Developing a championship process leading to sustainable success means continually improving every detail. While the initial process developed for winning may work at first, it might not be effective moving forward. The process evolves as the coaches and support staff gather more data. In championship programs, coaches implement this evaluation process in one on one meetings, in small groups, as a large group, and in surveys. Great leaders and coaches consistently schedule time to gather this data in order to continuously improve. Here are three questions to ask when auditing and refining the process:
- What should we STOP doing? When analyzing the process, it’s critical to ask players, coaches, and support staff what we should stop doing in order to reach the goals. Teams and leaders waste a significant amount of time on areas of little impact. The goal is to stop doing those actions and focus on the areas of greater impact through a data driven-decision process. Finding these blind spots takes time, gathering the correct data, and consistently auditing the process.
- What should we START doing? After working through the process for a period of time, it’ll become clear that the players, coaches, or support staff must take new actions to reach the desired outcomes. The answer to this question often comes from areas of glaring weakness in practices, games, or the weight room. Although it’s often easy to generate ideas of what to start doing, many programs fall into the habit of doing too much. Great coaches decide to take action only after evaluating the data.
- What should we CONTINUE doing? Once the process takes shape, actions that the program should continue doing will emerge. Those actions have led to specific, measurable results moving the team closer to its goals. Now it’s time to increase those actions and refine them even more to see if they’ll produce more benefits and greater results. Effective coaches narrow their focus on the actions of significant impact.
The Stop, Start, and Continue method provides a very clear and actionable way to further audit and refine the process. Although many coaches evaluate what’s working in their programs, championship programs use a strategic system for continually developing each aspect of the process. Elite coaches leave no aspects of the process to chance, and then they continually refine that process to uncover any weaknesses.
What system do you implement to continually improve a championship process?