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- It's A Never Ending Journey
Brian Cody is one of the most successful head coaches, across any major sport, anywhere in the world.
Cody won a record 11 All-Ireland hurling championships as manager of Kilkenny, compiling 43 major honours across more than two decades at the helm.
In the last number of years, Cody has become a popular keynote speaker as he begins to pass on the craft lessons from his journey. Cody’s talks centre around standards of excellence, and he impresses upon leaders that those standards must begin with them.
Here is a passage taken from one of his talks that goes deeper into his thinking, offering examples about how he set new levels of excellence in one of the world’s oldest sports:
When you talk about standards, there’s no point in talking about anything except standards of excellence. Absolute excellence! There’s no room for carelessness, no room for sloppiness, it’s about standards of excellence all the time. And to me, those standards have to be set from the top. You’ve got to go in there and set the tone, and set it seriously, and absolutely, and consistently the whole way.
So, what do you do? You don’t pluck something out of the sky and say, “Lads, I have a fantastic idea”. That’s gimmicky, and I don’t like gimmicks. Basically, you roll up your sleeves and you get down to work. Things like timekeeping: if we’re training at 7 o’clock, I see it as my duty to be there, organized, and ready to roll at 6 'o’clock. And that was from day one.
That sends out a message. It sends out a message to everybody that you’re setting a decent standard. When I started, it wasn’t like that. Lads were rolling in at quarter to seven, throwing on a pair of boots to be out on the field at 7:03pm. We did away with that, and we didn’t have to read a riot act. We didn’t have to do it, because word spreads very, very quickly. You set the tone, and word filters down.
The players bought into it very quickly. Why? Because everybody wants to be part of a setup that allows them to be the best they can be.
But I am certain you can never, ever, ever be the best you can be. You should never even consider that you’ve reached the ultimate of where you can go. Essentially, you’re putting limits on yourself. You should put no limits on where you can go. It’s a journey: I’m trying to be the best I can be knowing that I’ll never get there. It’s a never ending journey, which is great!