About the book

This time I read the book in Kindle format. The chapters are fairly short and the e-book format works well with Wooden’s thinking.

How was the actual reading of the book?

Wooden is very frank and humane. He uses less superlatives compared to a typical business book. This book can be easily read in a weekend.

What are the key learnings of the book? 

 The key learnings can be summarized as following:

• Two sets of threes 
  • Wooden’s father had simple rules about honesty and adversity. Honesty goes like “never lie, never cheat and never steal”. Adversity rules are “don’t whine, don’t complain and don’t make excuses”. For a Finn these rules are obvious

• The goal is a by-product 
  • Coach Wooden sees that making your best has an end-result – achieving your goals.

• Seek small improvements every day
  • And the key to goals lies in small improvements which can be achieved every day.

• Think big is too strong for kids
  • But achieving goals should be fitted into ones resources. Small dreams for those who have small resources. Big dreams for those who have big resources.

• Did I make my best effort?
  • That’s what matters

How should we change according to the book?

In great many ways, but from this book you can find the baby steps of improvement. I would highlight two essential learnings that can turned into everyday guidelines.

First is that the doer makes mistakes. John Wooden believes that the team which makes most mistakes will probably win. Doing and learning goes hand in hand in Wooden’s thinking. The second one is to learn forever, die tomorrow. If you want to turn Wooden’s philosophy in an equation it might look like this: Idealism + Realism + Hard work = More than you can hope

What should I personally do? 

Promise to talk health, happiness and prosperity.

Summary

Not too many times you come up with a writer like John Wooden. His humane attitude and great reputation as a coach underlines the soft ways of coaching teams into greatness. Compared to Kahneman’s book this book is about team leadership in plain English.

All in all it is a great book if you have recently read only hard-core business books. A short book, but a welcomed book about coaching. And you ask from yourself every day….

The book in six words – Did I make my best effort?