“I envisioned it as establishing a near-permanent ‘base camp’ near the summit,” said San Francisco 49ers head coach Bill Walsh, “consistently close to the top, within striking distance, never falling to the bottom of the mountain and having to start all over again.” As detailed in The Score Takes Care of Itself, Walsh’s mission was to introduce organizational excellence to every aspect of the 49ers and to win Super Bowls titles as a byproduct of that excellence.

Walsh inherited a 49ers team with substandard facilities and resources in 1979, and a losing record, but guided the team to becoming the only team in NFL history to go from worst in the league to Super Bowl champions in back-to-back seasons. He did this in large part by instituting his Standard of Performance–a detailed manual describing how every person earning a 49ers paycheck was to do their job. This included not just players and coaches, but extended to office personnel, groundskeepers, maintenance works, ticket takers, and parking lot attendants. It even went so far as to include instructions for receptionists as to how they were expected to answer phone calls with excellence and professionalism.

Walsh was successful in both leading his teams to three Super Bowl titles, and establishing the ‘base camp near the summit’ he had envisioned, as his successor coaches led the team to additional championships. Both the Dallas Cowboys dynasty in the 1990s and the New England Patriots dynasty of the 2000s developed programs similar to Walsh’s Standard of Performance, and so have other championship MLB and NBA teams.

Walsh is perhaps best known for developing the West Coast Offense which revolutionized football with quick passes for short yardage. But above all, he considered himself a teacher: “We had no mission statement on the wall. My mission statement was implanted in the minds of our people through teaching.”