Extraordinary Teams
THOUGH I HAVE ALREADY SHARED some of the experiences I had in football, I think it would be compelling to share a few more, but to also show you how they have specifically helped me learn to lead teams in business.
The thing about leading by example is that, before you can do it, someone has to do it for you. Put another way, we have to learn by example before we can lead by example. It will come as no surprise that General Neyland was one of the people in my life who showed me what quality leadership looked like. Of course, I had no idea at the time all the ways I would someday apply his principles to the rest of my life.
I was an average football player who was blessed to play on some fantastic teams. This taught me early on about the importance of surrounding yourself with people more talented than yourself, a lesson that would prove invaluable in business. In the three years I had a starting position at the University of Tennessee, we won twenty-nine games, lost four, and tied one. I was surrounded by incredible players the whole time, so much so that nine out of the twenty-two players on our team went on to play in the NFL, with some becoming standout players even in that competitive field. Three of my teammates are enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame: Hank Lauricella, Doug Atkins, and John Michels. Doug is also in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and Hank was the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in 1951. Additionally, Jack Stroud, Ted Daffer, Andy Kozar, Bert Rechichar, Jimmy Hill, Gordon Polofsky, and Bud Sherrod all played in the NFL. Doug Atkins and Bert Rechichar were both first-round draft picks. Stroud, Atkins, and Rechichar all played in the NFL for over ten years and were Pro Bowlers.
Playing alongside such incredible teammates and having so many unique and shared experiences with them also prepared me for a career in business. Each win and each loss taught me something (even though I always preferred the wins). In fact, while the daily experiences of being on these teams were in themselves very inspirational and instructive, there are three football games in particular that really stick out in my mind in terms of learning the principles and lessons that I have spent the rest of my life applying to business.
One of the first concepts I learned from General Neyland and from the experience of playing football was paying attention to who or what you’re up against. Since freshmen couldn’t play on the varsity squad, they were generally tasked with running the plays of upcoming opponents so that the varsity could practice.
During my first year, we learned so much about preparation and practice through studying our opponents so we could emulate their plays in practice. In particular, I learned that matchups matter… a lot. You can prepare all you want, but if you aren’t up to speed on your opponent—whether it is a person, a particular play or scheme, or even the weather conditions or climate—then you are only half-prepared.
Pay attention to what you’re up against. That is how you fully prepare.
As freshmen we practiced every day against the varsity, but Thursday practices were always held inside the stadium, which was called Shields-Watkins Field at the time. At the end of practices, General Neyland would always yell, “Big circle!” When we heard him yell, we would come running and assemble in a perfect circle to his liking. He would stand in the middle and begin every talk calling us by what he was actively helping us to become: men.
During the big circle time on the Thursday before we played Alabama, he said, “Men, you haven’t lived until you’ve beaten Alabama.” He paused for a second, then continued. “In Birmingham.” Back then, when we played Alabama on the road, the game was in Birmingham rather than Tuscaloosa. Auburn played all their big games in Birmingham as well. General Neyland was so passionate about playing and beating the best that it ingrained in me the concept that I had to beat Alabama in order to be successful.
Freshmen were not eligible to play back then, so I had to wait until my sophomore year in 1950 to finally take my turn to try to beat Alabama. It was the first really big football game of my college career—and it didn’t disappoint. At the time, Shields-Watkins Field held about 50,000 people; there was not an empty seat to be found.
Good thing for all those people that the tickets only cost four dollars.
With four minutes left to go in the game, we were down by a score of 9–7. We had the ball and were driving on them, needing a score to secure a win. During this drive, twice we faced third-down-and-ten situations. We picked up the first down on both of them, running a reverse on one play to Bert Rechichar.
When the game clock was down to about forty seconds, we faced a fourth and goal on the two-yard line. Well-known Tennessee and future NFL player Andy Kozar was our fullback. He took the handoff and dove over the goal line, scoring a touchdown and winning the game. We beat Alabama and, even though it wasn’t in Birmingham, I had never felt so alive.
During the game, I sustained a small injury to my wrist and was being attended to in the training room. General Neyland’s office was directly next to the training room, and I’ll never forget overhearing what he said to one of the sports writers during the post-game interview. The reporter said, “General, at the end of the game today, everyone in the entire stadium was standing and watching to see if your team would win or lose, but you were the calmest person in the whole place—just sitting there calmly in your seat.”
If you look at old pictures, then you will notice that coaches didn’t generally stand up and pace the sidelines during games like they do today. They usually sat on the bench. General Neyland actually kept a chair on our sideline, and he rarely left it during the game.
The General turned to the reporter and said, “I have meticulously prepared my team for any contingency, so all I can do is sit back and await the outcome.” That was General Neyland to a tee. He taught us to painstakingly prepare ourselves while also paying close attention to whatever challenges were ahead of us. We always knew to respect the challenge while maintaining the expectation that you could—and would—conquer it.
There were plenty of summer practices when the temperature would reach the high 90s or 100s. Back then, we weren’t given regular water breaks like players are given today; there just wasn’t as much education about the importance of hydration. On these extremely hot and difficult days of practice, General Neyland would always say, “Men, it’s hotter in Tuscaloosa.” This stuck with me because it reminded us all that the path to victory goes through humility, discipline, respect, and, ultimately, adversity.
When we circle up the team that I lead, I often think of these lessons from the General.
The second big game that comes to mind was against Texas in the 1951 Cotton Bowl. Though the game was played in 1951, it was the postseason game that wrapped up our 1950 season. We were ranked number four, and Texas was ranked number three. I’ve mentioned earlier in the book that we won the game, but the memories of the game itself are worth sharing.
I don’t recall people talking about point spreads very often in those days, but there was no doubt that Texas was favored, especially since the game was being played in Dallas. Before the game, General Neyland wrote down and went over his Game Maxims with us as he always did, but this time, he had some added motivation.
“Men,” he said, “this team is bigger than you. They’re stronger than you. And they’re faster than you.” We hung on his every word, hoping that this speech was going somewhere better—and fast. Then he pointed to his chest and said, “But you got it in here. We’re going to come back in here at halftime and we’ll be behind, but we will win it in the fourth quarter.”
He knew how not to just pump us up and convince us we could win; he knew how to help us see our limitations so we could address them realistically and give ourselves the best chance to overcome them. As we went through the tunnel and waited to be called to the field, we could hear the Texas band playing “The Eyes of Texas.” The entire stadium—minus a few Tennessee fans—was singing with all their might. The General remained unfazed, turning to us and saying, “Men, at the end of this game, they’ll be playing ‘The Tennessee Waltz.’ ”
At halftime, just as the General had predicted, we trailed by a score of 14–7. We made adjustments and kept fighting as hard as we could. Neither team managed to score in the third quarter, but then we scored another touchdown in the fourth quarter to seemingly tie the game. However, our kicker missed the extra point, leaving us down 14–13.
After a strong defensive series, we were able to get the ball back. We drove down the field and scored, putting us up 20–14. However, Texas still had enough time—about a minute—to pull off a game-winning drive. The Texas quarterback dropped back for a pass, but it was intercepted by Jimmy “Cowboy” Hill from Maryville, Tennessee.
Bill Stern was the announcer that day and, when Jimmy intercepted the pass, Bill screamed, “They’ll erect a statue for him in Maryville!” We kidded Jimmy about this for the rest of his life—the play that made him famous. Ultimately, General Neyland was right again, and we prevailed by the final score of 20–14. Jimmy was just the right guy who stepped up at just the right time. More on that later.
The third game that really sticks out to me was played against the University of Kentucky in 1951, which, of course, was the year we won it all. Just as it is today, Tennessee and Kentucky always played in November, which meant the seasons would be changing and harsher weather was usually upon us. Every time we played Kentucky, it rained or snowed.
In 1950, we had beaten them in Knoxville by a score of 7–0. Now, in 1951, the weather had taken a bad turn as it snowed and rained the entire game, covering the field in Lexington with snow and mud. Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s Kentucky team was ranked in the top ten, while we were ranked number one. Two of the greatest defensive minds of the century once again went head-to-head. Under those kinds of conditions, it’s no wonder the game was still scoreless at halftime.
We finally scored a touchdown in the third quarter. Kentucky then drove down the field for a first-and-goal situation from the five-yard line. Their quarterback was a superb player named Babe Parilli, who ended up coming in third in the Heisman Trophy voting that year. Ironically, Hank Lauricella, our tailback, came in second. Needless to say, there were some serious heavyweights squaring off in this game, and since Parilli had beaten us when we were freshmen, we aimed never to lose to him again.
We didn’t.
Parilli dropped back to pass when he was suddenly tackled by Bill “Pug” Pearman in the backfield. Parilli fumbled the ball and Pug recovered it around the fifteen-yard line. Kentucky was never able to recover, and we went on to win the game 21–0. This was a key win on our way to a national championship.
It was a chance encounter that got me thinking about the connection between General Neyland’s maxims and running a team in business. Back when my mother was still alive and living in St. Petersburg, I flew down to Florida to see her. On the trip home, I sat next to an SEC official whom I vaguely knew. We began talking about football and such.
He asked me about my job. When I told him that I owned a chain of gas stations, he said, “Well, I bet you’re using what General Neyland taught you in football and making good use of it in business.” It was a passing comment that I agreed with in the moment. However, when I got off the plane, I really started thinking about General Neyland’s methods for coaching a football team and their direct correlation to managing a business in general—and to Pilot, in particular.
First of all, he recruited the best players. Any quality coach knows that you recruit players, not positions. Yes, there must be a certain degree of physical talent in order to play at a high level on the football field, but there are also other intangibles that greatly affect a team and its outcomes. These include attitude, leadership ability, motor (that is, one’s innate ability to move forward with the right attitude), and tenacity. Without these, many a fine athlete has grossly underachieved.
In football, muscles cannot make up for a lack of moxie. The same is true in business.
We may own and operate gas stations, convenience stores, and travel centers, but our real business is serving people. For this reason, we do our best to seek out and hire the kinds of team members who will uniquely own the mission of Pilot Company and work with us, not for us.
Next, General Neyland put the best players in the best position that suited their abilities. Coming out of high school in those days, most guys played both ways: offense and defense. A player could be famous as the best running back in his high school’s history, but, in college, his best fit—the one that would elevate both his personal career and the performance of his team—might be as a defensive back. A good coach—and a good leader—will work hard to put team members into the right positions reflective of their abilities. At Pilot Company, we have a motto: “Right Person, Right Place,” or as we sometimes call it, “RPRP.”
Next, General Neyland would make sure we practiced often and that we practiced the right way. This meant we practiced with intensity, teamwork, and a drive never to settle for where we were, but always push forward towards improvement. This also meant practicing in preparation for that week’s game plan, which General Neyland always crafted with intentionality. Finally, he would expect us to put it all together towards a win on Saturday.
All these principles mirror what we do in business. Again, we try to get the best people on our team and put them in the right position. One person might be working in the office at present, but he or she would be better off working at one of our travel centers, or vice versa. We put a lot of time into consistently training our teams, orienting them not just to their respective roles and tasks, but also to the overall game plan for the company. And finally, in the case of Pilot Company, we aren’t expected to perform just on Saturdays; we must perform twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
If you don’t have good players, you aren’t going to win. If you don’t put your players in the right position, you aren’t going to win. If you don’t practice well, you aren’t going to win. If you don’t have a game plan, you aren’t going to win. Finally, you most certainly won’t win if you don’t put all of these into place for the purpose of performing well on Saturdays… or, in the case of business, every day you are open.
As it turns out, the SEC official on that airplane was right: the principles of business really are the same as the principles of football.
After doing business for so many years and contemplating General Neyland’s maxims and other leadership principles, our company landed on four main values that drive everything we do. Whether it is a matter of what we sell or of moving towards travel centers instead of convenience stores, Pilot has changed many times over the years. However, we are confident that these values will remain the same regardless of our company’s need to adjust to the dynamics of a changing market.
The first thing we must always focus on is the same thing General Neyland focused on: people. I’ve already mentioned the importance of getting the right people on your team, but this is more about remembering that the people themselves are the most valuable part of the company. They must be treated with respect and care, regardless of the bottom line.
We have a lot of stores in coastal areas such as South Carolina, Texas, and Florida. These areas are constantly being affected by hurricanes that sometimes devastate many of the local businesses, including ours. When a big storm hits, we are sometimes required by the authorities to temporarily close stores affected by the carnage. When this happens, we always continue to pay our team members, even though they can’t come to work and the store is not generating any income.
Since we employ over 28,000 team members, there are often other things happening in their lives—situations and crises that provide opportunities for us to care for them well. We’ve had team members who have lost homes, experienced health problems, or have had to live without power for weeks on end. We have a compassion fund for these kinds of things, but we try to go even further in assisting them.
After one hurricane, we were contemplating how to help a number of our team members who were without power. We considered sending them goodie baskets, but one of our team members recalled a similar experience in his own life. He said that when his life unexpectedly went out of sorts, what he really needed the most was money.
So in addition to continuing to pay them until they could return to work, we also added a little extra money to their paychecks just to help them get through the days they would be without power. A few months later, I stopped by one of these stores. One of the ladies working that day approached me and expressed her deepest gratitude for the extra help. They had lost everything in their freezer, so the extra money really helped them stay above water financially.
In business, people must come first—and your team is made up the most important people who will determine the success of your company. We do a special monthly birthday celebration for the Store Support Center team members who have birthdays in that month, giving them a free meal and playing various games for gift cards and prizes (but mostly, just for fun). We also allow them to fill out an anonymous survey in which they can give us their positive and negative feedback on any and all aspects of the company. Our Executive Leadership Team then addresses their concerns at the party. We want them to know that we are not only listening but are also accountable to them since all of us own the welfare of the company together.
Valuing people means taking care of one another, just as General Neyland taught us to take care of each other on the football team. We try to take good care of our people because we know they take good care of the company.
There is no value higher than them.
It can’t be overstated that there is simply no substitute for hard work. No matter what it is that you do, you have to actually do it if you want to get it done. And if you want it done well, you’re going to have to work hard.
I think that having a military leader with war experience as our football coach brought another level of work ethic to our team. General Neyland knew the way you conducted yourself with even the simplest of tasks was a reflection of the quality of the outcome you would achieve. A Saturday game was no more important than a Tuesday practice, even though there would be no trophies handed out after the practice. Working hard on Tuesday when no one but your coaches and teammates were watching, regardless of the task at hand, prepared us to work hard on Saturday when thousands of fans were watching us from the stands. Hard work is not something you can just turn on when the task is seemingly more important.
At Pilot, we want to elevate this kind of work ethic and expectation at every level of the organization, from the CEO’s office to the first-day team member cleaning a shower at a travel center. How we do all the things we are tasked with—big and small—is a key indicator of our character, as well as our success.
Business is a team sport. Today’s world is obsessed with promoting the star on the ball field or the court—the one who stands out with extraordinary abilities. But take it from a man who played alongside many gifted athletes: not one of them ever singlehandedly won us a game. In football, there are eleven players on the field at the same time. If ten of them do their job well and one of them does not, the whole team will suffer.
Our business operates a chain of nearly seven hundred travel centers, but if one of them performs poorly, it reflects on the whole company. We want our team members to embrace the fact that they are being supported—and counted on—by the rest of the team. We want them to embrace this healthy sense of accountability. It is all too easy to get bogged down or discouraged by a difficult task or a persistent problem in one’s own department or role. When we do this, we can forget that others are facing similar circumstances in their roles. Remembering the team causes us to feel less isolated and discouraged because we realize we’re not alone.
Of course, the best thing about working together is that, when someone does get bogged down with a problem, there are plenty of other team members there to lend a helping hand. It takes humility to ask for help, but those who never ask for help severely limit their own potential. And in the case of a business, they inadvertently do harm to the company. We desire an environment in which leadership can be confident in each and every team member’s ability to fulfill his or her role with excellence, as well as one in which everyone knows they are not expected to perform perfectly by themselves with no help from other team members.
A team filled with stars who can’t play with others is toxic to a business!
Even though a Tuesday practice was just as important as a Saturday game, the game was most definitely a different level of challenge. Practicing against our teammates was a night-and-day difference from facing our opponents in the game. General Neyland expected us to take everything we had learned during the week and apply it even better during the game.
In business, there are moments when all the training, organizational strategy, and preparation gives way to actually conducting business. We can train all day long on how to be kind to customers when they walk through the door of one of our travel centers, but if the person working that day presents a sour face to a customer, the whole company has failed in that one moment. Is that too harsh? No. The fact is, in that encounter, we did not achieve the results we set out to achieve.
A lot of companies start off by demanding results, which produces an environment of unhealthy competition, insecurity, and ultimately, a results-over-people mindset. That’s why this value comes after the other three. Demanding results only works when every individual on the team knows he or she is valued and commits to valuing others in return. Demanding results from people who haven’t been properly trained to work hard at the task they’ve been assigned and who don’t know how to work together toward a common goal will just end in negativity.
But if we keep these values properly aligned, we can demand results from our team members with confidence because we know they desire the same results. When people are valued, equipped to work hard, and surrounded by supportive team members, there’s a collective desire to take the field and put everything that’s been prepared into action. When this happens, the results everyone demands of themselves flow from a positive culture, not just from a list of expectations.
Rick Barnes, the Head Coach of Men’s Basketball at the University of Tennessee, is a good friend. He recently came and spoke to about fifty or sixty of our leaders at Pilot Company. Rick spoke about building the kind of culture where everyone can expect and demand the same results that lead to a positive outcome for all who are involved in the process. He said it all begins with the leader being willing to listen to his players because, if he doesn’t listen to them, they will never really listen to him. In the same way, he as the coach has to respect them because again, respect will never come his way if he doesn’t extend it to them first.
Coach Barnes said doing this requires him to have humility, something people often mistake for weakness in today’s age. Great leaders learn how to maintain complete control of the organizations they lead, but also remain humble as they do it. In the case of being a basketball coach, this means being accountable for the outcome of the entire team. I know General Neyland would have agreed with Coach Barnes. Being accountable as the leader is the key to being able to demand healthy results from your team.
Coach Barnes used the hypothetical example of his team being behind by one point with ten seconds to go in a game. If he calls a play that his team executes with precision, but the play doesn’t work and leads to a loss, he is personally accountable for those results. However, if one or more of the players do not execute the play he draws up and they lose, then that’s on them.
But no matter who bears the fault, the final result is the same: a loss for the team—and the coach will ultimately be held responsible for a loss more than the team members. Understanding this level of accountability encourages everyone at every level of a team or business to embrace the common values and goals of the team and ultimately demand the same results of himself or herself at all levels.
It works on the field, the court, or in the marketplace. In fact, I believe any person who has been successful in athletics at a high level and who will also choose to apply these same lessons and values to business will ultimately find success. The good news is that the same rings true for those who aren’t athletes at all. In other words, you don’t have to endure a General Neyland practice to learn from him; you can just listen and apply these principles.
It will be worth it. And the good news is that you can take all the water breaks you want.