The Ultimate Nick Saban Speech: Vision, Process, and Discipline

Vision, process, and discipline.

Those are the three things Coach Saban said every great leader and team needs to be successful.

Vision, process, and discipline.

Greatness starts with having a great vision for what you want to do and accomplish. The process is what you do to make your dreams a reality and how you do it.

The process is the work.

The most important part is having the discipline to keep showing up and do what you know you need to, no matter how you feel. This is where most people fail. The hard part is staying disciplined and sticking to the process.

Vision, process, discipline.

The hard part is staying disciplined and sticking to the process. Coach Saban says it is not human nature to be great, human nature is just to survive. Being great games consistency and performance, but as soon as we get a little success, we want to breathe and take a break.

Too often we let outside forces distract us or knock us off track:

• It’s too hard
• We get bored
• We don’t feel like it
• We get distracted
• We are afraid of failing
• We can overcome failure
• You have to be relentless if you want to be great.

One of my favorite stories Coach Saban told was about two boxers and the power of being relentless. One of the fighters was a grinder like Rocky - not very talented or skilled but had a lot of heart. The other fighter was talented and skilled but didn’t train as hard and wasn’t as tough. The talented fighter started strong, but because he didn’t train, he couldn’t sustain, and the less talented fighter ended up beating him. After the fight, the less talented fighter said he was getting beaten so badly and hit so hard that if he was hit one more time in his ribs, he was going to quit. But he never got hit again.

If you’re a relentless competitor, you won’t quit. You never know what the other person is thinking. Keep playing the next play, stay with what you need to do to be all you need to be, and be relentless.

How Do We Get People to Do This?

Coach Saban says you have to get to know the people lead and what their goals are, then tie their behaviors to their goals. Leadership and coaching are getting people to do things they don’t want to do so they can achieve the things they want.

Coach Saban says he defines his job as a leader as to provide the leadership and develop the relationship to help people take advantage of their opportunities and help them establish the discipline they need to do it. It’s about helping somebody else or affecting somebody else for their benefit.

And he says it starts with building strong relationships because they have to know you care. It’s hard to affect people if they don’t know you care.

Vision, process, and discipline.

Our jobs as leaders and coaches are to help create a strong enough vision for themselves and the team so they are motivated to act, create a process that will help them be successful, and then hold them accountable to the discipline that it takes to stick to the plan and process.

Watch the video to hear and learn more: The Ultimate Nick Saban Speech