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1
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Sweep the
Sheds Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done
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Before leaving the dressing room at the end of a
game, some of the top players in the team – including Richie McCaw and Dan
Carter – stop and tidy up. They literally and figuratively ‘sweep the sheds’.
It is an example of personal humility, a cardinal All Blacks value. Though it
might seem strange for a team of imperious dominance, humility is core to
their culture. The All Blacks believe that it’s impossible to achieve success
without having your feet planted firmly on the ground.
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Humility is taught in all things. It is an
attractive but uncommon virtue in business.
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2
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Go for the Gap When you’re
on top of your game, change your game
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It is the philosophy and focus on continual improvement and
continuous learning environment that is at the core of All Black culture.
When you’re on top of your game, change your game. Adaptation is not a
reaction, but an everyday action.
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A winning organisation is an environment of professional and personal
development in which each individual takes responsibility and shares
ownership. Build the ability to change your cultural and commercial
processes. Even when at the pinnacle of success, look to regenerate.
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3
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Play with
Purpose Ask ‘Why?’
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When Richie McCaw got his first All Blacks shirt, he
spent a minute with his head buried in the jersey. The person with a narrow
vision sees a narrow horizon. The person with a wider vision sees a wider
horizon.
Better people make better All Blacks is the core
belief, and understanding Why? identifies the purpose of being an All Black.
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Our fundamental human drive comes from within, from
intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivations. The power of purpose galvanises
individuals, and alignment in group behaviours. What’s the purpose of your
business?
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4
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Pass the Ball Leaders
create leaders
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Central to the All Blacks belief is the development of leaders and
the nurturing of character off the field, to deliver results on it. This
involves a literal and metaphorical handing over of responsibility from
management to players, so that by game day the team consists of one captain,
and 15 leaders.
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Ownership, accountability and trust. Shared responsibility in your
business means shared ownership, a sense of inclusion means uniting
individuals, and more collaboration means advancement as a team.
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5
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Create a
Learning Environment Leaders are teachers
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Former head coach Graham Henry made pre-match time
the team’s own, as part of his devolved leadership plan. He left the players
alone as a group to do what they had to do.
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Mastery, autonomy and purpose are three drivers of
All Blacks success, where success is defined as modest improvement,
consistently done. For the All Blacks, leaders are learners, are teachers, as
Jack Hobbs, former captain said: Get up everyday and be the best you can be.
Never let the music die in you.
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6
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No Dickheads Follow the
spearhead
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In Maori, whanau means ‘extended family’. It’s symbolised by the
spearhead. Though a spearhead has three tips, to be effective all of its
force must move in one direction. The All Blacks select on character over
talent, which means some of New Zealand’s most promising players never pull
on the black jersey – because they don’t have the right character, they’re
considered dickheads, and their inclusion would be detrimental to the whanau.
Like all the great teams the All Blacks seek to replace the ‘me’ with the
‘we’. No one is bigger than the team. The team always comes first.
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Individual commitment to a group effort is what makes a team work, a
company work, a society work, a civilisation work. You need to build and
maintain a high level of trust in your business, so that individuals connect
together and strive towards a common goal. If that is lacking, the
competition will punish you.
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7
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Embrace
Expectations Aim for the highest cloud
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A culture of expectation enables the asking and
re-asking fundamental questions, in order to achieve clarity. Humility allows
us ask a simple question: how can we do better?
Go Forward! Recast your challenges into proactive
goals. You have to be pro-active at all times, taking risks and
responsibilities is one of the many skills you learn from rugby. This sounds
militaristic, but in its core it is true, rugby, at the end of the day, is a
contest of strength, skill and intelligence.
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Judge yourself against the best, create for yourself
a narrative of extreme, even unrealistic ambitions and benchmark yourself to
the ultimate. Make it an epic of what is possible
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8
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Train to Win Practice
under pressure
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Brad Thorn’s mantra, Champions Do Extra, helped him become one of the
most successful players in rugby history. The philosophy simply means finding
incremental ways to do more by preparation and practice. There’s a Maori
saying: the way the sapling is shaped determines how the tree grows.
All foundation for success on a rugby field is built in training. You
win games in training. The ugly truth is that in most cases you get the
results of your weekly training efforts and commitments in the game at the
weekend.
The All Blacks run on individual integrity. This means total
accountability, and by actions not words. No one is ever late for training,
players set their watches ten minutes fast. A collection of talented
individuals will fail without personal discipline. Ultimately character
triumphs over talent, and for the All Blacks it is about training to win,
practising under intensity to replicate playing conditions.
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In business, training is often seen as a soft option, a day out of
the business. Make practice your test, make it intense, it should be central
to your culture. Training with intensity accelerates personal growth.
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9
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Keep a Blue
Head Control your attention
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One minute can decide the outcome of a game, as it
can the outcome of a business situation. Avoiding poor decision making under
pressure is vital.
Pressure is expectation, scrutiny and consequence.
Under pressure, your thinking can be diverted. Bad decisions are made because
of an inability to handle pressure at a pivotal moment.
In 2010, founding partners of Gazing Performance,
Ceri Evans and Renzie Hanham, assisted in mentally preparing the All Blacks,
providing a framework to think clearly and correctly under pressure:
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Red Head is a state in which you are off task,
tight, results oriented, panicked and ineffective.
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Blue Head, on the other hand, is an optimal
state in which you are on task and performing to your best ability,
expressive, calm, in the moment.
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In moments of pressure, the All Blacks use
triggers to switch from Red to Blue. Richie McCaw grasps his wrists and
stamps his feet, literally grounding himself. Using these triggers, the
players aim to achieve clarity and accuracy, so they can perform under
pressure.
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To act rather than react, move from volatility and
an ambiguous space to having mental clarity, control your attention. Clear
thought, clear talk, clear task is McCaw’s mantra.
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10
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Know Thyself Keep it real
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Honesty drives better performance for the All Blacks:
Honesty=Integrity=Authenticity=Resilience= Performance
Often attributed to Socrates, the phrase know thy self, is a key
tenet of the All Blacks philosophy, believing that development of the
authentic self is essential to performance.
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High performance teams promote a culture of honesty, integrity,
authenticity. The All Blacks’ socials deliberately hark back to the local
rugby culture each player came from, reminding them of why and how they came
to be here. No international superstar status, they simply keep it real.
Better people make better All Blacks, is an All Black credo.
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11
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Sacrifice
Find something you would die for and give your life to it
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Focus is vital for the All Blacks, and there is no
paradox – play to win, don’t play not to lose. Don’t be a good All Black, be
a great All Black.
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As highlighted earlier, Champions do extra, give
everything you have – then a little bit more. What do you offer the team?
What are you prepared to sacrifice? Champions give the extra, discretionary
effort and sacrifice it takes to do something extraordinary. Give your best,
treading water is drowning. What is the extra that will make your business
extraordinary?
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12
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Invent your own language
Sing your world into existence
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There is a ‘black book’, which was for a time, for All Blacks eyes
only. Its collected wisdom in the form of aphorisms still informs the
culture:
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No one is bigger than the team
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Leave the jersey in a better place
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It’s not good enough to be good, it’s about
being great
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Leave it all out on the field
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It’s not the All Black jersey, it’s the All
Black man
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Front up – or fuck off!
It was a system of meanings that everyone understood, a language and
vocabulary, a set of beliefs that bind the group together. These have
subsequently evolved to Humility, Excellence, Respect as the three words at
the core of the All Blacks ethos.
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Apple under Steve Jobs had the same approach to developing a credo:
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Stay hungry stay foolish
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Why join the navy when you can be a pirate
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Insanely great
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Think different
Develop strong resonant values using a common language in your
business, it connects personal meaning to the business vision of the future.
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13
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Ritualise to
Actualise Create a culture
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A key factor in the All Blacks success was the
development of the new haka, Kapa o Pango. Rituals reflect, remind and
reinforce the belief system to reignite their collective identity and
purpose.
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In business, team spirit, pride and respect create
effective relationship bonds. Building a great team requires individuals who
enjoy a deep degree of trust in one another, the trust that colleagues are
not just dedicated but also up to the task.
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14
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Be a Good Ancestor Plant
trees you’ll never see
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The All Blacks task is to represent all those who have come before
them, and all those who follow.
There’s a fundamental Maori spiritual concept called whakapapa – the
rope of mankind, an unbroken chain of humans standing arm in arm from the
beginning of time to the end of eternity. As the sun shines on you for this
moment, this is your time, it’s your obligation and responsibility to add to
the legacy – to leave the jersey in a better place.
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In 1999 Adidas ran a commercial starting with Charlie Saxton, then
the oldest living former All Blacks captain, pulling a jersey over his head
and is ‘reincarnated’ as Fred Allen, the greatest All Blacks captain and
coach. In chronological and successive jerseys it created a lineage of
leadership to the then captain, Taine Rendell. The legacy is more
intimidating than any opposition. This captures the essence of leading for
sustainability.
Take stewardship of your business as responsibility to add to the legacy.
Be a good ancestor, this is your footprint, your time in the business.
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15
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Write Your
Legacy This is your time
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When a player makes the All Blacks, they’re given a
small black book. The first page shows a jersey from the 1905 Originals, the
first tour. On the next page is another jersey, that of the 1924 Invincibles,
and thereafter, pages of other jerseys until the present day, and pages with
principles, heroes, values, the ethos, the character of the team. And then
the rest of the pages are blank, waiting to be filled by the player.
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Those organisations that know what they stand for –
and most importantly, why – consistently outperform those who are just going
through the motions. They create better commercial results, generate more
sales, deliver higher shareholder value, attract better talent, and retain
it.
The First XV shows how the All Blacks hold a
values-led, purpose-driven high-performance culture and use the power of
storytelling to give it personal resonance. The result of this extraordinary
environment is extraordinary results.
In business, if we align our people, resources and
effort around a singular and compelling central narrative, and reinforce that
story through communications, resourcing and training, the results will come.
If your leadership focuses on culture, vision,
identity – the ‘who are we, what are we really all about, and how do we live
that with integrity’, you will create a special business – the competitive
and the collaborative. The desire to achieve and the desire to be part of
something bigger.
It’s easy to be cynical about the soft stuff – story
and values and vision and purpose – compared to shareholder returns or sales
figures. Often the numbers people win because they have hard metrics.
However, the All Blacks narrative proves that the soft stuff delivers hard
results. The culture creates competitive advantage. By focussing on story and
purpose and vision and the human aspects of your business architecture you’re
able to deliver better business – and better people.
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