John Wooden's Pyramid Still Standing

At the age of 96, living in Encino, California and making 20 to 30 speeches a year, former UCLA coach John Wooden still keeps in touch with more players than he could name in one breath, including Bill Walton, Andy Hill, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Keith Erickson, Keith Wilkes, Mike Warren, Kenny Washington and John Vallely. And those are just the ones he has breakfast with on a regular basis. But that only seems natural for a leader whose "Pyramid of Success" includes friendship, loyalty and team spirit as three of its 15 blocks.

Wooden has been called the greatest college coach in history thanks to a long list of accomplishments, including a record 10 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship titles. But for him, it's not about the number of wins and losses: It's about how the game is played.

But, as his players have found out, the Pyramid of Success isn't just applicable to basketball--it's also relevant to the business world, marriage and even health struggles. In his college days, Vallely says he half-listened to the teachings of the pyramid, but has come to value them. "As I look back now, I see it as a parable for life. In order to have a good business, you must know the basics, you must have a certain set of fundamentals that you believe in," he says.

In addition to helping him in the business world, Vallely says the pyramid helped his family cope with losing his daughter, Erin, to cancer at age 12 in 1988. "This whole idea of the Pyramid of Success doesn't mean that you're always going to win. With my daughter, we had a sense of peace that we'd given it everything that we could give. But in that part of our life adventure, we had run up against an opponent we couldn't defeat," Vallely says.

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