Coach Raymond Berry: A Super Manager

By Paul Solman

It is not easy being both a business commentator and a football fan. The insights of the former often seem at odds with the reality of the latter. But with the New England Patriots of '86, theory and practice have at last converged, and I am content.

As a 20-winter Patriot I am warmed by these weeks as only the loss-weary can appreciate. As a member of the New England tribe in an era when tribalism has lost its function, but not its primal grip, I find myself embracing strangers who last month would have thought I was impersonating Leo Buscaglia. Finally, I am happy because, like most Americans, I love successful underdogs.

But as someone who thinks a lot about American business I feel a special contentment this season: vindication. Vindication as a believer in a philosophy of business that might be called non-macho management.

It is pretty clear that management is the magic wand in this Cinderella story. The Patriots' success under coach Raymond Berry illustrates the business axiom that good management makes a difference. That's an important reminder at a time when entrepreneurs are often cast as gods and gurus of business and managers as the goats.

But football cognoscenti knew long ago that management mattered: the dynastic achievements of Vince Lombardi and Don Shula rammed that lesson down our throats. No, Berry's miracle suggests something a little less obvious: that Lombardi and Shula may be yesterday's news and yesterdays philosophy of management.

The legendary coaches of the past were autocrats, martinets, intimidators. Fear was a prime motivator, and it seemed to work. But more recent tyrants like Frank Kush of the Indianapolis (nee Baltimore) Colts, who once physically attacked a player of his for failing to perform adequately, have had little success with today's more independent players. And even the gruff Bears head coach Mike Ditka cannot discipline his star quarterback, Jim McMahon, and simply shrugs at his antics instead.

Another historically successful model is also on the wane: so-called "scientific management". In pro football it was exemplified by "America's team," the Dallas Cowboys, and their devotion to recruiting by the numbers (an ideal size, speed and IQ for every position) and molding a team of interchangeable parts, much as the great management theorist Frederick Taylor preached to American industry at the turn of the century, much as Henry Ford and others practiced soon after. (It must have been around this time that the Sullivan Patriots developed their business philosophy, "random management," which produced a wide variety of transient coaches, none of whom proved a match for the autocrats and scientists of the NFL.)

But it is now 1986 and the great traditions of American management are decaying around us. In their place has come an increasing recognition of the superiority of "new" management techniques more in tune with the times. Consensus, humility, attention to detail and quality, hard work, belief in the group and goals beyond the group - these constitute the new credo. They also constitute the management techniques of the world's most competitive economy: Japan.

And, miraculously, the Sullivan Patriots have happened upon a professional football coach, named Raymond Berry, who actually practices this form of management. Predictably, he is ridiculed at first… for his lack of authority, his lack of ego, his lack of emotion, his willingness to let players contribute plays. He tells his subordinates he loves them; sportswriters gag. He tells his players to pounce on bouncing footballs, because every detail counts, and you can control the bounces. The public guffaws. He has his players knead Silly Putty to strengthen their hands. The national media titters. And on Dec. 6, 1984, in the midst of a losing streak, Berry tells the Boston Globe that most football players simply don't understand the key to success: hard work.

"You watch gymnasts," says Berry. "I'll tell you how those girls master that beam -discipline." A football coach invoking female work habits? Is nothing sacred? Skeptics note that at the time of this queer pronouncement, Ray Berry's team isn't faring any better than his rhetoric.

And then, gradually, implausibly at first, incredibly by the first playoff victory, inevitably by the last, it turns out that Berry's attention to human needs and the minutiae of excellence, his devout belief in community and long-term human investment, is precisely what distinguishes his team from those it out-competes.

Notice that it is also what distinguishes the modern Japanese manager from his traditional American counterpart. At first blush, it looks as if the Japanese management mystique is threatening the NFL as well.

But Raymond Berry is not Japanese. He's as Dust Bowl as his hometown (Paris, Texas) and as corny as Kansas in August, when the preseason begins. Where the Japanese are orthodox, he's heretical; where they are often derivative, he's a pioneer. The courteousness of the typical Japanese is socially dictated; Ray Berry's is genuine, heartfelt. And while the Japanese fears nothing so much as exclusion from the group, losing his place in the pyramid, Ray Berry was a salesman the day before becoming the Patriots' head coach. And one suspects he could be one tomorrow, with no loss of face.

Ray Berry resembles the Americans in business history books, Americans who worked their tails off, Americans who were the envy of the industrialized world, Americans whom the Japanese learned from and emulated. The faith that sustained such fearsome enterprise was in work itself, and in the community. America's business success was founded on such faith. And Raymond Berry is a timely reminder of what competitive success is all about. He shares many of the best traits of the Japanese manager. But he's also as American as Gatorade.

Paul Solman is a lecturer at the Harvard Business School, business correspondent For Public Television's MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour and co-author of "Life and Death On the Corporate Battlefield."