Category Archives: Helpful Hints

May 14, 2012 · 10:13 am

Na Na Na Na

We do food on Friday here on the screed and I’m starting to think we ought to do golf on Mondays since now that it’s golf season I seem to find golf themes to start the week. I’m not sure if any of you watched The Players over the weekend but it contained a fascinating study in psychology. We talk a lot in golf about it being a mental game. Bob Jones, a golfing icon, summed it up perfectly:

MARANA, AZ - FEBRUARY 22: Kevin Na watches pl...

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Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course…the space between your ears.

There was no better example of this than Kevin Na during The Players.  It’s a great business lesson too.  For the uninitiated, The Players is often referred to as the fifth major.  Whether it is or not, it’s a big deal in the golf world and it draws a top field.  Kevin Na is a young (28) golfer who turned pro out of high school and won for the first time not long ago.  He was probably best known for carding a 16 on a hole last year (which he did with great grace and a smile, by the way).  What is unusual about him is that he struggles to start his golf swing.  There’s no way to describe it so I’ll show you:

It’s painful, and what’s even weirder is that once he did manage to swing he was playing well enough to be leading the tournament into the final round.  It’s a great example of how often our worst enemies lie within us, both on the golf course and in the office.  How many of us spend time negotiating against ourselves rather than the other party in a deal and deliver worse deal terms than we might otherwise have got?  How many of us operate without a plan or without regard to data that might prove useful?  How many of us let our fears of failure undermine our abilities to function, despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence (like Na’s scorecard) that says we’re doing well?

Part of our ability as businesspeople is our mental capacity, which includes the ability to shut off our brains when we need to and just let our other skills take over.  To a certain extent, we need to get outside of our heads in order to let our brains function.  I’ve had the experience of feeling as if I’m watching myself give a presentation to a few hundred people, one for which I’ve prepared diligently.  My head got out of my brain’s way.  Hopefully Na, who seems like a good guy, can use this experience to do the same.  How about you?

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May 9, 2012 · 8:34 am

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Diamonds

I was out with someone last evening whom I’m hoping will become a client. He’s got an intriguing product and with some help I think it could become a game-changer. In the course of getting to know one another a bit better in preparation for a team meeting today, he said something that resonated:

A rose-cut synthetic diamond created by Apollo...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The road to hell is paved with diamonds.

Now, like me, you might have thought it was paved with good intentions but it turns out that the more I thought about what he’d said, the more I agreed.  What he meant was that too many of us look at the shiny stuff that’s in front of us and lose track of what’s really important.  As with the “good intentions” paving job, we often start down a path thinking we’re doing what’s best for ourselves and our families but end up in a different place altogether.  Working for a jerk or in a job that you can’t stand may bring the diamonds, but think of what’s lost in the process.  Bringing in a financial partner who can provide investment but doesn’t share your vision or ethics can be poisonous. Hiring brilliant people for your team who can’t or won’t get along is terminal.

Don’t misunderstand.  I’m not saying that we as business people and capitalists don’t need to focus on making money.  That’s sort of the nature of any successful business over time.  The business doesn’t survive for very long if it neither makes money nor lays out a way to do so.  What I think my dinner companion meant was that we can’t let the shiny objects – the glitter of the diamonds – become a distraction from what we meant to do with our business or our careers in the first place.  The connections we have with people – managers, subordinates, clients, partners, customers – should be based on more than just a financial relationship if they’re going to endure the odd bumps in the interpersonal road that come along.

What do you think?

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May 7, 2012 · 10:09 am

2 Things I Learned This Weekend

To start the week I’d like to share a thought I had while doing what I do on the weekend. That’s right: more business lessons from golf. I played with a friend who also happens to be a golf pro and like most people with whom one plays, he shared some things he saw in my swing that I might do differently (meaning a hell of a lot better). Normally, one would reciprocate  – “hey, you’re moving your head, you looked up, etc.”  Unlike most people, I had very little to tell him about his swing but I did read all the greens for him – we all do what we can!

An aerial view of a golf course in Italy

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The two things he got me thinking about the most to help me play better were also two things I believe are critical to success in business:  balance and commitment.  The two are related.  Without a full commitment to the swing, you “hang back” – you never move your weight forward and through the ball so the shot goes well off line.  If you over commit – shift your weight too far forward, you’ll generally pull the ball and it goes just as far off line the other way.

The trick is to maintain balance while fully committing to the swing.  While, of course, is exactly the business point.  None of us can function well if were half-hearted about what we do.  We either need to commit or find something else to do or another company to do it for.  We need to make smart choices about projects, partners and people and then commit fully to our decisions.  That gives us the best chance to succeed.

That said, we can’t get so caught up in what we do that we lose a sense of who we are – we need to stay balanced.  Think about how many folks you know that struggle to do one or the other or both.

Does that make sense, even to you non-golfers?

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