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I know I wrote about the win by Bill Murray and D.A. Points yesterday and I apologize for more on the topic today. Sometimes, it seems, one screed on an even isn’t enough to cover the random thoughts going on in my brain and so I promise this will be the last golf blog (at least for this week).
As you might imagine, I follow a number of golf blogs and get golf headlines via RSS. What got me going was the widely circulated AP story on the tournament and it prompted a business (and life) thought I’d like to share.
This is the lede from the AP story:
The final day at Pebble Beach turned out to be a real Cinderella story. D.A. Points captured his first PGA Tour victory and dragged along his amateur partner, Bill Murray of “Caddyshack’’ fame, to the pro-am title.
Let me explain why this got me going. Mr. Points won the tournament shooting 15 under par. The team (the net of Points’ and Murray’s scores) was 35 under par. That means that Bill contributed 20 strokes over and above his handicap to the team, or 5 more than did his professional partner. Who “dragged” whom?
Other than to correct the record, why bring this up? Because the fact is the team won and it really doesn’t matter who gets the credit. This happens all the time in business – a big sale, a great result on a project, etc. – and it’s always interesting to see who pops to claim credit and to whom “they” give it. More often than not, some higher up who was involved only to the extent his staff made it happen gets the pat on the back. The better (and smarter) executives place the credit with the right folks. In the event of a negative outcome, they’re also the ones who should take the blame and provide a buffer to their folks (while also taking corrective action after a quiet post-mortem). Unfortunately, this is usually reversed. Blame can’t be handed off quickly enough and credit is jumped on with both feet.
We’ve all heard President Kennedy‘s quote that “victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan.” The reality is that it’s pretty easy to see where success lies and who made it happen. In the case of the golf, the numbers show that it was a great partnership and those same numbers don’t show the mental lift each one gave the other over four days. That’s why the “dragged” set me off, and it also got me thinking about all those times credit (and blame) were misplaced by people not really paying attention.
Anything to add?
Consult Keith 