Super Bowl Systems: What Business Can Learn from the Steelers and Cardinals

Feb. 5, 2009 - PRLog -- One team has had just three head coaches in 40 years.

The other hasn’t won a game of significance since 1946.

So how have the Pittsburgh Steelers (who were named the team of the decade in the 1970’s) maintained the team’s winning ways into the 21st century?

And how have the Arizona Cardinals turned around a franchise that hasn’t won a major championship in more than six decades?

“Both teams have built their success around systems and culture – and those are two key strategies ActionCOACH Business Coaches use to help improve and transform businesses,” ActionCOACH Marketing Director Nathan Smith said. “Businesses can actually learn a lot from how both the Steelers and the Cardinals approach the operational side of their franchises.”

ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching firm, coaches its business clients to embrace systems and implement organizational cultures based on performance and accountability. See more about these programs at actioncoach.com.

For Pittsburgh, consistency has been the key to its winning franchise, which has been owned since the 1940’s by the Rooney family. In 1969, the Steelers hired head coach Chuck Knoll, who led the team to four Super Bowl titles.

Knoll coached until 1991, when Bill Cowher took over, who in turn led the Steelers to six consecutive playoff appearances and a Super Bowl win in 2005. After Cowher’s resignation, the franchise hired coach Mike Tomlin, who has continued the Steelers reliance on a strong running game to set up an effective passing offense.

“Part of the Steelers success is consistency in leadership and an overall team culture that relies on accountability and success,” Smith said. “All the Steelers head coaches have held their players to strict standards of behavior and performance. The flip side is that players know when they go to Pittsburgh, if they follow the system, they will have a chance to win.”

For the Cardinals, it took two coaches from the Steelers system – offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt and offensive line coach Russ Grimm – to “shake up” a franchise that had won only one divisional title since 1946.

When Whisenhunt was named the Cardinals head coach and brought Grimm with him to the team, both instituted new standards of accountability and performance for what was seen as an underachieving group of talented players.

This season, he established his new performance standards early in the year, benching young quarterback Matt Leinart in favor of veteran Kurt Warner, who performed better than Leinart in the preseason.

“Making a personnel call like that may be tough, but it was the right thing to do for the team,” Smith says. “It also sends a message to the team and the organization that the leadership is serious about winning, and is willing to do what it thinks is right for the team to be victorious.”

In Whisenhunt’s own words, the key to changing a losing culture into a winning one is all about raising the overall standards of the organization.

“Raise the expectations. Be prepared to work. It has to be everything,” he said. “Practice, off-season workouts, preparation and accountability."

While new standards and accountability are important, Smith emphasizes that approach only works if those standards apply to everyone.

“One of the most important things Whisenhunt has done is apply the rules to everybody,” Smith says. “That – and being consistent in the application of those rules and standards – is the best way to make certain a change in culture is adopted and embraced over time.”

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ActionCOACH is the world’s number one business coaching and executive coaching franchise, with more than 1,000 offices in 26 countries. To learn more, go to actioncoach.com.