The Super Bowl, Everest, and Decision Making Under Pressure

In the wake of last week’s jaw-dropping Super Bowl finish, for which Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll is still being criticized for a critical play call that cost Seattle a probable victory, a few thoughts on decision-making under pressure–relevant to any adventurer, entrepreneur or, yes, even business leader.

For anyone who didn’t watch the Super Bowl (really, Super Bowl Sunday is a great time to do just about anything else, including going to Disneyland, skiing, or even shopping at Home Depot, because the crowds are all off watching the game) … a quick summary:

The Seattle Seahawks were down by four points with 26 seconds to go in the game, with only one time out left. But they’d pushed their way (by luck as much by brawn) to the New England Patriots’ one-yard line. It was second down, and they needed a touchdown to win. Now, one of Seattle’s star players is a guy named Marshawn Lynch, so famous for his ability to push forward through defensive lines that he has the nickname “Beast Mode.” So most of those watching expected Seattle to give the ball to Lynch and have him try to beast his way into the end zone.

But an important side note for anyone reading this who doesn’t follow football at all: in a running play, the game clock does not stop, even after the play is whistled dead. In a pass play, if the pass is incomplete, the clock stops, and only starts again on the next snap of the ball. So if Lynch had run the ball and NOT gotten into the end zone, 8-10 seconds could have elapsed just in the play itself, let alone setting up for the next play. So to stop the clock and keep from running out of time, Seattle would have had to use its last time out. With only 15 seconds and no time outs left, Seattle might have had only one more chance to score.

If, however, Seattle chose to throw a pass on that second down, and the pass was incomplete, the clock would stop. They’d then have two more downs to use, (with a time out left to stop the clock between them), so they’d get three chances at the end zone, instead of possibly only two. Also playing into that equation is the fact that if you do exactly what an opponent expects you to do, your chances of succeeding at that plan, even with a beast in your line-up, go down. All of that was going undoubtedly going through the minds of Pete Carroll and his offensive coordinator, Darrell Bevell, in those final seconds. They wanted to use all the time and plays available to them. They wanted New England to have no time left on the clock to come back with. And they wanted to score.

Seattle’s fateful decision was to go with a pass on second down, and have Lynch run it on third or fourth down, if necessary. Unfortunately, the pass was intercepted at the goal line by New England cornerback Malcolm Butler, giving the Patriots the victory and setting up Carroll, Bevell, and quarterback Russell Wilson for a torrent of hindsight criticism.

Hindsight is always 20-20, of course. Listening to the NFL real-time audio recording of those final moments, you hear Carroll calling out, “They’re going goal line! They’re going goal line!” as he recognizes the Patriots’ run-stop defensive formation. On the other side of the field, you hear the Patriots’ defensive coaches scrambling to adjust to Carroll, screaming to the players, “3 corners! 3 corners!” “Malcolm, GO!” as they send in Butler (their third cornerback) as a last-minute substitution. And even watching the replays of that fateful interception, it’s far from a given that Butler is going to end up with the ball. He actually appears to arrive at the reception point a nanosecond behind the Seattle receiver, but manages to hit the receiver hard enough to get in front of him and wrestle the ball away.

Football coaches can (and no doubt will) ruminate for years to come on the lessons of that last play call in terms of football. But what about the rest of us? One of the challenges of charting your own course, whether it’s in a physical exploit or in an entrepreneurial, leadership, or personal adventure, is figuring out how to make good decisions, since there isn’t a nice, neat policy or procedure to follow. So it’s instructive to pay attention to how other leaders and adventurers solve their decision-making equations.

On my flight back to Washington D.C. last week, I sat next to a man who knew a thing or two about adventure and leadership, having been a Navy pilot and three-star admiral. He also knew David Breashears, the mountain-climbing IMAX filmmaker who’d sacrificed his own film effort on Everest, in 1996, to help try to rescue the climbers lost in the disaster there (later chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air). My seatmate said that at one point, he’d brought Breashears in to speak to his team on decision making under pressure. So what did Breashears have to say on the subject?

“He said that the key was to come up with parameters and decision points ahead of time, before you’re under that pressure,” my seatmate said, “and then to make sure the whole team bought into those hard-stop choice points, so everyone would stick with the plan in the heat of the moment.”

It’s such a simple and obvious point, and yet, it needs restating because it’s so hard to put into practice. It’s easy, when you think you can see the goal line just ahead, to dismiss whatever game plan or hard and fast “turnaround” points you’d started with, and just push ahead. It’s what doomed the climbers on Everest in 1996–they ignored their supposed “hard stop” turnaround point of 2 pm, because they were close to the summit and, perhaps more importantly, they wanted that summit so badly. Too badly. Pilots call it “get-home-itis.”

It makes sense, with any uncharted venture, to come up with “if/then” decision points to keep you from being emotionally drawn into untenable situations. While flying my own plane past Pensacola, Florida one time, I was sent 3 miles offshore by air traffic controllers. But the conditions over the water were worse than over land, and I kept having to descend to stay out of the clouds. I felt my heartbeat increasing and my muscles getting tense. This could end badly. So I decided that 500 feet above sea level and a clear view of the shore were my two “turnaround” decision points. If I couldn’t maintain at least 500 feet clear of clouds, or lost clear sight of the shoreline, I was going to declare an emergency and just head for Pensacola, and the controllers could sort it out with me on the ground. Not only was sticking to that plan going to keep me alive, it kept me calm enough to keep performing well, because I knew I had a plan to keep disaster at bay. So my decisions within those parameters were clearer and better, as well.

An entrepreneur might make a plan to invest in a business idea, but only with “x” amount of money, so he or she doesn’t end up unable to pay the mortgage. Parents have to decide constantly “at what point is this behavior unacceptable?” Decision points are important to make, and to keep.

Of course, not all decisions are alike. It’s one thing to have a hard-stop parameter when the opponent is nature, or a limited amount of funds, or even personal limits or boundaries. But Mt. Everest isn’t playing chess, actively scheming against climbers, trying to outwit them. Bill Belichick (coach of the Patriots) and Pete Carroll are. Which is to say, tightly competitive situations add a layer of extra difficulty, uncertainty, and nuance to the decision-making process. It’s not just “what’s my game plan,” but “what’s my opponent’s game plan?” So adjustments to an original strategy, to respond to observed weaknesses in, or unexpected attacks by, your opponent, can sometimes be important.

And yet, Breshears’ point still applies. Abandoning the decisions and game plan conceived in the clear light of day, in the heat of a pressured moment, is more likely to get you in trouble than not, whether you’re an adventurer, an explorer, an entrepreneur, a parent, or a football coach.

Which brings us back to Pete Carroll. As an interesting post-game piece in The New York Times pointed out, the reason Carroll–and his running back Lynch–had been so effective this year was that opponents were never sure when he was going to run the ball. Carroll’s strategy was to mix up plays so the opposition couldn’t predict what was coming next. So in those last few plays of the game, one could argue that Carroll did what Breshears recommends: stuck with his proven, well-thought-out strategy of mixing up plays to surprise the opponent.

But surely Carroll should have adjusted to the circumstances? Second and goal from the one yard line? Perhaps. But then again, maybe he did. Clearly, Carroll saw New England gearing up for a goal-line stand against the run (strength), at the same time as they put in Butler–an undrafted rookie cornerback –to guard against a pass (weakness). If Seattle’s play had worked, everyone would be saying what a genius Carroll was, to get around the Patriots’ strong suit by surprising them in a weak spot.

So maybe the real lesson here–which I’m sure David Breashears would agree with–is that the very nature of adventure involves an element of unpredictability. Good decision-making is critical, because it’s a way of stacking the odds in your favor. But sometimes, even good decisions don’t work out. Every strategy has risks to it. That’s why adventure, and leadership, are hard. And perhaps why the two people not second-guessing that last play call are the two people who actually had to make those calls in split-second real-time: Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick.