Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
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| Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13 | Issue 770 |
| Craig Impelman Speaking | Championship Coaches | Champion's Leadership Library Login | |
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EMBRACE INNOVATION AND ENCOURAGE RESOURCEFULNESS The Summer of 1974During the summer of 1974, Coach Wooden had just completed his twenty-sixth season at UCLA. His teams had won nine national championships, including seven in a row. No other coach had won more than two consecutive NCAA men’s basketball championships. If anyone had earned the right to say, "My system works; I already know how to coach," it was John Wooden.
Instead, before what would become his final season, he again selected a subject, searched for better information, and looked for a way to improve his teaching.
For 20 of his 27 UCLA seasons, Coach Wooden devoted part of the off-season to an organized research project. Success did not convince him that learning was finished. It increased his responsibility to keep learning.
Coach Wooden said:
"It is what you learn after you know it all that counts."
A Resourceful Research SystemCoach Wooden selected one specific part of basketball—free-throw shooting, defensive rebounding, or another subject—and tried to learn everything useful about it. He began with a clear question, then read every book and article he could find and kept extensive notes.
But he knew valuable knowledge was not confined to print. He studied statistics to identify the best-performing teams. He contacted their coaches, explained his project, and sent open-ended questionnaires so they could describe their methods in their own words. He interviewed outstanding individual performers, including professional players, because they might reveal details that team statistics and coaching surveys missed.
He did not seize the first answer he liked. He assembled books, articles, statistics, questionnaires, interviews, and his own observations. He looked for principles that appeared repeatedly across independent sources, but he also examined the outliers. In his free-throw study, one coach devoted an extraordinary amount of practice time to free throws. Wooden did not blindly copy him or dismiss him. He studied the example, recognized both the value of additional practice and the point of diminishing returns, and considered how the useful part might fit his own system.
Finally, he distilled the best information, combined it with his experience and judgment, and incorporated what worked into his teaching. That is embracing innovation and demonstrating resourcefulness.
If Coach Wooden Had AIIf Coach Wooden were conducting that research today, he would not ask one AI platform a question, accept its first answer, and stop. His method suggests he would pose the question to several resources—ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google’s AI, and a traditional Google search—then compare the answers, investigate differences, trace citations to original sources, and apply his own judgment.
Coach Wooden warned:
"When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks."
Different platforms often provide different details and sources. That is not necessarily proof that one of them failed. The differences can expose missing facts, new possibilities, and better questions. No single platform may provide the complete package; the complete picture emerges by following useful leads and verifying the material.
Coach Wooden kept another observation among the ideas he valued:
"Wisdom, like the wind, blows on unused, except for those who know the art of sailing."
Today, information and technology surround us, but availability alone does not make us resourceful. AI should not replace human thought or responsibility. It should help us investigate more broadly, test our assumptions, and produce better work.
The lesson from the summer of 1974 is clear: never allow yesterday’s success to become today’s excuse for standing still. Embrace innovation. Encourage resourcefulness. Keep learning.
Reflect on this idea of resourcefullness,How are you doing? Write it down. Share it with someone on your team.
Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman
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Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) "The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts; and the art of life is to have as many of them as possible."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) "Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament."
Swift Things Are Beautiful Elizabeth Coatsworth (1893–1986)
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