Dabo's Master Plan

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Almost two years ago Tigerillustrated.com sat down with several key members of Clemson's football program to get a behind-the-scenes look at head football coach Dabo Swinney.

By request, Tigerillustrated.com is re-releasing these LENGTHY, one-on-one interviews as part of our College Football Playoff week content lineup.

We would also like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! -- Owner-Publisher, Cris Ard

PART 1: Senior writer Larry Williams sits down with Director of recruiting and external affairs Thad Turnipseed, who has worked for both Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban.

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The great leaders I’ve been around – and I haven’t been around many – have all been highly intelligent, first of all. To have the most successful football program in the country and have it run at a high level, you’ve got to be highly intelligent. And Dabo is as smart as anybody I’ve ever been around. We shared an office at Alabama for the two years he was pursuing his MBA while he was a graduate assistant for the football program, so I got to see some of this early and first-hand.

I think great leaders are feared, but also respected. What I learned with Dabo is you can fear somebody but also love them so much because they’re so good to you. The world associates fear with “I’m going to fire you. Do your dang job.” We all think fear is getting yelled at, and Dabo can do that but it’s rare. Yet you fear him because you don’t want to let him down. Because he’s so good to you. You know there is nowhere else better to work.

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The beautiful thing about Dabo is it’s not what we relate fear to. Now I know a lot of nice people that aren’t successful leaders. Because there’s no fear.

He is passionate about serving the employee. And he says it best: It’s not customer service; it’s employee service. I don’t know where he learned that, but he’s passionate about taking care of us, whether it’s financially, mentally, spiritually, health – whatever it is, it’s the best quality of life you can possibly have in any organization. It just doesn’t get any better than here.

You hear the Google stories. It just doesn’t get any better than working in the Allen Reeves Football Complex. It doesn’t. But because of that, we’re happy and therefore we pour into our players differently. And therefore if we’re happy, our players are happy. And if our players are happy, our recruits are happy because the players are our best recruiters. And if our recruits are happy, then we’re winning and our fans are happy. A lot of people try to make things so complicated, but it’s really that simple.

Another big part of his leadership, and a part of all great leaders, is having a detailed plan. And you can’t do that unless you’re highly intelligent. Ninety-five percent of every year, we know exactly what we’re going to do every day of the year. A small part of it changes every year, but we know the first Monday of June we’re going to be in camp. We know when our vacation days are. We know everything. He’s got a master calendar from Day One that’s a year ahead. And rarely, rarely, does that change. So that creates quality of life for your families, your planning. It allows you to be more organized, and therefore you do have some more time off.

The great leaders I’ve been around also have a belief in their plan and in themselves that they don’t waver from. “Best is the Standard” catches a lot of things we believe in, but he is passionate about that. It’s easy to say, but is the message just relentless? You know how Nick talks about “The Process” relentlessly? Dabo talks about Best is the Standard relentlessly. And a lot of the same things go into both of those. And they both believe in them so much that they’re not going to waver from it.

In July at the All-In Meetings is when Dabo gives us the calendar for the rest of the year, the entire year. It’s called the All-In Book. And don’t misunderstand: Just about everybody out there does the same thing, all over the country. In one form or another, everybody has an All-In Book. But the difference is, who can execute the All-In Book? Who has the intelligence to remember what’s in the All-In Book? It’s five inches thick. There’s a ton of information. Every single coach I know has an All-In Book. Every GA here is making their own All-In Book. They all have them for their job interviews. It impresses the heck out of an AD. But very few people can execute an All-In Book.

Everybody has their own management styles, and there are pluses and minuses to each one. Whether at the top or with the custodial staff, everyone has different styles. Me, for instance, I’m hands off with our recruiting room. I draw a circle and tell Jordan Sorrells, our coordinator of recruiting communications, and his group:

Here’s our circle. Here’s our plan. You make that circle better, but if you ever want to go outside that circle, I need to know about it and I want input. But I don’t micromanage day to day at all. It’s Jordan’s show. But Jordan knows: Don’t be changing the channel unless a lot of people have eyes on it. That’s a good way of describing Dabo’s style. Director of football operations Mike Dooley, for instance, is the biggest micromanager but it works for him because his job is so detail-oriented and he is so detailed at it.

The point here is, just because you don’t micromanage doesn’t mean you don’t have a detailed plan. Dabo gives all of us a long rope, everybody. He tells the assistant coaches: You’re doing the recruiting in your area. You’re bringing the people to the table. You’re bringing them into this organization. But these are the parameters I’m looking for: High character, high grades. Then are they good at what they do? So he sets that parameter with the coaches, and every time we’re in a recruiting meeting that’s what he brings up.

Dabo rarely, rarely, talks about a particular recruit. He trusts his people. From my department in performing background checks, to our coaches who know them and talk to them and bring them into this building, he trusts others to pick the right ones. So before they even get here, he knows they’re going to be good people. And then once they’re here, he’s the best deal-closer in college football. Period. It’s not even close. So that’s the way he manages: He’s setting the framework and drawing that circle. You’re making that circle the best it can be. He’s going to be open to doing something different as long as you run it by him. That’s how he manages.

Dabo writes everything down, takes notes constantly, keeps files on everything. And he’s relentlessly sharing with us his observations from those notes. It becomes sort of a joke behind the scenes – and this is a good thing – that we know 90 percent of what he’s going to say before he says it. That’s when you know you’re successful, when you can predict the messages with that kind of frequency. Because he doesn’t waver from it. He believes in that process. It’s the same thing year-in and year-out, every time. But part of being a great leader is being that patient, and knowing you’ve got to repeat something 12 times a year to your staff.

One example is something he always says in recruiting meetings: “We’re not going to cross the line in anything we do.” We all kind of roll our eyes, because we know we have great people and we know we don’t cross the line. It’s not in our culture or our mindset that we’re going to go near breaking a rule in recruiting. Yet Dabo still goes over all these recruiting rules every year, three or four times a year.

If you’re not highly intelligent and you don’t believe in your process, you just don’t remember to do it. A lot of us have great ideas, but we just don’t execute it all the way through. Whether it’s because of ADD or lack of focus or whatever, we go on with our lives and then we forget what we were supposed to be doing at a certain time of year. Dabo, on the other hand, is always on point in reminding us and going over his beliefs and our process, which creates our culture.

And I think culture is what separates us and leads us, not process. The best is the standard because of our culture. Now do you have process? Does everybody have processes? Absolutely. Does everybody have culture? Absolutely -- don’t know what kind of culture it is, but everybody has it. But what leads you? What leads us is culture. The key is being relentless in protecting that culture. And that’s what Dabo is.

Dabo and Nick are a lot more similar than dissimilar. There’s no question. One is process-oriented, and one is culture-driven. But both have a lot of each. No great organization has one without the other. They’re both equally passionate about a process, and they’re both equally passionate about a culture. Alabama’s culture is a lot different from Clemson’s, but the way Nick leads it, the way he runs his people, the way he’s constantly reminding people about his process, Dabo does the same thing. It’s just in a different way. But the passion of the two about their processes and what they believe in is the same. They’re equally intelligent and passionate about what they do and how they do it, and relentless about repeating what they expect.

Tigerillustrated.com thanks Turnipseed for sharing his time and insight. We will release part two of this lengthy series on Christmas Eve.

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