From Record Losses to Historic Wins

The Business Lesson Behind Indiana’s Historic Turnaround

Unless you have been hiding behind a rock for the past few weeks you have probably been hearing the name Curt Cignetti. Even if you are not a College Football fan what he has been doing at Indiana University transcends athletics.

Just two seasons ago, the Indiana Hoosiers were a punchline in college football circles. Before 2023, Indiana held an infamous distinction: the most losses in college football history. Expectations were low. Culture was fractured. Confidence was brittle.

Then Curt Cignetti arrived.

Fast forward to the 2024–2025 seasons and Indiana did the unthinkable:

• Reached the National Championship game

• Won the Big Ten

• Set multiple program records

• Became a model for disciplined, resilient execution

This wasn’t a miracle. It was a system.

The Real Reason Indiana is Winning

Cignetti didn’t sell hope. He installed standards.

Influenced heavily by the perennial winner Alabama Crimson Tide, Cignetti built Indiana around one unshakable belief:

Winning is not the goal. Winning is the byproduct.

The real focus? Process.

1. The Process Beats the Outcome

Cignetti doesn’t coach wins. He coaches behaviors.
High standards. Clear expectations. Relentless accountability.

The scoreboard takes care of itself when the process is executed every single day.

Business parallel:
Most struggling companies obsess over revenue targets, growth goals, or “big wins.” Meanwhile, the underlying processes—decision-making, accountability, communication are broken. Growth doesn’t fail because of ambition. It fails because of inconsistency.

2. “Stacking Good Days”

Cignetti teaches his players that success comes from disciplined daily choices—what he calls stacking good days. This mirrors the philosophy popularized in Atomic Habits: small improvements, compounded relentlessly.

No heroics. No shortcuts.

Business parallel:
Turnarounds don’t come from one big initiative. They come from installing repeatable habits:

• Weekly leadership rhythms

• Clear ownership of decisions

• Standardized processes instead of tribal knowledge

Do this long enough, and momentum becomes inevitable.

3. Mental Toughness & Compartmentalization

Cignetti demands mental resilience. Wins don’t inflate egos. Losses don’t derail focus. The only thing that matters is the next play.

Business parallel:
Owners who can’t compartmentalize get stuck. A bad week bleeds into bad decisions. One miss creates hesitation. Strong businesses are built by leaders who stay disciplined regardless of yesterday’s result.

4. “Average Is the Enemy”

Cignetti is blunt:

“Normal equals average. Average is okay—except in my business.”

Indiana didn’t rise by doing more. They rose by refusing to tolerate mediocrity.

Business parallel:
I was just talking to a client about this last week. She reminded me of the famous quote "Good is the enemy of great," popularized by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, meaning that settling for "good enough" prevents people or organizations from achieving true excellence, as comfort with adequacy stifles the push for greatness. Average meetings. Average accountability. Average execution. That’s how good companies plateau and eventually decline.

The Takeaway for Business Owners

If Indiana can go from worst in history to national contender in two seasons, the lesson is clear:

Transformation is not about motivation. It’s about structure.

At Cornucopia Business Consulting, this is exactly what I give owners. I install a disciplined operating system that replaces chaos with clarity, inconsistency with accountability, and effort with execution.

If your business feels stuck, plateaued, or overly dependent on you to function, it’s not a talent problem. It’s a system problem.

And systems can be rebuilt.

If you’re ready to engineer your own turnaround—let’s talk.