Bill Walsh took over the San Francisco 49ers in 1979 when they were one of the worst teams in professional football. Within three years, they won the Super Bowl. Over the next decade, they became a dynasty.
When people asked Walsh how he did it, he didn’t talk about winning. He talked about preparation, standards, and process.
His philosophy was captured in a single phrase: “The score takes care of itself.”
Walsh believed that obsessing over the scoreboard was counterproductive. Instead, he focused relentlessly on the behaviors that produce winning: meticulous preparation, disciplined execution, clear standards, attention to detail. He insisted that champions act like champions before they become champions. If the process is right, the outcome follows.
This idea extends far beyond football.
Systems Over Goals
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, builds on Walsh’s insight. Clear argues that goals are necessary but not sufficient. Everyone who enters a competition has the goal of winning. What separates those who achieve their goals from those who don’t isn’t the goal itself. It’s the system they follow to get there.
Clear puts it directly: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Goals define direction. Systems determine progress. A goal tells you where you want to end up. A system tells you what you need to do today. And today is the only place where work actually happens.
The problem with focusing too heavily on outcomes is that outcomes are delayed.
You can do everything right for weeks or months and see no visible progress. Clear calls this the “plateau of latent potential.” The work isn’t wasted. It’s stored. But if you’re measuring yourself only by results, you’ll quit before the results arrive.
Process focus solves this.
When you concentrate on executing your system, you can succeed every single day. You’re not waiting for some future scoreboard to tell you whether you’re on track. You are on track if you followed the process today.
Your Grades Will Take Care of Themselves
When I have the opportunity to speak to college students, I tell them something that sounds almost too simple: don’t worry about your final grade in the class. Worry about being great in class tomorrow.
Don’t fixate on the final exam.
Focus on the quiz this week. If you prepare well and perform well tomorrow, then do the same thing the next day, and the day after that, your grade at the end of the semester will take care of itself.
This reframe changes everything. The final grade feels distant and overwhelming. Tomorrow’s class is manageable. You can control what you do tonight to prepare. You can control how you show up in the morning. String enough good days together and the outcome becomes inevitable.
The students who struggle are often the ones staring at the mountain instead of taking the next step. They’re so focused on where they need to end up that they become paralyzed about where to begin.
The Nineteen-Year Checklist
Early in my career, I decided I wanted to become a recognized thought leader in business. At the time, nobody knew who I was. I had no platform, no reputation, no track record. But I had a clear picture of what success would look like.
The most respected figure in my field at that time was Tom Peters.
He had written groundbreaking books, spoke to audiences around the world, and had built a reputation as one of the most influential business thinkers of his generation. I decided that his level of success would be my long-term target.
Then I backed up and asked a different question: what would I have to do, starting now, to eventually reach that level?
I made a checklist. Not a vague list of aspirations, but a specific inventory of skills to develop, credentials to build, relationships to form, and work to produce. I identified everything I could think of that separated someone at the top of the field from someone just starting out.
Then I got to work. Every day, I focused on checking something off that list. I didn’t wake up thinking about the distant goal. Instead, I woke up thinking about what I could do today to move one step closer. Some days that meant writing. Some days it meant reaching out to someone I could learn from. Other days it meant preparing for a speech that only a handful of people would attend.
It took nineteen years.
At a ceremony for the Thinkers50, an organization that recognizes the most influential management thinkers in the world, I was nominated for an award for innovative thinking in business. The same year, Tom Peters received their lifetime achievement award, I was sitting at his table.
I don’t share this to impress anyone, I share it because it illustrates exactly how the process works. The outcome that night wasn’t the result of chasing recognition. It was the accumulated result of nearly two decades of following a system, day after day, without knowing when or whether the scoreboard would change.
The score took care of itself.
Focus on Today
The principle applies everywhere. An athlete who obsesses over the championship will burn out or give up long before they get there. An athlete who focuses on today’s practice, today’s preparation, today’s execution, builds the foundation that championships require.
A leader who focuses on annual results will make short-term decisions that undermine long-term performance. A leader who focuses on building the right culture, developing the right people, and executing the right processes creates an organization that performs consistently over time.
Walsh understood this. Clear teaches it. And anyone who has achieved something meaningful over a long period of time has lived it, whether they had language for it or not.
The question isn’t what you want to achieve. The question is what you need to do today to become the kind of person who achieves it.
Define the outcome you’re working toward. Then back up and identify the process that will get you there. Focus on that process every single day. Trust that if you execute with discipline, the results will come.
You may not see progress for a while. That’s normal. Keep going. The score will take care of itself.
At the end of each year, I review what I see working and failing across organizations I advise worldwide.
In this video, I share what deserves real attention in 2026 and what most leaders are over-investing in. If you’re setting priorities for the year ahead, start here.
