Musings at Altitude

The Coach of the Patriots spent the last two days answering questions about his decision to go for it on 4th and 2 rather than punt.  He said quite bluntly, “It gave us the best chance to win.”  And even though they came up short and thus gave the Colts the short field to work with which eventually allowed them to win the game, he reiterated, “It gave us the best chance to win.”

If he truly believed that, it’s hard to fault him.  If he fully believed that kicking the ball back to the Colts and allowing their offense to get back on the field was a guaranteed touchdown, then he made the right choice.  If he believed at that point in the game that his offense gave him the absolute best chance to win, then he made the right choice.

As I was listening to the constant replay of Coach B’s comments, I thought of two things:

(1) In Top Gun after one of the training missions, Maverick was grilled about a maneuver he made with a bogey on his tail; amazingly, the maneuver worked, and the bogey was “destroyed; during the debriefing he was grilled for taking such a risky chance when their were safer options for him and his airplane, at one point, the analyst asked him why he didn’t think about it and do something different; Maverick replied, “if you think, you die”; there was no guarantee that his decision to pull that particular maneuver would work, but it did, and he got the kill

(2) In Golf, Tiger Woods is undeniably the greatest golfer in the world today…maybe ever; if his situation was similar to Coach B’s, and he was on the 16th hole of a tournament, had a 3 shot lead just 3 holes before and now it was down just 1 shot, had his short irons letting him down for the entire back 9 thus far even though he was killing it with his driver off the tee, and because of all that, he teed up on this 370 yard hole with his driver to try and drive the green and take the short irons out of play, what would have been the reaction to that?  If he made it, everyone would say, “That’s Tiger”!  If he missed, everyone would be grilling him about why he didn’t take the safer more defensive route and lay up.  I wonder if Tiger would answer, “The driver gave me the best chance to win.”

Making the decision that gives you the best chance to win doesn’t always give you the win…in sports or in business.  Making the decision that gives you the best chance to win and executing flawlessly gives you the absolute best chance to win, but still doesn’t guarantee you the win.  Making the decision that gives you the best chance to win, executing the plan then flawlessly, and having the opposing force (or the market in business) do exactly what you expect them to do and thus allow you to achieve success does indeed then guarantee you the win.

Since hope is certainly not a strategy, leaders must make informed decisions.

History says Coach B is arguably the most prepared and informed coach, and he says, “It gave us the best chance to win.”

I think I yield to the battlefield commander at that particular point in the battle.  If that was my team or those were my forces, I’d want to make the decision that gave my team or my force the best chance to win.

It certainly gave us something to analyze and debate for quite a long time!