Ep 328 | Nick Saban and How to Follow The Process

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I want to talk about a football coach, or I should say former football coach, college football coach, arguably the greatest coach of all time. Nick Saban. You're probably familiar with Nick. If you're not, you are certainly not a football fan, and that's okay. There's still a ton that we can learn from Coach Saban. Coach Saban really, really raised a number of champions, a number of championship teams, but not just the teams themselves. Individuals on his teams I would define as champions. And what Nick Saban, what Coach Saban did differently than most other coaches out there is he taught his players not just how to perform, but how to think. See, leaders, leaders influence. What do leaders influence? They influence thinking. Nick Saban is one of the greatest leaders in sports history. Now, what Coach Saban taught in order to get his players to think or teach his players how to think like winners. He had this, this, this mental model he called process thinking. Now, if you, if you're in the goal setting, we've talked here at No Days Off before, you've got process goals and you've got product goals. Process goals have to do with all the steps that you take to get to an end, uh, an end goal, a product goal. So it's lead measure, lag measure, process versus product. Nick Saban taught process thinking. It was a mental model. Now, what is a mental model? We talk about it a lot here. I am a huge fan of Charlie Munger, and I've said many a time, Charlie is the master of mental models. But what are mental models? Mental models are really just frameworks that we use to examine problems, that we use to, to make decisions, that we use to really understand the world around us. They help us unspool, I would say, the universe's tangle of information, right? Like, the idea is make things a bit more manageable, and, and in doing so, it allows us to tackle more challenging problems with greater clarity, with greater purpose, right? So mental models are really just tools. Your mind is a, is a toolbox to Toolbox and a mental model is really just a tool. And the more tools you have, the easier it is to build solutions for filtering, for synthesizing, for processing the enormous amount of data that you take in every single day, that your brain receives every single day. Now, let's go back to the process, what Nick Saban called the process. Let's talk around how it even started. Nick Saban started his career not at Alabama. But one of his first, uh, head coaching jobs was at Michigan State. And when he was at Michigan State, he befriended a psychiatry professor. And his Michigan State team was not all that great, and they had a game coming up against Ohio State, who, no surprise, was a powerhouse at that time. Still a powerhouse today, but was a powerhouse at that time. His team was very much— Saban's team was very much the underdog. Saban turned to his friend, the psychiatry professor, and said, what do I do? Help me improve the mindset of my players. My players are pretty unconfident because we're playing Ohio State. Now, the psychiatry professor, I believe his name was Dr. Rosen, he really, you know, plugged in and, in Nick Saban's words, not only changed the minds of the players but changed the very way they saw the game of football and the game of life. See, what, what Dr. Rosen taught the players and what Nick Saban doubled down on, he taught them that the average football play lasts only 7 seconds. So from the time you hike the ball until the conclusion of a play, a single play, it's about 7 seconds. Dr. Rosen asked the team, the players, to think a little differently. Concentrate not on winning the game itself, but on just winning those 7 seconds. Ignore the scoreboard entirely. Ignore the game clock. Ignore Ohio State. The 7 seconds, 7 seconds of that play are all that matter. And if Michigan State could outplay Ohio State for 7 seconds more times than not, then there's a good chance they're gonna end the game victorious. Now, the game started, you know, game day arrived, game started, and Michigan State did not exactly, you know, take off in the way that Coach Saban had hoped. They were down by 15 points in the second half, and Coach Saban leaned into his Michigan State players and he said, "Remember the process, trust the process," and they did. And despite the deficit, they were undeterred by their circumstances. And they had faith in this process because frankly, they'd probably been brainwashed or they'd been coached by Coach Saban around this process. And they clawed their way back into the game. And they ultimately won the game in a pretty dramatic fashion. And the process and how Nick Saban's known as, you know, known for the process, it was really born. In Nick Saban's own words, he said, there's probably one really memorable game that changed the whole dynamics of the psychological approach we use to motivate teams, and it happened when we played Ohio State in 1998. They had been a number one team all the way through, and we were 4-5 and not a very good team. We decided to use the approach that we are not going to focus on the outcome. We were just going to focus on the process of what it took to play the best football you could play, which was to focus on that particular play as if it had a history and life of its own. I love that. I love that quote. I love the approach because this process thinking, it applies throughout life. It really does. Apply throughout life. I love at the very end, Nick Saban says, our intent was to focus on that particular play as if it had a history and a life of its own. Every second, seconds, every 7 seconds had a life of its own. Now, process thinking applies all throughout our life, and it's pretty powerful. The plays, of course, are, you know, a little different than what happens on the football field. But they're really metaphors for all of life's contests. Coach Saban, Dr. Rosen, their philosophy was pretty unconventional, unconventional. But it spread, that mentality spread through the world of sport and it found its way into the lives of everyday people. As a matter of fact, I've been talking recently about Ryan Holiday, the author Ryan Holiday, in his book, The Obstacle Is the Way. And The Obstacle Is the Way, I mean, part of what is discussed in that book is in fact The Process. No coincidence. Ryan Holiday says, whether it's pursuing the pinnacle of success in your field or simply surviving some awful or trying ordeal, the same approach works. Don't think about the end, think about surviving. Making it from meal to meal, break to break, checkpoint to checkpoint, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time. When you really get it right, even the hardest things become manageable because the process is relaxing. Under its influence, we needn't panic. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts. Facing challenges, striving towards these crazy goals, these things that, that the No Days Off Nation, all of us listening, all you guys listening, you know, you face obstacles, you have big goals. These are pretty daunting things, right? Like, they can be very daunting even for the best of us. The magnitude of the effort can be overwhelming, and sometimes we may want to throw in the towel before we're even close to getting to where we'd like to be. But if you break down the effort it takes to get to where you want to go and you break it down into small parts that you can control right now, call it the 7-second play, it suddenly becomes less intimidating. And that's the fundamental value of the process thinking mental model. So you gotta let go of the past and its failures and its successes and resist the impulse to imagine what I would say is the uncontrollable future. Right? So, just focus on what you can control. And as Coach Saban would tell you, the next 7 seconds, your effort, you know, your energy, your discipline, your commitment, your accountability to the next 7 seconds, that's all that matters. And when that whistle blows and that play ends, now you start again for the next 7 seconds. I think there's a lot to think about here. You know, I'll end with, you know, an acronym that I heard from Nick Saban that I think about quite a bit, and it's the acronym WIN, which stands for obviously win, but the acronym itself, WIN, it's what, what's important now. WIN. What's important now. Coach Saban has redefined the very notion of victory. To emphasize not a future outcome, but this moment and this moment alone. What's important now? The next 7 seconds, what can I do right now? Find value in where you are at this moment. Insulate yourself from unproductive worry and just get after it and trust the process. So the focusing question today Where does this apply in your world? Where can you take a step back and ask yourself, what's important now? And then just play the next moment all out. And you win or you lose, but now the play resets and play the next moment all out. And as you continue to work through the process, if you win enough times, at least win more than you lose, the product, the end goal, will work itself out. Where might this apply in your world? Something to take action around today. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.