coachKidsSports.com

Managing is getting paid for home runs someone else hits. - Casey Stengel

You're a rec league coach.  When you volunteered you knew one kid who would be on your team — yours.  Otherwise your roster is a combination of kids whose parents knew to ask for you, some geographical coincidences and random placements.  In short, you're not Tex Schramm looking to build through the draft, you built your team by picking up a packet at league headquarters.  You have very little choice or input on who is on your team, so how can you follow the second principle of Good To Great, First Who, then Where.

Well, I have some ideas — after all it's my website and if I didn't have some ideas on the subject I'd be writing about something else…

Collins uses a bus analogy to describe running a company.  He says the great companies first decide who should be on the bus before deciding where the bus should go. 

They said, in essence, “Look, I don’t really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.”

Obviously, in a rec league environment you can't shape your roster, but you do have more control over your coaches and other helpers.  It's up to you to set the tone for the team. 

You may have an assistant assigned to you and he may have different ideas about how to run the team, but you are the coach and you set the culture.  Because if you don't, you're still setting the culture, and it won't be one you like.

You want people helping you who understand the course you are taking and will help you move forward.  You don't want people who are working at cross purposes with you.  Be sure your team, your coaches and - especially - the parents understand your core values.

Don't confuse this with a "my way or the highway" approach.  Core values are only the most basic needs for running a team.  My core values are:

1. Coaching is teaching
2. Players improve when they understand what they are doing

Take a few minutes to think about why you coach and what your core values are.  How can you apply those with your team and how can you convey them?