Attention Fall Sport Coaches: How to go from Chaos to Control

Ok coach, in this next month or so you are going to be wrapping up your spring seasons.  The summer will come, and it will be filled with camps, recruiting, and hopefully a little vacation time.   

When you think of the upcoming fall season, on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being chaotic and 10 being organized and in control, how would you say you and/or your co-workers will be working on a daily basis?  

Do you have a consistent way of doing things or is it a little bit different every time?   

As you know already, the way you do things currently in the office, with your team, or with recruiting produces a certain result.  If your step-by-step process for getting things done is random and each of your co-workers does things their own way, it depends on their mood, or it depends on the time of the day, you are going to get random results, and random results are usually bad results for you coach.   

So what’s the solution? 

This may seem way out in left field, but I want you to think about running your program like a franchise, which is one of the most successful business models in the world. 

What is it exactly that franchisees do? They follow documented procedures.  

Each franchise unit under a franchise brand, such as Domino’s Pizza or McDonald’s, performs exactly in the same way as the next. Franchise brands figure out a formula that really works, even with the very smallest procedures of an operation, and then they document the procedures so that others can follow the format and repeat the model with the same level of success.    

So how would this work with your program?  Think about all of the things that you do as a coach that are reoccurring events.  Some examples would be: answering the phone, setting up a practice, running meetings, processing email, setting up an on-campus visit, or anything having to do with recruiting to name a few. 

Do you fly by the seat of your pants daily to get these things done or do you have a documented system that is consistent that will produce the desired result that you want no matter who performs the task?  

Ultimately, as a coach you want to find the best way of doing things, document it, apply it every single time, and keep finding ways to approve it along the way.  

Documenting your daily repeatable procedures in order to produce quality and efficiency is so effective it almost seems like there’s magic in it. Again, that’s everything. How can we apply the best solution to every situation? 

Michael Gerber’s book, The E-Myth, centers itself around this concept and it will be the basis for my upcoming Win the Day Academy Group Coaching Program.   

Here is how you start the process of documenting your systems.  

Have a meeting with your staff. You want predictable results, and so you put everybody together, you find the best way to do things and you all do it the same way. 

1. Write down your three biggest problems right now.  It might be with another employee, and it might be with a process (on-campus visits, processing email, recruiting phone calls, etc.) But it all leads down to a system that needs some tweaking or there needs to be a system corrected altogether.   
2. Then you need to document your processes as they are now. If there’s any kind of a coherent step-by-step process in your particular procedure you need to document it one, two, three.  Just the way it is now. It is much easier to construct your new procedure when you know exactly what your old procedure was. It’s much easier to tweak something that’s already in place, and something you can clearly see, rather than trying to create the perfect procedure from scratch.  
3. Once things are down on paper, start analyzing the steps. It’s much easier to analyze on paper than just randomly thinking about it. When it’s down on paper you can look at it and you can analyze it. If it’s not on paper there’s no analysis, it’s just random floating thoughts. You have to nail it down. 

Another thing, writing your processes down demands focus. Focus equals study. Study equals understanding of the process, and understanding the process equals the ability to repair the steps that don’t make sense, and especially to add new steps. 

When you get this sorted out, this could be the big difference between your new program and your old program. Or if you’re on your own with no staff, how you used to do things and how you do things now.  

Documentation of all of your processes is so potent because it allows you to manage your systems. You want to put your hands around them and get them going in the direction you want them to go, and you want them to perform the same way every single time, because that is what creates efficiency.  

You want your processes to be hyper-efficient every single time it’s executed. Rather than efficient one time, sort of efficient the next, and terrible the next time. The great execution every time adds up to something very good over the long term. 

Finding the best way of doing things, documenting it, learning how and when to apply it every single time, and keep finding ways to approve it along the way will be the focus of my upcoming Win the Day Academy Group Coaching Program.  For more information, click the link or email me with your questions.  It is starting soon so don’t miss out!  

At this point, you might be thinking, Mandy, this sounds good, but I have no idea where to start and don’t have the time to do this.  I gotcha covered!  

I am going to be running multiple implementation workshops throughout this summer to help set up your systems so in the fall you will be a more effective staff who has the bandwidth to be able to give more time and energy to your team.  More details coming soon!   

To your success,

Mandy Green

Busy Coach

Tudor Collegiate Strategies