Copy & Paste vs. Building

Here's an interesting article out of ESPN regarding the Houston Texans and the hiring of their latest GM.

I'm not going to address the hiring and the rift it appears to be creating between the ownership and the Texans best offensive player. What I am going to talk about is the difference between building and importing culture.

I've addressed culture before. It's something that you have to build, cultivate, and then once it's established, you must nurture it. Culture is not permanent. It is in fact extremely fragile. It takes time to build, but one single wrong step to start showing cracks. Those cracks are not ones that you can easily repair through words or even actions because typically a crack in culture means you've gone against the culture you've preached and held others to. The instances I've seen most destroy culture come from the need to be competitive, and sacrificing culture and team long term for a short term gain that comes with obvious risks. It's keeping an athlete on the team whose behaviors run contrary to the standard the rest of the team is held to but is allowed to remain because of their "athletic talent." It's not applying the same standard across the board. This is not an instance of being overly general, but is instead applying a standard to your second or third line athletes that does not apply to your starters. 

It doesn't take much for cracks to appear and you will not be aware of them immediately. By the time you see them, the cracks are numerous and run deep. 

It's not a surprise that the Texans, like many professional NFL franchises and college teams, have tried to tap into the New England Patriots way of thinking and running their franchise in hopes of bringing some of that "magic" to their home. The Detroit Lions, the Browns, the Denver Broncos, Notre Dame and the University of Kansas have all attempted to tap into the "Patriot Way," in hopes of finding that same level of success. And all have met with failure. It is a common opinion that while the assistants in New England are excellent, that excellence stays in New England and doesn't travel.

What's interesting is that when you start looking at programs that tried their best to emulate New England, did not see New England type results, and made changes, some have met with considerable success. Brian Kelly has taken Notre Dame to incredible heights and while many will point to their lack of success against top tier teams, they are consistently ranked well enough to be selected to face those programs. The Browns seem to have hit a homerun with their hiring of GM Andrew Berry, and head coach Kevin Stefanski. 

The issue that I believe you have here is that programs and ownership groups are not interested in the details that went into building the Patriots to the level that caused everyone to want to copy their blueprint. They see the building and want that building. 

And that's the problem with copy & paste. In my time as a coach, I've been at several programs where the head coach has borrowed ideas from multiple successful programs and tried to shoehorn them into their program and it has never amounted to any level of success.

This isn't to say that you cannot take ideas from other programs. Acclaimed chef Marco Pierre-White says that cooking isn't about invention but about refinement meaning you're not coming up with new ideas, you're simply executing old ideas in a better way. I believe that if you're not looking at successful programs and asking questions, then you're ignoring the elephant in the room. 

However, kidnapping that elephant and trying to fit it into your room is where you go wrong. I was at a program where all the culture aspects came from other programs. Every time the coach talked about a new idea, a new culture standard, a new way to be proud to row for X and what it meant to row for X, they referenced the program they'd seen this at. "We have to do this because X does it, and look at what X does." The issue isn't that the ideas were good or bad. The issue was that they were never adapted to fit the program we were at. The ideas were done simply because they were done at X, and because the head coach referenced those programs, the athletes never bought it. The motivation wasn't there for two reasons. First, because it wasn't adapted to fit the program, it wasn't seen as something the athletes were part of. It didn't come from them, it wasn't part of who they were. Second, it came off as the head coach saying they wished the program was X program, rather than the program they had. 

Going back to the blueprint, remember that when Robert Kraft purchases the Patriots, no one wanted to follow the "Patriot Way," because the Patriots were awful. The Patriots when he purchased them were not the Super Bowl winning teams we know and have known for 20 years. They were the franchise that had gone to the 1985 Super Bowl, but had experienced one playoff season since and had seasons of 1-15, 2-14, 6-10, and 5-11 just prior to purchase by Kraft. Even then with a Super Bowl appearance in 1996, the Patriots didn't blossom until the hiring of Belichick in 2000. 

In short, the Patriots we know and either love or hate but admire greatly gradually became the Patriots we know and either love or hate but admire greatly but it did not happen overnight. Kraft hired a "failed" head coach. They drafted their future QB all time great with the 199th pick but wouldn't have known that had their current quarterback not been hurt. 

All this to say is that building culture means building culture. It takes time, dedicated effort, and a clear plan. You cannot simply run out and purchase culture. And you cannot make the mistake of trying to take culture from another program and slam it onto yours in hopes that everything that made it successful over there makes it successful over here. You must build your culture from the ground up. Yes, those franchise ideals and culture might work in yours. That program culture you borrowed could work for you. But if you do not establish the basework, the foundation, if you simply throw paint onto a shack, you still have a shack.