Thread by @ryan_caldbeck

1/ Leadership lessons from Coach K.

I was a walk-on for the 2001 @DukeMBB national championship team. It isn’t something I talk much about publicly (or privately) because it’s hard to summarize authentically in a tweet or a quick conversation. Today is an exception.
#CoachK 🐐

2/ In honor of Coach K’s last game at Cameron, I want to share some of the things I learned from him.
#𝕿𝖍𝖊𝕭𝖗𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖉 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆😈🏀 🐐

3/ Names can be tools: Coach uses your name, or doesn’t use it, to demonstrate respect. To motivate. For a purpose.

Coach K always knew my name, and the names of every manager, staff and player. How he chooses to use your name is amazing and brilliant.

4/ He can talk about you and to you, without using your name. He can not use your name for months, or an entire year. There are <50 people in the inner circle, it isn’t because he doesn’t remember. It’s a form of motivation.

Oh but when he does use it? Wow that feels good.

5/ I shared with @Ian_OConnor that once my dad came to watch a practice. In middle of practice Coach stopped play and pointed out something that I did well, using my name. My dad heard it. It was one the greatest feelings I had in my bball career

amazon.com/Coach-Rise-Rei…

6/ Everyone has buttons to push that will make them better than they thought they could be: I’ve never seen someone get more out of someone- everyone- than Coach K. He does this by doing a remarkable job of identifying exactly what makes each player tick- regardless of talent.

7/ He would then leverage that knowledge and figure out how to motivate based on what drove each individual at a base level. It is one of his superpowers.

Think about what the important words are in this video:

“St. Louis.”

youtube.com/shorts/peY0iWN…

8/ 1-2 players per year probably couldn’t deal with the stress and intensity of what he demanded. Those that could handle it were able to grow beyond what many of them thought was possible.

9/ Visualization is powerful: The night before the 2001 Championship Game, Coach gathered the entire team in his hotel room at 9pm. It was a short meeting just reminding everyone what they were responsible for. Then he talked about what he wanted us to fall asleep thinking about

10/ “Visualize yourself winning” is what he said. The staff had put together a highlight film *as if* we had just won the National Championship, set it to One Shining Moment. Watching it gave us goosebumps.

Btw here was the real one made the next day.

11/ Give your teammates the rope to succeed:

Coach empowers his assistants, staff and managers to make decisions, to coach as they see fit, and to have real impact on the team. While he is fanatical about details, he also allows others to act within their lanes.

12/ He is able to scale his impact and has had remarkable longevity w/o burnout in part because he has consistently enabled others to help him. Today he looks for assistants that are former Duke captains. They rise to the level of excellence and understanding of his approach.

13/ Great leaders can inspire others to do thankless jobs. I’ve never seen someone who is able to inspire others to do such thankless work, and do it with as much pride, as Coach. The thing is, if you offer genuine appreciation, it is no longer thankless.

14/ You have Duke students- future Doctors, i-bankers, tech CEOs, who take tremendous pride in making sure the Gatorade was made properly and the uniforms are laid out correctly. I felt that pride when I was a manager.

More about thankless jobs here:
amazon.com/Captain-Class-…

15/ He would offer appreciation in a variety of ways. A quick comment to the manager, a mention to the team. But we knew how important they were and I know that’s not true at all programs.

16/ [Writer’s note: if you see a theme here around motivation, you’re right. He is one of the greatest motivators in history in any field. And he has other lessons to teach as well.]

17/ Details matter: Most college programs have practice plans. Coach K structures his practices by the minute. Meaning there are drills that run from 3:23 - 3:27pm on the practice schedule. It’s that specific.

18/ One of my overriding memories from Duke was from before I made the team. While I played my sophomore to senior years, as a freshman I was a manager. Seeing the precision with which the managers act is like watching a world-class ballet.

19/ There are typically 12-15 managers at Duke Basketball and they are responsible for everything from getting practice equipment ready to making sure that if Coach K turns over his left shoulder in a timeout there is a black marker waiting there for him with the cap off….

20/….and if he looks forward to his right there is a manager holding out the number of fingers to indicate how much time is left in time out. Other managers are responsible for drinks or to hold up towels to ensure TV cameras can’t see inside huddle.

wralsportsfan.com/duke-s-basketb…

21/ Having details right means you can trust your teammates:

When fundamentals are handled, you can feel confident in that foundation. Reliability breeds trust. It’s a solid foundation that allows others to focus on their specific tasks.

https://twitter.com/ryan_caldbeck/status/1013626221601738754

22/ Passion is paramount: When I was a senior I had an offer at Bain, BCG and McKinsey. I went to meet with Coach K to get his advice on what to do. He asked “what are you most passionate about?” I subconsciously rolled my eyes.

23/ I thought: “Coach I’m not lucky enough to go coach basketball. I have to get a job.” I missed the lesson in that moment and for the subsequent 10 years until starting my first technology company.

24/ His point was about knowing (and constantly discovering) your passion. Quite frankly I have no clue if Coach is passionate about basketball. I am extremely confident he is passionate about building teams, reaching for specific goals and creating something bigger than himself

25/ I focused only on the actual job, and not about passion. It took me a decade to realize I’m passionate about having an impact on others, something I perhaps could have seen as early as my Duke basketball days had I listened more to Coach and less to career services.

26/ Talent is important: Every year Duke brings in some of the best players in the country. My soph year had 14 players. 6 played in NBA. Another 3 played professionally overseas. The walk-ons included the starting quarterback at Duke and the national player of the year in soccer

27/ …But work ethic is required. If you have talent and don’t work hard, you will have a painful career at @DukeMBB. Having a strong work ethic is getting extra shots up on off-day, or extra physical therapy with the team doctors. Can't succeed on team w/o a strong work ethic

28/ Being on time means being early:

If practice started at 4pm, dressed and ready was 3:30pm. 20 years after graduating I still have a recurring *monthly* nightmare of being late to practice….even though I was never close to being late for practice. Details matter.

29/ True friends call when you fail: Coach K once told a story about his best friend Moe and said “Moe calls me after losses not after wins. Your true friends call you when you fail.” It was a short anecdote I’ve never forgotten and something I’ve come to believe.

30/ Loyalty matters: Every former player can get a ticket to every game for the sacrifices they made in their time at the program. Whether it’s preseason, the National Championship game or the most expensive ticket in regular season sports history.

https://twitter.com/darrenrovell/status/1498669875090411523?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1498669875090411523%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Froamresearch.com%2F%2Fapp%2FRyan_Caldbeck

31/ Ask to understand: Once Coach asked in a team meeting what caused us pain outside of basketball. He knew our team better than we knew ourselves, but he still asked.

32/ A player talked about how he needs to race from class, has nowhere to park and then often risks getting parking tickets.

From that day on we had a new place to park next to Cameron.

Coach would have been a good Product Manager.

33/ Communication - breaking the hub and spoke: Coach would use a whiteboard fairly often. An image he drew -just once- was of a hub (him) and points in a circle around the hub (us, the players). He then drew a line from each node to him.

34/ He said today he was communicating to each of us, and we were communicating to him. That system would break. We needed to communicate with each other and not just through him. He then drew lines from each player to each other and it looked like a bicycle wheel.

35/ Simple but it sank in and I drew it on a whiteboard fifteen years later when a team I was leading was communicating with each other ineffectively.

36/ Next Play: If you have an incredible dunk or shoot an airball, move onto the Next Play. I think great organizations and people that sustain excellence embody this.

37/ I talked with a former teammate about this recently. Great things lead from “Next Play”. It can also lead to never feeling satisfied- which can have an impact on mental health as well. Persistence at the extreme is a double-edged sword. I see that a lot as a founder.

38/ Language leads to reality: Coach would talk about “bumps and bruises.” The first time I heard him say that I thought “no one has bumps and bruises. These really f**king hurt.” But the framing led us to believe they are minor. To get treatment and to move on.
Framing matters.

39/ When a great shooter doesn’t shoot, it’s selfish: We had one or two players each year that were both fantastic and more reluctant to shoot their shots than Coach wanted. He would say that’s selfish.

40/ “You’re sitting here worried about how you’ll look if you miss. The team needs you to shoot.” It’s a massively different perspective than anything else I had experienced before or since. And I think he’s right.

41/ Work with a sense of urgency: Coach loves stories and metaphors. “My mom didn’t have a lot of money. If someone stole her purse in a subway station and then got onto a train, she would have done *anything* possible to get into that train.

42/ She would have pushed people, clawed and made sure she was on the train before the doors left. Work with that type of urgency and hunger.”

43/ Habits matter:

Be on time. Get treatment for your injury. Stretch. Eat right. Get to sleep at the right time. Nap on game day.

Habits are the compound interest of your life. (alright that wasn’t his phrase, but I like it).

https://twitter.com/ryan_caldbeck/status/1466808005614350340

44/ Cry in your last game: Coach would say the mark of a great journey is one that ends in tears regardless of outcome. If you win the final game there are tears of happiness. If you lose there are tears of sadness- in part because you put all of yourself into the journey.

45/ The team works as one: Coach was fantastic at understanding how to get talented people to sacrifice to build together. “Five fingers working as a fist are more powerful than five fingers working alone” Is an image he used for many years.

46/ Know your emotions to use your emotions: The cameras have shown Coach lose his temper probably more than any college coach in history. I think it’s all completely controlled, because he was in touch with his emotions. He can thus respond rather than just react.

47/ He uses his outbursts- in practice and in games- for very specific reasons. To send a messages. Similarly, I’ve seen him not react in many situations- particularly in the middle of the season- to help teach a longer-term lesson to the team.

48/ Leadership means pivoting: Players get hurt or can't play. Teammates sometimes don’t gel. Other teams get hot. Regardless, a leader needs to pivot along the journey in order to reach the ultimate goal.

49/ When our starting center and future Olympian @MisterCBooz broke his foot in 2001, Coach led a pivot to shoot more 3s, before it was fashionable.

vault.si.com/vault/2001/04/…

50/ Moments - not plays - are where the battle is won:

It was amazing to see Coach zoom in on not a specific play, but a moment within a play, when the play, the half, sometimes the game, was won and lost.

51/ In a pre-season scrimmage a player held the ball by palming it away from his body while he directed traffic, similar to how an NBA player might. Coach paused the tape and eviscerated him. “You think you’re f**king Michael Jordan?”

52/ The player thought he had already “made it” and was acting like it in the game. That type of “slippage” (one of Coach’s favorite words) would lead to a lackadaisical approach. A losing attitude.

I think Coach was right.

53/ Body language tells an important story: He is big on body language. Your face, shoulders, how you sit & walk. It wouldn’t shock me if he makes major decisions on players- to play or recruit- based on body language.

This resonates (7:15 mark)

54/ Look each other in the eyes: Both literal- he talked about how great players like Grant Hill would look him fiercely in the eyes- and figurative (be direct, open and honest).

Tell Lebron to look at you? Courage to do what he thought was right.

55/ Oh yes, we are definitely talking about Practice: Coach is very output focused. But frankly he believes a ton in inputs as well. If you don’t practice well you won't play. And he definitely would help you see the connection by talking about it openly in front of the team

56/ Live in the moment: Coach is incredible about helping those around him stay focused on the present.

He lives in the now.

57/ In the tournament he did this by giving us only a 4 team bracket. I.e. we wouldn’t see all (then) 64 teams, only the 4 teams in our specific weekend. We wouldn’t talk about the full tournament, just that one weekend. First things first.

58/ The power of change: A basketball season is long and intense. For those that stay four years it gets to be a grind. He comes up with creative ways to keep his message fresh. He has different coaches deliver the message, and sometimes even some of the players.

59/ He will use different props and theatrics. He also moved team during practice so that they weren’t always sitting in the same chairs during a rest period to listen to him. It’s simple but it keeps your mind active. I did something similar as CEO.

dukebasketballreport.com/2020/10/30/215…

60/ Ownership: I was fortunate to play with one of the greatest players and leaders in college basketball history, @ShaneBattier. He spoke on Every. Single. Play. Calling out screens, the next play etc. He spoke so much that it led others to not talk- because he became the voice.

61/ That turns an asset (his talking) into a liability (us not talking). In one memorable practice Coach, w/o telling us, told Shane to not say a word. It highlighted for us how dependent we were on Shane’s talking. We didn’t feel ownership over communication.

62/ Hold yourself and your teammates accountable:
I remember seeing him hold assistant coaches accountable (often by yelling). All-Americans and managers accountable. Every single time it reminded those around him that their contribution mattered, and he expected accountability

63/ Pause on that. When he yelled I was reminded that the person he yelled at was important. I get goosebumps thinking about that.

I kept a journal at Duke. In it, I wrote I wish he would yell at me more.

64/ On October 16, 1999: “Coach screamed at me for not getting in the passing lane. The next play I did it and I intercepted the ball. I just felt good, no great because I think he doesn’t yell at people if he thinks they suck. That felt really good."

65/ Perhaps most importantly I remember him holding himself accountable. After one game he said he didn’t do a good job. It was a bit surreal and frankly I don’t know enough about basketball to know if he was right. But I remember feeling grateful that it wasn’t blamed on others.

66/ Demand excellence: Clearly closely related to accountability, Coach required excellence from everyone around him. The media relations people, players, staff, etc.

67/ Also from my journal: At one practice in January, 2000 Coach was sick of a player “not giving any emotion back.” He sat him out the second half and afterwards said “the ship is leaving. Either get on or not, but I won't accept mediocrity.”

He doesn’t bluff btw.

68/ Grow every day and develop a strategy to do it: Coach is a learning machine. He is obsessed with growing every day. He has clear hypotheses on how his team needs to grow, and puts them in positions to do that.

69/ It could be through end of game situations (i.e. we’ll put 1:30 on the clock, down by 4 or up by 3, and play a scrimmage against ourselves). Tracking progress on +/- in practice (20 yrs ago that wasn’t common), etc. All part of how he tries to help us grow every day.

70/ Leadership is about being able to get outside yourself: At first I was so consumed with whether I could stay on the team (I was almost cut after Sophomore and Junior seasons, but stayed on), it was really hard to think about anything else.

71/ When you are consumed by yourself you don't think about the well being of teammates, how to help them be more effective individually and collectively. Over time as I gained confidence I was able to open my eyes. He named something that I've seen few others identify.

72/Rules aren’t as important as principles: There's a lot of discipline at @DukeMBB. Not a lot of rules; more @ principles. There was no rule that a player should go get extra shots if he went 3 of 10 in a game. But if you care about getting better (principle) then you will.

73/ Courage is required to be great: Coach loved players with courage. Courage to say they wanted to guard the other team’s best player. Courage to scream at your teammate when they aren’t doing what you expect, courage to raise your hand to take a charge.

74/ I remember walk-ons that received more respect than McDonald’s All-Americans because the walk-on showed more courage every day. In how he would check into practice, speak up in a meeting, or hold someone else accountable.

sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~mikec/cs48/mi…

75/ To achieve greatness you must focus ruthlessly: I’ve never in my life met someone as focused as Coach K.

This weekend I went back to watch the UNC game with a bunch of other former players including several from our 2001 team (including 2 that have their numbers retired).

76/ We got him a gift. We are going to give him the present after the season because we know Coach wants to be present for his current team, not live in the past with his old ones… even some of the best ones.

fivethirtyeight.com/features/this-…

77/ My daughter (7) asked why I wouldn’t see my old coach and the first thing that came to my mind was that he is focused on something else. Again: most focused person I’ve ever known.
I’ve seen few things articulate his focus as effectively as this:
espn.com/espn/feature/s…

78/ I don’t think all of these lessons are applicable in business. You can’t scream at someone in business. It isn't right in that setting and jumping between companies is too easy. [We once fired an engineer on a Friday and they had a job at a FAAMG co. on Monday.]

79/ But I do think many of the leadership principles are transferable with work and I feel honored to have learned them from Coach.

80/ To say he has influenced my leadership style in business is obvious and feels corny. He has done much more. He has influenced every aspect of my life. What I chose to work on, how I parent, my marriage, my friendships and professional relationships, where I spend my time.

81/ Perhaps a non-obvious way he has influenced me is this. I try to live in the moment. I never wear the championship ring and I have never looked to talk publicly or privately about playing for Duke, even though I'm very proud of it.

https://twitter.com/DukeMBB/status/1500118442896146436

82/ That was 20 years ago and while I’m incredibly grateful for the experience, I think about one of his most important lessons...

Next Play.