Jim Tressel’s Firing, and What it can Teach Health Care Leaders

Jim Tressel, the now former head coach of Ohio State, is the latest college coaching celebrity to lose his job because of an NCAA inquiry into rules infractions. In the aftermath of Coach Tressel’s Memorial Day decision to resign as Ohio State’s head football coach, many pundits are already offering what have become familiar refrains.

“The NCAA rules are arcane and unfair,” say some.

“Coach Tressel’s real failing was in trying to cover up the original offense,” say others.

There is truth to both points of view. The lasting lesson, however, that each of us can take from this latest tragedy is this: Jim Tressel’s biggest and most important mistake was in letting the interests of a small handful of his players become greater than the interests of his team.

In trying to shield his star quarterback, Terrell Pryor, and a handful of other players from the scrutiny of possible NCAA violations, Jim Tressel paid a huge price--one of the best head coaching jobs in the country. He also sacrificed the interests of his entire team which will now play for a new coach, in a new system, under what will certainly be NCAA-imposed sanctions.

More than anything else, Jim Tressel lost sight of the values embedded in the Ohio State fight song and sung by over 100,000 fans every home game Saturday. "Our honor defend, we will fight to the end, for OHIO!"

What’s true for football coaches is also true for health-care leaders. By their very definition, organizations exist to pursue goals that they cannot achieve by individuals acting alone. As in sports, rules aren’t meant to be broken, they’re meant to be followed and enforced. And in health care, more so than most other industries, rules are the norm.

How many health-care leaders do you know who’ve fallen because they didn’t live up to the compliance standards their organization must meet? Like the conversation now swirling around the Jim Tressel resignation, it’s not hard to envision a conversation that goes something like this: “Everybody knows those rules are a joke; who can live up to those standards anyway?”

As health-care managers face complying with regulations that are often burdensome and ineffective, it’s tempting to take the bait and excuse compliance transgressions. As leaders, however, excusing transgressions of any type is organizational suicide, and can never be tolerated.

I’m not suggesting that every compliance violation requires a firing. I’m recommending strong allegiance to compliance with the rules, no matter how arcane, and whatever the consequences.

Otherwise, your organization–your team–will begin to accept the big compromise that the players at Ohio State came to: That rules don’t matter; that different rules hold for different players. And that, my friend, is the beginning of the end for every organization that seeks greatness.