Production over potential

What Indiana University's record-breaking season teaches us about cultivating unexpected excellence.

Trevor Ruszkowski/Imagn Images/Reuters

It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.

Curt Cignetti

The Indiana University football team held the record for the most all-time losses to start this season.

Tomorrow, they are heavily favored to win the National Championship.

Indiana has gone from arguably the worst college football team in the country to making history because of one man: Curt Cignetti.

Cignetti is Indiana’s head coach. This is only his second year coaching Indiana, but he’s left a healthy resumé of successes in his decades-long career.

Throughout his time as a wide receivers coach, recruiting coordinator, assistant coach, and eventually as a head coach, Cignetti has always produced incredible results, but he’s never played by the rules.

Ignoring speculation

Indiana’s roster only has 4 top-ranked recruits compared to oppenents which often have more than 50, and yet, they are still winning by margins of 30 points or more.

Cignetti doesn’t care about vanity metrics or a player’s potential; he only cares about results.

Rather than focusing on the standard ranking system and metrics like 40-yard dash times, which project players’ potential, Cignetti focuses on on-field production.

He doesn’t gamble on the highest-ranked recruits coming out of high school. Instead, he finds unranked players who have quietly produced incredible results at smaller schools from the transfer portal. These players have more than potential, they have years of experience playing at a high-level and a proven track record of concrete results.

In addition to heavily weighing on-field performance, Cignetti focuses on unique characteristics for the players he recruits. Most coaches obsess over a player’s height, weight, and speed, but Cignetti cares more about ankle, knee, and hip flexibility. This ensures players can actually use their speed and size effectively.

Finally, he considers players’ character and conduct off the field. He is not willing to recruit an incredible player if they will cause problems in the locker room or elsewhere.

Cignetti’s approach is producing incredible results in the realm of college football, but it also provides us with a framework to create asymmetric results in other areas of our lives.

Obsess over outcomes

We will gain access to better opportunities and accomplish more in the long run if we focus on “production” instead of predictors of “potential”.

When we’re choosing between paths in our lives, we should always lean towards the opportunities that give us the best chance to produce meaningful and measurable outcomes.

It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond.

An all-star quarterback on a DII football team will have far more opportunity produce concrete results than a backup at a big-name DI program. A talented professional will make a huge impact at a small firm, but might not get a chance to contribute meaningfully at a large multinational firm.

Signals like rankings, prestige of a school or firm, and credentials or degrees are leading indicators that tell us we have the potential to create meaningful outcomes. Producing real work in the real world, even if it’s in a smaller environment, are lagging indicators that undeniably prove we have already created the outcomes that matter most.

Name brands and expensive degrees can open doors, but they don’t guarantee we can do the work. Rankings and titles sound impressive, but when the stakes are real, no one cares what our potential is; they care about what we’ve created, what problems we’ve solved, and what outcomes we’ve been responsible for.

Outcomes are the only thing that matter.

Chasing signals and status can open doors, but we have to produce measurable results to walk through them. Talking the talk doesn’t matter if we can’t walk the walk.

To craft the life we want and become a bit better each day, we can’t chase status or signals of potential. Instead, we must focus ruthlessly on developing valuable skills and using them to create an undeniable track record of results.

Prompts

1. What is one area of your life in which you’ve produced undeniable results?

2. Where do you see yourself falling into the trap of over-indexing on potential instead of production?

3. What is one skillset you can focus on in the next 6 months to create outcomes that will unlock new opportunities?

Deep Dive

• So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

  • Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

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Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.

Kevin