The Score Takes Care of Itself
my philosophy of leadership
by Walsh, Bill · first published 2009
72% recommend28% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Leadership philosophy from a championship football coach, valued for its bottoms-up approach to building high-performing teams. Suits new managers and startup founders, even though it is not a tech book.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The last words from the amazing coach known as "The Genius"Bill Walsh was perhaps the most influential and successful coach in NFL history, transforming the San Francisco 49ers from the worst franchise in sports to a dynasty that won five Super Bowls. He is acclaimed not only for his strategic brilliance but also for his advanced approach to leadership. His teams sustained a consistency of excellence rarely seen in sports or anywhere else. Drawn from a series of deeply revealing conversations with coauthor Steve Jamison, The Score Takes Care of Itself offers Walsh's best leadership principles
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…http://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Sup... (note: "that one's particularly good") "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories" - http://www.amazon.com/Hateship-Friendship-Courtship-Loveship... "The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership" - http://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp/... "The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time" - http://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067...…
on “Sam Altman's Twitter AMA” ↗…experience. For me, this adds context and makes a book readable. If you don't learn anything, then at least you might get to read a good story. The hard thing about hard things, by Ben Horowitz The Score Takes Care of Itself, Bill Walsh (49ers Coach) Creativity, Inc, Ed Catmull (Ran Pixar) To Pixar and Beyond, Lawrence Levy (CFO of Pixar with interesting different POV than Ed Catmull) Otherwise for any dumpster fire of…
on “The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read” ↗Bill Walsh - The Score Takes Care of Itself
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2013?” ↗"The Score takes Care of Itself" - Bill Walsh Jack Dorsey talked about it in Startup School and I highly recommend it as well.
on “Ask HN: What are the most inspiring books on leadership?” ↗"The Score Takes Care of Itself" by Bill Walsh: http://www.amazon.com/The-Score-Takes-Care-Itself/dp/1591843... Jack Dorsey recommended this title at Startup School 2013 and I got around to reading it in 2014. It's also one of the…
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?” ↗…managers in my org: * High Output Management by Andy Grove https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679762884/ * Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591846404/ * The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591843472/ For interns I give out these two books: * The Pragmatic Programmer https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Maste... * The…
on “Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?” ↗…essay notes, you will stifle yourself. If you have an editing process, where you line up your creative expressions with profit, you're basically doing what a writer does when he edits. Bill Walsh's The Score Takes Care of Itself is a fun book that, as the title suggests, deals with this idea.
on “The Myth of the Objective” ↗The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
on “Ask HN: Suggest me books on leadership and negotiations?” ↗[0] The Score Takes Care of Itself. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp...
on “Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?” ↗“Score takes care of itself” By Bill Walsh While not necessarily a “tech” book, the parallels to leading high performing teams are incredible. For me, this was the book that changed the way I think about leading my team.
on “Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?” ↗…but here they are, for what they are worth: Management: - High output management (Grove, 1995) - Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win (Useem) - It’s your Ship (Abrashoff) - The score takes care of itself (Walsh) - The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Horowitz) - Where good ideas come from (Johnson) - Extreme Ownership (Navy Seals) — (Willink) - Work Rules — (Bock) - 5 Dysfunctions of a team — (Lencioni)…
on “CTO Mentor Network – A virtual peer-to-peer network of CTOs” ↗…to be a bit more chilled out while still keeping the discipline in the right areas. I found that 7 habits of highly successful people really helped me; I also recommend "Wooden on Leadership" and "The Score Takes Care of Itself" as examples of champions putting this bottoms-up approach into practice over years and reaping the rewards. There is no shortcut. There is nothing fancy. Control what you can control, don't worry about…
on “Ask HN: How do you stay disciplined in the long run?” ↗…management books. > I decided to focus on growing Gusto’s engineering team, and not our code. The technical books on my desk starting getting replaced with books like Mindset, High Output Management, and The Score Takes Care of Itself — still three of my favorites today. If the three books listed in the latter excerpt were not those three books you read in the hotel, can you please tell us what books they were?
on “How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers” ↗…Ries 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson Measure What Matters - John Doerr, Larry Page The Fish That Ate the Whale - Rich Cohen The E-Myth Revisited - Michael E. Gerber The Score Takes Care of Itself - Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh Management - Peter F. Drucker Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗I read about half of "The Score Takes Care Of Itself" by Bill Walsh on a flight a few weeks back, and it makes me question your reasoning. It sounded like the team that Bill Walsh coached was playing an (at the time) similarly unloved playing style, and…
on “How David Beats Goliath: When underdogs break the rules (2009)” ↗