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INTRODUCTION

Running a business is a lot like quarterbacking a football team. I know. During eighteen hard-scrambling years with the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants, I managed dozens of oversize madmen in shoulder pads feverishly trying to put points on a scoreboard. My job was getting high performance out of these talented, single-minded people who - as one of them told me - didn't have to punch in, but always punched out. I led hundreds of tense business meetings - kindly known as huddles - to improve our bottom line: our score. I learned ways to confront the onrush of competitive forces: usually 250-pound tackles, ends and linebackers.

And for my own survival, I had to do some quick strategic planning, which is why I became known as a "scrambler." I now feel a little like a former Buffalo Bills quarterback, Congressman Jack Kemp, who said, "Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics - I'd already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy."

Like football, business is a game - but it is the game where the clock never stops and the score can change every day. Today, I find business an even more exciting game than football, because the stakes are higher and the rewards greater.

The goal of any organization or any team is to win, to beat your own record, to turn a profit. Yet, one of the things I discovered in my eighteen years in the pros and nearly that many in business is that businessmen today are living on myths. Many of these myths are based on sports but have nothing to do with the reality of either the gridiron or the boardroom. These myths are destructive; they rob you of success and keep you from delivering a winning performance.

So . . . here's the book I didn't write. It contains all the rules I don't believe in - either on the playing field or in the boardroom:

1.  A manager's job is to think, not to play
2. Motivation is the secret of successful management
3. People work mainly for money
4. One-minute  praisings - the  most  praiseworthy thing to do
5. One-minute  reprimands - put  people  in  their place
6. Managers should manage themselves
7. Macho makes the man a manager
8. Winners don't make mistakes
9. A winner never quits
10. For big successes, risk the Big Play
11. Superstars can carry the team
12. Listen to the Monday-morning quarterbacks
13. "Talent always beats experience"
14. One-sided deals leave you sitting pretty
15. A smart leader has all the answers
16. Always play as if you are ahead
17. Hard work ensures success
18. To come out ahead, beware the competition
19. Second always finishes behind first

None of this is true in my opinion. What I've learned about business from sports is that the key to both is people - and a winning attitude that you can create to psych up yourself and others. No quarterback can be successful unless he's confident and capable of bringing the ten other men on his offensive team together with all their energy and spirit. The moment the football is snapped, the quarterback needs all the skills of involvement, goal-setting, feedback and reinforcement - the same ones that work in business.

You've probably never heard a football player use that kind of "psychological" language before to describe the business of running a team. Well, I didn't know those words either - I didn't even know the concepts - until I had already thrown a lot of balls and run a lot of plays.  Then I realized that the real game was in keeping everyone going. The other game - the one that the stats show - was just the result of playing the mental game superbly.

I was born the son of a preacherman and sometimes it shows. They say the chief impulse that motivates a minister of the Gospel is a desire to spread the good news. Well, I have a bit of that impulse in me, too. And I have been going around the United States for years, even before I retired from football, telling folks what I have learned about success and leadership from my many years in football and almost that many in business.

In 1971, while I was still with the Giants, I found that after I became a businessman, I became a better quarterback. I learned how to manage human resources better.  I founded my own management consulting business. Tarkenton & Company (now Tarkenton Productivity Group, Inc.) has by now worked with some three hundred companies all over the country - and abroad. We have brought our techniques of performance evaluation and productivity to over 250,000 people - from line workers to top management. From doing this, I feel I've learned something about what makes people care about their jobs and what raises their performance to star quality.

As chairman of Tarkenton Productivity Group, Inc., I spend a great deal of time talking to business groups around the country. I come into contact with chief executive officers from every kind of company: with a financial services wizard such as James D. Robinson, chairman of American Express; with textiles mogul Roger Milliken; and with electronics giant Harry Gray, chairman of United Technologies Corporation. As Jimmy Robinson once said to me, "Fran, I think you know more CEO's than anyone else in the country."

In fact, what I've learned about business and productivity did not come from books - it came from people, people in football and in business. Whatever smarts I have in this business are street smarts. I believe in learning by listening! Whenever I'm around successful businessmen, I learn. I ask a million questions. I milk people dry. I take advantage of every plane ride and luncheon meeting and golf match. I know how to get people talking: by sincerely asking for their help. People love to help - but you have to ask.

So I've been very lucky. I've spent half a lifetime in a sport that requires teamwork, high morale, a winning spirit and the constant search for better performance. I learned to learn - and was in fact learning the art of quarterbacking at a faster rate in my last year in the pro game than in my first. As a quarterback, I had benefit of special training in how to manage human resources into a successful and productive unit, even though I didn't have the greatest arm or the fleetest feet in the trade. Just like businessmen looking at the bottom line, the offensive team of the Minnesota Vikings had to put points on the board! I was the field manager of this enterprise.

I even learned by staying abreast of what was going on in the front office of my football teams. In fact, during all those years on the playing field, I was really just a businessman masquerading as a football player.

My spreading the news about football and management is not good for anything, of course, unless you, the receiver, do something with it. It is like passing the football: it does no good for me to shoot a perfect spiral 25 yards downfield if there is no one there to catch it. I can't catch my own passes. My message won't help anybody if it only gets you excited for a couple of days before you get caught up again in your old routines.

This is not a scientific book that will answer all your questions about management or the business of your life. But it is a practical, action-oriented guide to survival and success in a confusing and challenging world. It is practical and action-oriented because that is the way I learned the lessons myself: by trying them out.

So here's the book I did write.

It contains the rules that worked for me on the football field and the ones that I have found most applicable to the business world. They explode the myths that have been lifted from the Vince Lombardi lore and point the way toward greater productivity, higher performance and new levels of personal satisfaction. For me, they are the secrets to attaining a winning edge - in football and in business.

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