Regular readers of my columns, whether here in the Augusta Business Daily or other venues, know that I am no fan of the University of Georgia football team. I have a couple of pretty good reasons.
First, I spent nearly seven years on the Georgia Tech (What’s the good word?) campus, as an Air Force ROTC instructor and then as a doctoral student. During that time, I learned much about the “Clean Old-Fashioned Hate” that characterizes the rivalry between the two schools. Second, the Bulldogs helped spoil my senior year at Notre Dame by beating my Fighting Irish in the Sugar Bowl that followed the 1980 college football season. I attended that game and many years later, when I bemoaned to Coach Vince Dooley how it made me feel, he indicated that the game meant a little more to him than it did to me!
As I noted in a previous column, my relationship with Coach Dooley softened my overall feelings about UGA football. Although I am not a Georgia football fan, the program’s success during the last two years has caused me to respect it immensely and led me to try to understand the reasons for its success. The following is what I learned about UGA football’s reasons for success and how people can apply those same techniques in their businesses.
Success in an organization starts at the top and in the seven seasons since Head Coach Kirby Smart was hired, UGA has won the SEC East five times, the SEC Championship three times, has gone to the National Championship game three times, and has won National Championships the last two years.
While some may argue that much of what Coach Smart has done at Georgia was “copying” what Coach Nick Saban has done at Alabama (Smart was Saban’s defensive coordinator there before becoming the UGA Coach and was on Saban’s staff for ten years), I would argue that Coach Smart adapted many of those ideas and techniques to his own situation and improved on them.
Continuous Improvement/Never Satisfied: Since Coach Smart took over at UGA, we can see that the program continues to get better. There is clearly an emphasis on continuous improvement in every aspect of the program: player development, coaching, nutrition, strength and conditioning, and recruiting to just name a few. After having won a National Championship after the 2021 season, it would have been easy for the program to rest on its laurels and celebrate its success. Rather, the UGA program looked more closely at what it could do better and never acted satisfied, resulting in a second consecutive National Championship. As business people, focusing on continuous improvement and never being satisfied with our success will lead to even greater success.
Retention/Continuity through Investment and Development: In this era in which coaches change jobs and players transfer, the UGA program has done an outstanding job of retaining its coaches and players through committed investment and development in both. On the coaching side, UGA pays their assistant coaches as well as any program in the country. But the pay is only part of the story. Coach Smart does an outstanding job of developing his assistant coaches, often promoting from within, and preparing his assistants to become head coaches at top schools. Since his arrival in Georgia, four of his assistants have taken head jobs at Power Five schools, the pinnacle of the profession (Mel Tucker at Michigan State, Sam Pittman at Arkansas, Shane Beamer at South Carolina, and Dan Lanning at Oregon).
The same can be said for their investment in player development, as on a yearly basis, Georgia sends as many players to the NFL as just about any program. While in the UGA program, the players are developed in terms of nutrition, strength and conditioning, technique, and football knowledge, preparing them for careers at the next level. As Georgia football does with its coaches and players, we must focus on investing in and developing our employees, to the point of preparing them to move on to bigger things somewhere. This will maximize their performance while they are with us.
Make it a Meritocracy: In UGA football, it is all about being a meritocracy. That is, those who play are those who perform. While they work with all their players to continually improve, it is those who ultimately perform who get to play in the games. There is no better example of that than quarterback, Stetson Bennett.
Since Bennett has been at UGA, a number of better-known and thought-to-be more highly skilled quarterbacks have been in the UGA program. However, it has been Bennett, a one-time walk-on and junior college player who has led the team’s offense for the last two years. This proves to everyone on the roster, that if I do my best, I will play. That is also the way it should be at your business, those who perform are those who get rewarded.
Culture, Culture, Culture: Probably the greatest thing Coach Smart has done with the UGA football program is to engender a culture that everyone associated with the program has supported. The players clearly play for each other and there is a tight bond among all those associated with the program. While UGA is always looking for outstanding talent, it does not seem to go after talent that might not fit into its culture.
For instance, at the start of the 2022 season, UGA did not take in any players from the transfer portal. Now, they already have a few transfers coming in from the portal for the coming year, but I would bet, they are players that meet the current UGA football culture. In our businesses, it is important to build a culture that bonds our people together and be sure to hire those who embrace that culture.
The UGA football program has had extraordinary success in recent years, particularly the past two. Even someone who is not a fan of the program, like me, must admit that and realize that there is much to emulate about the program. If your business can adopt some of the same principles as UGA football: Continuous improvement, investment, and development of your people, meritocracy, and culture, you can experience similar success.
