Inside a Torrance collection agency, workers sit at cubicles and call people who are behind on their debts. On the wall is a 10-foot diagram of former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden's Pyramid of Success.
At McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma, Wash., 25 men and women in uniform spend three days in a seminar called the John R. Wooden Course, discussing how his wisdom could help in their work protecting the air security of the Western United States.
And in Irvine, a ballroom full of businessmen and women pay $225 each to hear Wooden talk about managing people and balancing family and work in a time-stressed society.
Wooden turns 94 today, and this season will mark 30 years since he retired as UCLA coach with a record 10th NCAA championship in 1975. Yet Wooden's adages and his Pyramid of Success -- a diagram of core values that once struck former Bruin player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as "corny" -- have surfaced in more books, seminars and workplaces than ever in the last few years as admirers seek to cement a legacy that might be as much about wisdom as winning.
After a period in American business embodied by the Michael Douglas "Greed is good" speech in the 1987 movie "Wall Street," and the Enron bankruptcy and accounting scandals of recent years, Wooden's philosophies are in vogue -- even among some too young to know who he is.
"It's classic wisdom. It's just come into its own," said Stephen R. Covey, the bestselling author of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" whose book "The 8th Habit" will be released in November with a blurb from Wooden inside. "All these scandals in business I think have highlighted the need for going back to the fundamentals. That's what he represents."
Wooden worked on the pyramid for 14 years and discussed it with his UCLA teams before each season. It includes 15 large blocks arranged in rows, starting with five along the bottom, each illustrating the qualities that Wooden believes help people reach their potential -- his definition of success.
With such building blocks as industriousness, team spirit and self-control, it reflects a values system based on cooperation and personal responsibility, an old-fashioned worldview that apparently still resonates in the 21st century.
Since 2002, almost 4,000 workers at such companies as Nissan, Southern California Edison and Pacific Dental Services have participated in the John R. Wooden Course, a seminar created by Orange County consultant Lynn Guerin, a veteran of the performance-improvement industry, in partnership with Wooden and his family.
