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Angie Bachmann
Tony Dungy is a highly successful American football coach who turned the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts into two of the NFL’s winningest teams. His secret was to make his players practice a few key formations over and over again, until they were automatic. This taught them to act faster and more decisively than their opponents. Dungy’s strategy shows how good habits are the key to successful teams and that the Golden Rule of habit change is the best way to develop them. However, it also shows why people have to truly believe in themselves in order to build new habits. For years, Dungy’s teams repeatedly lost key playoff games because they overthought their strategies, instead of following the routines Dungy taught them. But after Dungy’s son committed suicide, his players started to believe more sincerely in his methods and coasting to victory in the playoffs.
Tony Dungy Quotes in The Power of Habit
The The Power of Habit quotes below are all either spoken by Tony Dungy or refer to Tony Dungy . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3 Quotes
His coaching strategy embodied an axiom, a Golden Rule of habit change that study after study has shown is among the most powerful tools for creating change. Dungy recognized that you can never truly extinguish bad habits.
Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.
That’s the rule: If you use the same cue, and provide the same reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit. Almost any behavior can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same.
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The legendary football coach Tony Dungy turned around two unsuccessful teams—the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Indianapolis Colts—by teaching his players to develop new habits. His approach was unprecedented and controversial in the high-stakes world of the NFL, but it was also remarkably successful. Duhigg argues that Dungy succeeded by applying the key principle he calls the Golden Rule of habit change: “keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.” For instance, Dungy didn’t change the way his players looked at the opposing team’s formation before a play (the cue). Instead, he changed the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem acc
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Tony Dungy Character Timeline in The Power of Habit
The timeline below shows where the character Tony Dungy appears in The Power of Habit. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3: The Golden Rule of Habit Change: Why Transformation Occurs
Tony Dungy, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ head coach, feels hopeful during the closing minutes of a game...
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...Diego, the Buccaneers get into formation. Rather than teaching them hundreds of different formations, coach Dungy only taught them a few—he wanted his players to act so automatically that they would...
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After becoming the Buccaneers’ head coach, Tony Dungy made the team repeatedly practice their most important moves until those moves were automatic. He...
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...straight. But they also fell apart in high-stakes playoff games—at key moments, the players abandoned Dungy’s method and went back to their old ways. Dungy got fired—and the next year, the...
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After leaving the Buccaneers, Tony Dungy moved to the Indianapolis Colts. He used the same techniques, and the Colts followed the...
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...they started overthinking things in the first half, and they fell far behind. At halftime, Dungy reminded them to stick to their habits. They did, and they pulled ahead. In the...
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Chapter 6: The Power of a Crisis: How Leaders Create Habits Through Accident and Design
...some people ultimate authority over others. To do this, they have to do what Tony Dungy and Howard Schultz did: take advantage of a crisis.
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