Free The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh Page B

so much trouble letting up, getting out from under the increasingly crushing pressure of expectations that got sky-high as the decade rolled on. Burnout is what they call it, I guess; but who can argue with success?

PART II
    Success Is Not Spelled G-E-N-I-U-S: Innovation, Planning, and Common Sense

Opportunity Is in the Eye of the Beholder
    Creating gold from dross is alchemy; making lemonade when you’re given lemons is leadership; making lemonade when you don’t have any lemons is great leadership.
    Here’s a little example of it: Post-it notes are a multimillion-dollar product that began as an accident when a scientist working in the laboratory unintentionally created a glue that didn’t stick very well. Obviously, nobody was looking for a glue that didn’t stick, but then a creative leader saw a way to turn it into lemonade—Post-it Notes.
    I witnessed a football version of Post-it Notes many years ago when I was an assistant coach with the Cincinnati Bengals. See if it applies to your own resourcefulness in evaluating situations and figuring out what to do with “glue that doesn’t stick.”
    Early in the second half of our game with the Oakland Raiders, Bengals tight end Bob Trumpy (later a well-known announcer) came out of the huddle and lined up on the wrong end of the line of scrimmage—the left instead of the right side, as the play called for.
    Trumpy recognized his mistake almost immediately and tried to correct it by sliding over to the right side before the ball snap. The Raiders were utilizing a complex pass defense at the time, so when they saw Bob shifting from one end of the line of scrimmage to the other—legal, but not done—all hell broke loose.
    Oakland defensive backs began frantically flapping their arms and screaming, running around and creating havoc as they tried to react to the bizarre movement of Cincinnati’s wandering tight end. Three of them actually collided in the middle of the field. The whole scene was kind of funny, although nobody was laughing on either bench. We lost yardage on the play, and when Bob trotted to the sidelines with a sheepish look on his face, he muttered to head coach Paul Brown, “Sorry, Coach. It won’t happen again.” He was wrong.
    When we got back to Cincinnati and the assistant coaches looked at the Oakland game film, Bill Johnson, the offensive line coordinator, ran Trumpy’s play over and over for us on the projector. At first the room was filled with laughter as we saw the mayhem Trumpy’s mistake had precipitated. One man, however, wasn’t laughing—Bill Johnson. He was thinking.
    Finally, he stopped rerunning the play, turned to us, and asked, “Fellas, what would happen if we put Trumpy in motion intentionally and worked plays off it?”
    There was silence in the room; everyone sitting in the darkness recognized the interesting possibilities this might offer. In fact, I was awake most of that night thinking up ideas that would let us capitalize on Bill Johnson’s revelation, his crazy idea of how to turn a lemon into lemonade, an accident into an asset.
    Putting the tight end in motion caught on quickly around the NFL because it created new problems for the defense. Soon every team in the league had added it to their playbook. And it all started with a botched play.
    What’s your own version of Trumpy’s lemon and Johnson’s lemonade? Is it right there in front of you, unseen because your thinking is rigid and resistant to originality and change? How effective are you at turning nothing into something, something into something that changes everything?

The West Coast Offense: From Checkers to Chess
    Here’s an example I’m proud of from my own coaching career. It profoundly—but unintentionally—changed the way NFL football is played. You may find in its genesis inspiration for extending your own receptiveness to innovation, for seeing what others don’t see.
    The West Coast Offense, considered by many to be one of the most