Here is another superb video from Art Jonak.  Orjan Saele and his lovely wife Hilde, great friends and top leaders in Norway, flew over to the USA for some mentoring and fun in December of last year.  The last day, Orjan and I answered a few questions asked by Art’s social network.  The following video answers some of these questions.  2011 is off to a great start and by developing your leadership, you can make it your breakthrough year.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-DHTUGBcIg]

In many leadership circles, the consensus is, that the best leader of modern times, one who started with nothing, but became the wealthiest man in the world, is Sam Walton.  His immense hunger to learn and improve is what separates him from the rest.  Even after achieving multi-billionaire status, Walton routinely visited other retail establishments, looking for any idea that might improve the operation of his discount store dynasty, known simply as Walmart.  He never lost his humility, a necessary prerequisite for hunger, even after Walmart became the number one largest retailer in the world.   In Chris Brady and the author’s book, Launching a Leadership Revolution, we list hunger as the single most important factor creating all leadership, because without it, no change is possible.  In other words, it’s the hungry person (mentally not physically) that confronts reality, willing to change; it’s the hungry person that is never satisfied with good when great is possible; and, it’s the hungry person who pushes past the pain associated with all real change.  In fact, leaders come in all shapes, sizes and personalities, but all have one trait in common – they are all hungry.  Hunger, like anything in leadership, can be developed, as discussed in an earlier chapter on the alignment of the conscious with the subconscious mind.  Walton had a winners tenacious attitude, producing results in every field where he applied himself.  Jack Welch, a man who understands good leadership, said, “Sam Walton understood people the way Thomas Edison understood innovation and Henry Ford, production. He brought out the very best in his employees, gave his very best to his customers, and taught something of value to everyone he touched.”  Sam Walton’s story exemplifies the magnifying effects of leadership in producing inconceivable results from insignificant origins.

Walton, as a young boy, hit the ground running, starting his business career early.  His parents, Tom and Nan Walton, were mismatched, to put it mildly.  Walton shared in his must read autobiography, Sam Walton: Made in America, “They were always at odds, and they really only stayed together because of Bud and me. . . . I’m not exactly sure how this situation affected my personality – unless it was partly a motivation to stay so busy all the time – but I swore early on that if I ever had a family, I would never expose it to that kind of squabbling.”  Walton’s first leadership lessons were instructions in what not to do, similar to General Norman Schwarzkopf’s, who said he had learned more from bad leadership than good leadership, learning first hand what demotivated the troops.  Walton’s dad, who foreclosed on defaulted farm loans during the depression, developed a small thinker’s mentality, valuing security over any potential risk associated with success. He was frugal, not just with expenses, but also with personal investments, a good plan to remain poor.  Again, Walton learned a valuable lesson. He absorbed his dad’s frugality in expenses, but ignored it, when it came to investments, believing that only through investments could he start his own business, which he fully intended to do.  Thinking big and not squabbling were two of his original principles developed on his way to business immortality.  He applied both principles in his first significant business venture, a newspaper route, that expanded across the Missouri countryside.  Walton, always kind and courteous to his customers, quickly realized that one man could not do it all.  His solution, was to subcontract out the newspaper routes, setting up others kids in business, while maintaining control of the financial accounting.  Through this win-win arrangement, many hard working kids who struggled with financial literacy, became successful in business; at the same time, Walton made an extraordinary side income, literally financing his own college education, making more than his professors by profiting $4,000 to $5,000 per college year (over $70,000 in todays money), until his graduation in 1940.

Walton’s intense hunger was fueled further when he accepted an offer for $75 a month at the J.C. Penney store, as a management trainee, in Des Moines, Iowa.  His salary was minimal compared to his paper routes, but Walton desired to learn the retail trade from one of the top companies, understanding that learning comes before earning.  Walton was an immediate success as a salesman, topping the list of sales numerous times, but the personnel manager told him, because of his haphazard approach to recording sales slips along with cash register transactions, “Walton, I’d fire you if you weren’t such a good salesman. Maybe you’re just not cut out for retail,”  proving the truthfulness of the saying, “The smallest minds with the smallest ideas will criticize the biggest minds with the biggest ideas.”   But, in the personnel manager’s defense, Sam admitted later, that he “never learned handwriting all that well.”  Walton was befriended by Duncan Majors, his mentor and store manager.  He was Majors’ top student, working with him six days a week, then spending Sunday afternoons at his house, playing ping pong, cards, and learning all he could about the retail business. After an eighteen month stint, Walton left J.C. Penney, joining the service during World War II, but he never ceased to dream of one day owning his own retail store.  Moreover, while stationed in the army at Salt Lake City, he checked out every book on retailing at the local library, reading voraciously on the latest trends and techniques, supplementing his books learning with innumerable trips to the local department stores.  Walton was a huge positive thinker even then, saying, “Thinking like that (positively) often seems to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy,” having faith, that when his opportunity arose, he would win, just like he had in sports, entrepreneurship, and education, and college elections throughout his youth.

After his military release, in 1945, Sam, Helen, his wife, and their young son, settled in the small community of Newport, Arkansas, with a population of around 5,000 people. Having raised $25,000 through his savings, and a loan from Helen’s dad, L.S. Robson, the Walton’s were the new proud owners of a pre-existing, money losing, Ben Franklin five-and-ten-cent store. Walton considered Robson, a successful lawyer and businessman, one of his mentors, saying, “He influenced me a great deal. . . . My competitive nature was such that I saw his success and admired it. I didn’t envy it. I admired it. I said to myself: maybe I will be as successful as he is someday.”  The Ben Franklin store was Walton’s first opportunity to prove himself, he was filled with positive expectancy, sharing, “I’ve always believed in goals, so I set myself one: I wanted my little Newport store to be the best, most profitable variety store in Arkansas within five years.”  But the Butler Brothers, the owners of the Ben Franklin franchise, had repressive rules for their franchises, not allowing Walton, or other franchisees, much room for innovation, requiring that eighty percent of all merchandise had to be purchased from them.  The excessive markups profited the Butler Brothers greatly, but prohibited Walton from entering the discounting field as he wished.  Adding to Walton’s troubles, was a rental agreement that totaled nearly twice the average for other variety stores, being a whopping five percent of total sales.  Walton, in his impetuous desire to close the deal, didn’t object, but found out later, as he said in his own words that it, “was the highest rent anybody’d ever heard of in the variety store business. No one paid 5 percent of sales for rent.” This may have seemed like a sure recipe for failure, an inexperienced first time owner, a small money losing store, in a small town, with an excessively high rent, but that recipe mix neglected the positive effects of a leader of the caliber of Sam Walton.

Walton’s strengths were on display, at least in embryonic form, in his decisions, attitudes and actions at the Newport store.  Richard S. Tedlow, in his powerful read, Giants of Enterprise, captures the leadership of Walton when he wrote, “First he learned all the rules. Then he broke all the rules which did not make sense to him – which meant almost all of them. . . . Sam Walton did not become a billionaire because he was a genius (although he was without question smart, shrewd, and astute). The real reason for his success was that he had the courage of his convictions.”  Not shockingly, Butler Brother’s tight controls and Walton’s independent actions clashed, forcing Walton to work around them, searching for less expensive suppliers of merchandise, ignoring some of the higher item mark ups that Butler Brother offered, in an effort to reduce prices, satisfying his customers.  But, the Butler Brothers, even though unhappy with Walton’s free wheeling methods, tolerated his independent streak, focused instead, on his massive improvements in total sales volume.  Sales increased over 45% the first full year, moving ahead another 33% the following year, and then expanding the third year by another 25%!  This surprising turn of events, shocked the Butler Brothers, who thought they were selling a capsizing franchise to a naive rookie.  Instead, he changed the perpetual loser into one of the franchises elite performers, surprising everyone except the indomitable Walton himself, whose personal hands on leadership had turned the tide.  Despite having purchased a money losing franchise, one that the Butler Brothers were elated to unload, Walton had achieved success against the odds, later writing, “I was the sucker Butler Brothers sent to save him (the former owner).”  By his fifth year, Walton had a compounded growth rate of 28% annually, making Walton the leading variety store owner in the entire state of Arkansas, achieving his goal to be the best within the five year period he had set.

Walton’s story had all the makings of a “and they lived happily ever after,” but it was not to be.  Like many elite leaders, Walton suffered a severe setback, one that would have proved fatal to a lesser man, in his quest for excellence.  By 1950, Walton had a problem, it involved the lease, that the impatient Walton had signed back in 1945, which didn’t include a renewal clause.  This left him open to the whims of the rental owner, on whether to sign a new lease with Walton or to lease it to someone else.  The rental owner, seeing an opportunity to set his son up in business, refused to renew the lease contract, leaving Walton with no options, but to sell his store inventory and fixtures to him . In a flash, Walton had lost five years of dreaming, planning, working, and executing, receiving a mere $50,000 for five years of tireless work, a bitter pill to swallow for the Walton family.  He shared, “It was the low point of my life. I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. It was really like a nightmare. I had built the best  variety store in the whole region and worked hard in the community – done everything right – and now I was being kicked out of the town. It didn’t seem fair. I blamed myself for getting suckered into such an awful lease, and I was furious with the landlord. Helen, just settling in with a brand-new family of four, was heartsick at the prospect of leaving Newport. But that’s what we were going to do.”   It would have been easy for him to get bitter, blaming the world for this seemingly unjust action, but Walton refused to play the blame game.  Through the pain and heartache, Walton had learned several valuable lessons.  First, he learned to have a trusted legal team review all of his future contracts, ensuring the written words agreed with the verbal expectations for both parties.  Between Walton’s son, Rob, and his father-in-law, both lawyers, he was protected in the future from rashly signing any legal contracts.  Second, Walton didn’t pass the buck, admitting fault for signing the document without proper inspection.  It is this characteristic, probably more than anything else, that separate leadership producers from leadership pretenders.  Simply put, leaders refuse to pass the buck or play the victim card.  Third, he allowed the pain of this setback to fuel his fire, rather than quench it.  In other words, leaders turn rejection into energy, while others turn rejection into excuses. Walton had pulled off a business miracle, becoming the top variety retailer in Arkansas, but his reward, for the exceptional achievement, was the forced closing of his store and banishment from Newport society, a surprise ending to an otherwise rags to riches story.

Every person has to make a choice when setbacks occur in life.  Either one can learn from the bitter experience, leading to winning more in the future, or alternatively, one can lean on the bitter experience, leading to whining more in the future.  Walton, as a leader chose to learn from his mistakes, but not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, because many great things were still accomplished during the five years.  So he made a mistake, but why sacrifice his future on the altar of past mistakes?  Walton swallowed his pain and pride, moving forward, wiser than he was five years before.  He believed he could do it again, even better than before, no longer bound by an exorbitant rental agreement and having learned how to work around the higher markups with the Butler Brothers’ items.  This time, Walton would not be the inexperienced amateur, but a professional retailer who had achieved record breaking results.  The Walton family moved to Bentonville, Arkansas, opening up Walton’s 5 & 10, changing the name, even though it was still under the Butler Brother’s umbrella.  His new project would be an uphill battle, with Bentonville being half the size of Newport, but having three variety stores competing for the small town’s business.  In addition, his new store averaged less than half the volume that his old Newport store, which had been losing money, had averaged before he took it over, but Walton was not deterred, later writing, “It didn’t matter that much, because I had big plans.”   He immediately invested $55,000, $5,000 more than he had received in the sale of his Newport store, banking on his ability to produce results.  In less than six months, his new store had tripled its sales, proving that his leadership formula worked wherever it was applied.  From 1950 to 1962, Walton expanded operations across the southwest, building the largest independent variety store operation in the entire United States, while receiving little fanfare or publicity.  Walton recalls, “That whole period – which scarcely gets any attention from people studying us – was really successful.”  The years before Walmart, when no one had heard the name of Sam Walton nationally, were the years where his leadership style was developed, plying his craft in near anonymity, investing over 10,000 hours in a quest for leadership mastery, a quest he more than fulfilled.

My good friend, Art Jonak, has outdone himself again, concepting, creating, and producing a professional quality video, using the wonders of technology available to us today.  In years past, producing videos of this quality were tens of thousands dollars, or more, but thanks to entrepreneurs and competition, we all enjoy the improved methods, learning even faster.  The video is entertaining, Art having a wonderful sense of humor, taking business serious, but not himself, while capturing nuggets to help people move on in life.   Art even included a blooper section at the end!  Quite simply, I am thankful that nearly three years ago, I met Art, and through the years the Woodward’s and Jonak’s clans became friends.  I hope you enjoy the video as much as I did.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzKAe6mvjM4]

For over 3,000 years of recorded history, beginning in the eighth century B.C. with the ancient Greek Olympics, people dreamed of breaking the four minute mile.  The early Greeks, loved their athletic competitions, believing that they developed the martial spirit in the people, necessary for success in war.  The ancient Greeks city states seemed to live for war, but they loved their sports even more than their wars, calling temporary truces if needed, in order to enjoy their athletic events, in which each city-states brought their best athletes to compete against one another.  The largest, and most honored of the competitions, held every four years in Olympia, was called the Olympics. The Greek mentality, named paideia was the ideal, a goal to be pre-eminent, the best, seeking perfection in whatever field of study. Early in the Greek Olympics, the paideia, or perfection, in relation to the mile foot race, was thought to be four minutes flat, a perfect 60 seconds per quarter.  Greek runners were impressive, vaunted for their superior conditioning.  For example, take Pheidippides, an Athenian herald, who had once run 150 miles, from Athens to Sparta in less than two days, an impressive feat, even by today’s ironman standards.  For over a thousand years, Greek runners trained intently, dreaming of being the first to achieve the mythical paideia.  Greek folklore recounts amusing training methods, in the attempt to reach the target, one consisting of lions unleashed to chase the runners, in a desperate attempt to motivate runners to improve their foot speed.  The dream of the four minute mile captured the Greek consciousness, but the paideia, the perfection, was never achieved.  With the last of the ancient Olympics, held near the end of the 4th century A.D., the over 1,000 year quest for the perfect mile ended, without anyone accomplishing the paideia.  Many Greeks, in fact, reached the belief that it was physically impossible.  During the decline of the Roman Empire, most of the historical records were lost, but a select few were stored away in monastic libraries, not to be rediscovered for multiple centuries.  The dream of the four minute mile was buried, along with the rest of the classic past, leaving only fragments of the complete historical record, as the dark ages descended over Europe.

Following the Middle Ages, during the European Renaissance, the re-birth of learning created a hunger for Greek and Latin classics.  By reading the ancient manuscripts, the scholars learned of the unconsummated Greek dream of a four minute mile. But with over a thousand years experience with failure, the Greeks no longer wrote optimistically about the possibilities of achievement. The Renaissance scholars, through reading the dismal record of failure in the paideia quest, adopted the limiting beliefs that permeated the Greek records, thinking the four minute mile was illusory.  What once was believed the physical target, was now believed to be physically impossible. From the Renaissance scholars perspective, if the ancient Greeks, who exercised their bodies on a daily basis, applying over a thousand years in the pursuit of paideia, couldn’t crack the four minute barrier, then how could anyone accomplish the feat today?  This disbelief had grown from a weed into a veritable jungle, blocking the attitude needed to reach for the ideal.  It wasn’t a physical disability, but a mental one, holding humanity back.  Remember, when a weed grows inside the human psyche, most of the effort is invested in feeding the limiting belief, instead of pulling it out.  In this case, scientist, doctors, and running coaches, all spoke on the physical limitations inherent in the human anatomy, spreading their limiting beliefs to anyone who would listen.  Sadly, runners from around the globe were listening, leading to the record mile time, at the turn of the 20th century, still ten seconds off from the ‘impossible ideal.”

The 20th century, initiated a new level of worldwide sporting competitions, especially with the advent of the modern Olympics, first being held in 1896.  The best of the best, now met every four years, creating the competitive excellence that moved forward the top performances in many sporting events.  The original Greek quest, the paideia, for the four minute mile was reborn.  Numerous runners, from many different countries, dreamed to be the first to breakthrough the mythical ideal, running a sub-four minute mile.   By 1915, the mile record stood at 4:12.6, still over twelve seconds off the target, set by the ancient Greeks, thousands of years before.  Superstar runners from all over the world, over the next thirty years, continued to move the mile time closer to the four minute barrier, eventually Gunder “The Wonder” Hagg, on July 17, 1945, ran a mile in 4:01.3.  Hagg was so close to the coveted prize, only 1.3 seconds away, yet he never broke the barrier, his world record stood for nearly nine more years, the longest period that any mile record stood for the entire 20th century.  In other words, for nearly nine years, this mental weed, this troublesome belief, held its Rasputin like powers over runners from every nation, leading to doubt filled attitudes and no progress towards the goal.

Enter Roger Bannister, a medical student, one of the new breed of runners, who believed that the four minute barrier could and should be broken.  For Bannister, breaking the longstanding barrier was a personal challenge, having heard repeatedly that it was “impossible.”  It’s interesting to note, that while most get demoralized when hearing others say its impossible, winners get energized. Bannister was a winner and negative stimuli only strengthened his resolve.  He trained alone, deliberately avoiding the coaches and managers, believing they were inadvertently holding the runners back by their limiting beliefs and attitudes.  By 1953, through applying his own training regimen, using his experiences in the medical field, he had reduced his time to 4:03.6, still short of the mythical standard, but progressing forward. With constant practice, both mental and physical, Bannister slowed his heart rate to less than 50 beats per minute BPM, significantly below the 72 BPM of the average man’s.  The lower heart rate allowed him, under the intense strain of running, to maintain a larger oxygen reserve, prolonging the time he could run under anaerobic conditions, making the four minute mile possible.  But it was more than just hard training, Bannister, naturally scientific in outlook, analyzed his performance after every run, placing a focus on continuous improvement, he wrote, “Improvement in running depends on continuous self-discipline by the athlete himself, on acute observation of his reaction to races and training, and above all on judgment, which he must learn for himself.” Bannister researched the latest running mechanics, this, along with his scientific methods for training, left him convinced that he could break the record, ending, once and for all, the 3,000 year quest.

Bannister may have trained alone, but he was not alone in the quest for the coveted four minute mile.  Two other runners, both Wes Santee and John Landy, had impressive credentials, and both had publicly set the goal to break the mark, leading to a three man race against time for track and field immortality.  Santee, an American, was probably the best natural athlete of the three,  The son of a Kansas ranch hand, he amazed crowds with his athletic prowess and confident spirit.  Santee was the first to publicly state his intention of breaking the four minute barrier.  The other, John Landy, was an Australian. He trained harder than anyone, desiring to win, not only for himself, but for his home country this international honor.  Landy ran everywhere, in the woods, in the sand dunes, on the beach, revealing an inner drive to be the best that he could possibly be.  Each runner understood, that on any given day, that, with the right conditions, they could breakthrough the four minutes barrier.  This led to a three dimensional race against time. On the one hand, was the race itself, breaking through the four minute barrier, certainly pressure enough.  But, on the other hand, was the race against the unknown, since only one of the three can run a sub-four minute mile the first time,  To put it another way, there can only be one time that it’s the first time, and even though all may run under four minutes eventually, the prize, along with the corresponding historic immortality, would only go to the one who accomplished it first.  The unknown, was how much time did each runner have before one of his competitors broke through the barrier.

In an article by Neal Bascomb, he describes the hoopla created by these three elite runners: “For weeks in advance of every race, the headlines heralded an impending break in the barrier: ‘Landy Likely to Achieve Impossible!’; ‘Bannister Gets Chance of Four-Minute Mile!’; ‘Santee Admits Getting Closer to Phantom Mile.’ Articles dissected track conditions and the weather forecasts. Millions around the world followed every attempt. When each runner failed–and there were many failures–he was criticized for coming up short, for not having what it took. Each such episode only motivated the others to try harder.”  This three man drama, created a buzz throughout the athletic world, leaving everyone debating who would be the first man to break the four minute mile.  In the spring of 1954, on an Oxford track, the debate ended.

It was May 6, 1954, on a chilly spring evening, that Bannister’s date with destiny arrived.  He traveled to the Iffley Road track in Oxford, where the Oxford University track team competed against his British Amateur Athletic Association (BAAA) team, in their annual track meet.  Over the years, the idea of a “dream mile” had been scientifically plotted by sports physiologists and coaches, believing that it would take ideal conditions, with temperatures around 68 degrees, having no discernible wind, and a track made of hard dry clay, in order to accomplish the “dream mile.” Furthermore, along with the perfect weather and track conditions, a planned sequence of quarters needed to be run, the first quarter clocked the slowest, with each subsequent quarter becoming faster, closing with the fastest time being the final quarter. Nearly everyone believed, that without perfect conditions and planning, the “dream mile” would remain just that, a dream.  But the conditions in Oxford, on this chilly May day, were far from ideal, forcing Bannister to break nearly every one of the “dream mile” theories in his quest.  Rain had drenched the cinder track, making the surface slippery.  Meanwhile, the wind had been blowing at practically gale like force for most of the day, reducing the crowd to a mere 1,500 spectators, attending to witness the historic event.  Thankfully, with the late 6 p.m. start time, the rain had died down, but sadly, not the biting cross wind, cutting through the athletic track.  In spite of these conditions, Bannister knew that he must make this race count. Knowing that Santee or Landy could break the record, in any upcoming race, Bannister reach deep inside himself, revealing the spirit of a champion in his, soon to be legendary, performance.

At 6 p.m., the runners were at the starting line, Bannister, with two of his teammates from the BAAA,  lined up with three Oxford runners.  In a methodical plan, developed before the race, Chris Brasher, a teammate of Bannister’s, played the jackrabbit, the pacesetter for Bannister.  Brasher’s first lap set a blistering pace, with Bannister, running right behind him, timed in 57.5 seconds.  This was too too fast, an impossible time to maintain for even two laps, let alone four, making many feel the record would not be broken, at least not on this day.  Regaining his composure and the pace, Brasher completed his two laps, collapsing to the side of the track exhausted.  Bannister’s half mile time was 1:58.2, which, although fast, was within the range set beforehand, leaving a possibility that Bannister could pull it off.   At the start of the third lap, Chris Chataway, the third BAAA runner, in accordance with the plan, sprinted to the front, allowing Bannister to draft behind him.  Chataway, ran a stellar third lap, giving it all he had, until, depleted of energy, he fell off the pace, but Bannister, thanks to the pace set by his friend, completed the third lap in 3:00.7, well within shooting distance of the prize. But, the million dollar question was, how much gas did he have left after the grueling first three laps.  Bannister didn’t take long to answer that question, when, with three hundred yards to go, he began his final kick, tapping into a reservoir of energy, known only to himself, he lengthened his stride, rolled his head back awkwardly, and gave it everything he had, literally collapsing as he broke the tape, passing out momentarily from the extended physical and mental exertion.

Pensively, the crowd awaited for an official announcement, which finally came over the loudspeaker: “A time which is a new meeting and track record, and which, subject to ratification, will be a new English native, a British national, a British all-comers, European, British Empire, and world record. The time was three minutes. . .fifty-nine and four-tenth seconds.”  The crowd erupted in applause, pandemonium ensued as people realized the momentous event they had just witnessed. Bannister had run the fourth lap in an unbelievable 58.7 seconds, smashing through the four minute mile barrier with a final time of 3:59.4 seconds!  After his superhuman effort, Bannister regained consciousness quickly, but suffered momentary color-blindness from his other world exertions.  His standard heart rate of 50 BPM had soared to over 155 BPM, not  returning to normal for over three hours.  Bannister completed his 1954 dream season in style, winning the British and Empire championships in the mile run, along with the European title in the 1500 meter event.  After his record breaking season, Bannister announced his retirement from athletic competition, pursuing his medical career full time.  In 1955, he wrote a book on his track and field exploits, called, The Four Minute Mile.  He earned his medical degree from Oxford, becoming a neurologist and in 1975, he received the honor of being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, a fitting close to an extraordinary career.

Bannister, when he raised the bar on what is possible, received more than his fair share of criticism, carping, and nay sayers, but he didn’t hear them, choosing not to listen. Instead, he focused his attitude on what he believed possible, not on what others said was impossible. In the author’s opinion, the most incredible part of this story, isn’t Bannister’s four minute mile, but what happened to the other runners when Bannister ran his four minute mile. Remember, the mile record had stood at slightly over four minutes for nearly nine years, but the year after Bannister broke the four minute mile, other runners broke through their mental barrier, leading to 37 runners breaking the four minute mile.  What would account for the fact that, in nearly 3,000 years, no runners broke the four minute mile, but numerous runners did over the next five years? It certainly cannot be physical conditioning, improved tracks, or improved shoes, what improved was the beliefs and subsequent attitudes. Over the following years, things really get crazy, as hundreds of runners broke the four minute mile. Nothing changed but the belief window, leading to a can do spirit can account for such a radical change in results in so little time.  What was once thought impossible, now has become routine, simply because, a man with better beliefs and positive attitudes, proved that it could be done.  Bannister, in an interview with Guardian News, fifty years after his historic accomplishment said, “Until then, there had been a widespread belief that it was physically impossible for a man to run the mile in less than four minutes. People claimed the human body would burst amid such a trial of speed and endurance. Bannister, slipping into his best Inspector Clouseau-style accent, remembers that, “a Frenchman once said to my wife, ‘but ‘ow did ‘ee know ‘ees heart would not burst?’ Even Landy spoke of a ‘cement wall’ protecting the four-minute mark. But I knew it could be done.” Bannisters knew it could be done, this made all the difference, because the real barrier to break in the four minute mile, wasn’t physical, but mental.

Beliefs and attitudes will propel one towards or repel one away from his goals, depending upon whether one is leading the beliefs or allowing the beliefs to lead him.  Bannister’s personal breakthrough pulled a 3,000 year old weed, removing a mental block, helping thousands of runners achieve better results. This principle works in every field. When leaders do the “impossible,” others will step up to the plate, modeling their beliefs and behaviors.  What would happen, if a group of leaders broke through their mental barriers, achieving the Bannister Effect in their professions, helping many others fulfill their untapped potential.  The world needs more men and women with the attitude of Bannister, willing to take criticism, using it, not to get demoralized, but to get energized. God Bless, Orrin Woodward

The following article is written in memory and thanks to John Wooden. His book, simply titled Wooden, co-authored with Steve Jamison, impacted me immensely.  I sincerely thank Mr. Wooden for the life he lived and the legacy he left. God Bless, Orrin Woodward

On October 14, 1910, in Hall, Indiana, into a Dutch-Irish family, John Robert Wooden was born.  The farmhouse, where he grew up, had few of the modern day conveniences, like running water or electricity, but young John was given something much greater by his parents, an unbeatable work ethic.  In Wooden’s nugget filled book Wooden, written with Steve Jamison, he reveals the secret to his superhuman work ethic, “My dad, Joshua, had great influence on my own personal definition of success, . . . . one of the things that he tried to get across to me was that I should never try to be better than someone else.  Then he always added, ‘But Johnny, never cease trying to be the best you can be. That is under your control. The other isn’t.’ . . . . The concept that success is mine when I work my hardest to become my best and that I alone determine whether I do so, became central to my life and affected me in a most profound manner.”  Wooden may not have won every contest he entered, but he was rarely, if ever, outworked.  This legendary work ethic, one of the cornerstones of Wooden’s success, led a farm boy from the fields of Indiana, to UCLA, in Los Angeles, leading to ten NCAA titles in his last twelve years, including a record seven in a row.  There are many qualities that can be learned from John Wooden, but central to his philosophy and life was his mastery of his profession by the consistent and persistent work ethic over time.

As a player at Purdue University, Wooden was not blessed physically with a Michael Jordan frame, but he maximized what he was given, quickness and speed, through sheer determination and work ethic.  In fact, Piggy Lambert, Purdue’s coach for 29 years, said that Johnny was the best-conditioned athlete that he ever coached in any sport.  Strong words of praise from Lambert, who won 11 Big Ten basketball titles as head coach at Purdue. Wooden said, “Later, I applied the same philosophy to our teams: focus all your effort on what is within your power to control. Conditioning is one of these things. How your mind functions is another.”  Wooden’s legendary work ethic, led Purdue to the 1932 Helm’s Foundation unofficial national championship, and him into the college hall of fame.  But to Wooden, the fame of winning was secondary to the inner peace of knowing that one has done his personal best.  Wooden’s definition of success exemplifies this, “Success is the peace of mind that is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”  In other words, one can lose, but still win, if he did his personal best.  On the other hand, one can win, but still lose, if he didn’t do his personal best.  This philosophy imbued all of his teams with an unquenchable drive for excellence night in and night out.  Wooden believed that the external scoreboard was secondary to the internal scoreboard, where players competed more against themselves, rather than the competition, to reach their potential, he explained, “Championships were never the cake; they were the icing. Doing our best was the cake.”

Wooden coached high school basketball for eleven years before moving into the NCAA by accepting the head coaching position at Indiana State.  After two years there, in which Wooden led his Indian State team to the NAIB finals, Wooden, in 1948, accepted the head coaching position at UCLA.   He was led to believe that UCLA would soon have a state of the art basketball facility to support his efforts.  However, the promise wasn’t fulfilled until nearly seventeen years later, forcing his UCLA teams to practice under less than optimal conditions.  To say that the UCLA facilities were outdated would be an understatement, with many modern high schools having better training facilities. It’s hard to imagine, but Wooden’s future UCLA dynasty practiced basketball on the third floor of the old Mens Gymnasium, the same floor that both the gymnastic and wrestling programs used for their practices, many times simultaneously.  In fact, the place was infamously labeled the B.O. barn, from its lack of ventilation along with the inherent smells emanating from hard working athletes.   Wooden shares, “For sixteen years, I helped our managers sweep and mop the floor every day before practice because of the dust stirred up from the other activities. These were hardship conditions, not only for the basketball team, . . . You could have written a long list of excuses why UCLA shouldn’t have been able to develop a good basketball team there.  Nevertheless, the B.O. barn was where we built teams that won national championships in 1964 and 1965. You must take what is available and make the very most of it.”   When one studies Wooden, a recurring theme seems to be, that whatever the situation, by applying disciplined hard work, it will be conquered. Instead of waiting for conditions to improve, thus helping the team improve, Wooden focused on improving the team through a spirited effort that eventually led to improved surroundings.

Few recognize, that it took Wooden sixteen years to put all the puzzle pieces together, launching the dynasty in 1964 with UCLA’s first NCAA title.  Most people are too impatient with the success process, applying hard work for a day, a week, or maybe even a year, expecting to be a champion without the full 10,000 hour investment.  How many people are willing to invest sixteen years, with no titles, yet remain as committed, if not more so, at the start of year seventeen?  But Wooden, in his mind, viewed things differently, his teams were winning long before their 1964 NCAA title, because his teams strived to reach their full potential. Wooden, in his book, Wooden on Leadership, also written with Jamison, describes his philosophy, “There is a standard higher than merely winning the race: Effort is the ultimate measure of success. . . . When it’s over, I want your heads up. And there’s only one way your heads can be up – that’s to give it your best out there, everything you have. . . . To my way of thinking, when you give your total effort – everything you have – the score can never make you a loser. And when you do less, it can’t somehow magically turn you into a winner.”   For most champions, it’s that extra effort, when everyone else is out of gas, that makes the difference between victory and defeat.  Wooden tapped into the inner motivation of his players, helping them to fulfill their potential, leading to practices that were more intense than the majority of the games.

Over and over in life, one finds that hard work creates its own luck.  Examine the chain of events, leading to Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul Jabbar), one of the all-time most recruited collegiate athletes, attending UCLA.  Because Wooden instilled pride into his teams, expecting superior work ethic, regardless of the practice conditions at the B.O. barn, UCLA overcome the hardships, winning two consecutive championships.  Because they reached the finals, the games were aired on T.V. before a national audience.  One of the interested fans, who watched the games was a young Lew Alcindor, who became intrigued with the burgeoning UCLA dynasty.  Alcindor interest in UCLA led to a commitment from the athletic director, J. D. Morgan, to finish building the Pauley Pavilion by the fall of 1965, in time for the basketball season.  Another case of L.U.C.K. – Laboring Under Correct Knowledge striking again.

With the coming of Lew Alcindor age, UCLA began a near unbeatable streak.  After Alcindor’s exit to the pros, Bill Walton and the “Walton gang” continued the dynasty, not missing a beat.  The impressive list of records and accomplishments border on the unbelievable. Wooden’s UCLA teams won a record 7 consecutive championships, at one point, they won 88 consecutive games in a row.  Much has been written of the 10 championships in 12 years, but that isn’t where UCLA’s competitive greatness was formed.  The UCLA dynasty began 16 years earlier, when a young coach, created a culture of excellence, founded upon a simple concept, that hard work applied to reaching your full potential was winning, regardless of what the external score displayed.  By creating this work ethic culture at UCLA, Wooden, despite poor practice facilities and lack of height, competed consistently against universities with better funding and recruiting.  Wooden and his team’s finest hours, were the years on end, sweating it out in the B.O. barn, refining his 10,000 plus hours of mastery in the coaching field, leading to the dynasty that everyone reads about.  As Joe Frazier, the great boxer said, when referring to his miles of running performed before daylight in preparation for his title fights, “If I cheat when the lights are out, I will be found out under the big lights.”  Although Wooden and his teams didn’t win any NCAA championships during that fifteen years, they achieved something infinitely more important, the self respect developed from giving their personal best everyday. It’s called the ‘mirror test’, can one look in the mirror, win or lose, and know that it was a personal best performance? If it was, then competitive greatness will be formed, and if it wasn’t, then no amount of trophies, recognitions and awards, will erase that fact or allow one to look in the mirror with pride. Wooden passed the mirror test with flying colors, coaching for 40 years, refining his craft, winning, by his definition, by reaching his, and his teams, full potential.

To the sports community, Wooden’s teams seemed to appeared out of no where, lighting up the NCAA tournament regularly after 1964, but to the few in the know, those who witnessed first hand the rest of the story, Wooden’s last 12 years of external winning, were simply the fruits of his first 27 years of internal winning, a true testament to the worth of investing 10,000 hours to master one’s craft.  Champions invest their 10,000 hours, typically in anonymity, when mastery is reached, they splash upon the world scene, similar to the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the famous American poet, who wrote, “The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.”  Today’s society, so focused on getting into the win column, will shortcut the process of success, eschewing the hard work for any gimmick, drug, or maneuver that satiates their misguided definition of success.  This makes Wooden’s timeless advice more relevant today than ever.  Wooden would tell them that winning is an internal, not an external event, that the moment one cut corners, one only cheats themselves, stealing from their own futures.  Dave Meyers, the captain of Wooden’s last championship team, shares a powerful story that captures the difference between society’s and Wooden’s definition of success:

“As a pro, absolutely nothing else mattered but winning. If you missed a shot or made a mistake, you were made to feel so bad about it because all eyes were on the scoreboard. Winning was all that mattered and all anybody talked about: “We’ve gotta win this game,” or “We shoulda won that game,” or “How can we win the next game?” Win. Win. Win.

Coach Wooden didn’t talk about winning – ever. His message was to give the game the best you’ve got. “That’s the goal,” he would tell us. “Do that and you should be happy. If enough of you do it, our team will be a success.” He teaches this, he believes it, and he taught me to believe it.”

It seems that everyone, who knew Wooden, learned this valuable lesson of life, that if one handles the inner scoreboard, the outer scoreboard will take care of itself.   Imagine the impact that could be made in society, if Wooden’s philosophy of success and hard work, were adopted by the top leaders in every field.  Leaders, instead of emphasizing the outer scoreboard of life, would teach people to reach their full potential on the inner scoreboard, helping people to pass the ‘mirror test.”  When enough people in the organization or team can pass their personal ‘mirror test,’ the external scoreboard is nearly assured.  Dynasties are created, when, rather than looking at the outer scoreboard, being dissatisfied only when one loses, a team, instead studies their personal inner scoreboards, always identifying some area of dissatisfaction to be improved further through hard work and continuous improvement.  John Robert Wooden passed away, on June 4, 2010, after 99 years of life, but not before passing along his success legacy to the world.  Wooden’s life exemplifies what legendary sportswriter, Grantland Rice once wrote, “For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, he writes – not that you won or lost – but how you played the game.” Wooden knew how to play the game of life, modeling character, honor, passion, hard work, and a fidelity to all who knew him.  He leaves a powerful legacy, passing the baton of excellence onto the next generation of leaders, displaying what is possible through faithfulness, hard work, and persistence.  In closing, Wooden wrote these prophetic words in his book, Pyramid of Success, “I am ready to meet Him (the Lord) and I am eager to see my wife, Nellie. . .”   Wooden is with the Lord and his wife Nellie, hearing the words, “Well done thy good and faithful servant.”