaves together marvelous stories about how Bronco applied leadership principles to create a band of brothers and a winning tradition.

Dave Ulrich, University of Michigan professor, Ross School of Business; partner, the RBL Group

Bronco Mendenhall is a great football coach who obviously knows how to win a lot of games. More important, Bronco is a true leader and a unique coach who has a broader focus than just winning games. He is about life skills, teamwork, excellence.

Chris Peterson, Boise State head football coach

A masterful demonstration of how to win in sports by placing character first. Insightful, provocative, timely. A must-read for leaders.

Jim Loehr, performance psychologist and best-selling author

Foreword

When Bronco Mendenhall took over one of the countrys best-known and yet precariously declining football programs, he faced a challenge of enormous magnitude. First of all, he was a coach. That cant be a fun job. Imagine having a career in an industry where your success depends on the daily choices of people who are now, or recently were, teenagers. And you have to practically fight to get them to come work for you. And these new employees then do their jobs in front of millions of crazed customers who scrutinize their every move, along with the actions of their bosses. These customers are so opinionated about what they like and dont like, that when things dont meet their approval, they routinely call for the bosses to be fired. Many, in a highly transparent effort to gain power, donate tens of thousands of dollars to the company, and then demand a say in how its run.

Welcome to the world of college coaching.

Then you have the problem of an organization in decline. A screeching crowd of rabid customers has called for and received the head of the previous boss. You, the new leader and hope of the future, are going to enjoy a honeymoon period of a few weeks while people express their love for you because, well, you arent the previous boss who led the company through several years of disappointmentand anythings better than that.

Then, as the rhetoric of how great youre going to be is unceremoniously washed away by the harsh reality of these are mostly the same folks who failed to perform well the last year, you realize that your resources are severely limited, despite all the promises you were given. For one, most of those with whom you will be working directly, you didnt hire. Its the former guys employees youll be reshaping into a new entity, and weve all seen what they can do.

Maybe, just maybe, if you had four to six years to recruit and train your own employees, youd turn the company around. But your crazed, ever vigilant, hyper-opinionated, and heavily invested customers arent going to wait for six years. Theyre in your face with a list of demands after about, say, six weeks. And dont forget the press. These members of the fourth estate write whatever comes into their head, whenever they like, as often as they likeand much of it is about your leadership style. After all, for the first few months you arent going to be demonstrating your product, so all they have to talk about is the cut of your jib, your strut, the clothes you wear, and other equally inane topics. And, oh yes, they too will be calling for your job if they dont see big changes soon.

Such were the circumstances Bronco Mendenhall faced when he took over the helm at BYU. It had been a great team, had declined into something far less, and now Bronco was supposed to make it all better. And fast.

Which Bronco did.

And he didnt do it through magic, rhetoric, or luck. He did it (and whos going to believe this?) by applying sound leadership principles and techniques. Bronco is one of those rare leaders who not only reads about his industry, he also eats management theory for breakfast. While its true that he looks and sounds like the poster guy for football (his name is Bronco, for crying out loud), hes equally comfortable talking about empowerment, change theory, high performance teams, and the like. Who would have thought?