Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

April 3, 2013 · 8:49 am

Things Change, Even In The Gym

Let’s start with a truism:  things change.  Sometimes those changes are about how we behave; sometimes those changes are about how others react to behavior we’ve been manifesting all along.  Either way, if we’re not cognizant about the change and fail to act accordingly, trouble generally follows.  Let me explain why this is on my mind this morning.

You might have seen the video of the Rutgers basketball coach interacting with his team at practice.  He’s yelling at the kids as well as grabbing them, shoving them to move them around the court, and even throwing basketballs at them.  Was I shocked by this?  Not in the least, since I played organized sports growing up, basketball among them.  I had a third base coach in baseball literally kick me down the baseline in the heat of a game.  I had a lacrosse coach who was bigger than many of us and would engage us in hitting drills at full speed.  The basketball coaches had a kid stand next to a wall with his hands up for a long time to teach him, well, to keep his hands up, and ran us until some kids threw up.  I’ve got stories from other sports as well, and I don’t think I ever had a coach in any sport on any team who didn’t spend a fair amount of time yelling at us.

Did I feel abused?  No.  Did any of the other guys?  No.  Did the parents who might come by the beginning or end of practice go to the school to have the coach fired? Not to my knowledge.  But things change.  That’s not a knock on where athletes and their parents are today.  It’s a recognition that as a society we don’t expect what might seem to be  physical or verbal abuse from adults we put in charge of our young people.  If you’re a coach and you don’t understand that change, you end up on the news as an example of a bad apple.

The same applies to your business.  Calling your female assistant “honey” gets you fired.  When I started in business it got you coffee.  There are many examples but you get the point.  Many of us were spanked as kids – do that now and you might go to jail.  Things change, and you need to change with them.

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April 2, 2013 · 10:27 am

Coach Knight

We’re down to The Final Four (Go Blue!) and so what better place than the Golf Channel to have a chat with a great college coach?  That’s exactly what aired last evening as part of Feherty, one of my not so guilty pleasures.  David Feherty interviewed Bob Knight, best known as the coach of Indiana University.   He’s the sort of coach that many people love to hate – they respect his accomplishments but can’t understand the screaming, chair-throwing, and general misbehaving that he did.  The interview helped me to understand it – and him – a lot better.

Bobby Knight (en), coach of the Texas Tech Red...

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Early on in the show, Coach Knight said something that really resonated with me as a businessperson and it’s our topic today.  It seems kind of simple but it often gets lost:

The role of a coach or the role of a teacher is to get the player or student to be the best that they can be.

Exactly.  Not “to get them to achieve some impossibly high standard that even professional athletes can’t reach.”  Not “to win a championship at all costs.”  It’s centered around understanding each kid and the potential for greatness that’s in each of them to whatever degree it exists.  Even if the kid doesn’t get it.  Then the challenge is to fulfill that potential.

Think about it in a business context.  How many managers are focused on “winning the championship” and not on getting each employee to be the best that they can be?   Instead of using the initial interview process to determine what that potential might be, many managers think about it as filing a box on the org chart.  They don’t think about complimentary skill sets, the potential to advance, or how well the candidate will fit into the group.  Instead, they assume the people are fungible.  Big mistake.

If we take the time to think carefully about Coach Knight’s standard, it becomes obvious that the key to success lies in looking hard for potential, especially if that potential is untapped to a great degree.  After all, if we’re focused on getting people to be the best that they can be, we want that bar set pretty high so the organization as a whole is elevated.

What do you think?

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March 28, 2013 · 10:32 am

Word Count Zero

Some days it’s a pretty easy thing to crank out three or four hundred words here in the screed.  Other days it’s a struggle and today is one of those days.  Oh sure, there is plenty of research to write about and a few stupid business tricks about which I’m aware, but I’ve noticed you guys tend not to read the research-oriented posts (there will be fewer) and the stupid stuff the businesses are doing isn’t really taking the idiocy to a new level.  So I’m kind of stuck here at word count zero.

600x750mm sign intended to match the specifica...

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Maybe it’s a good day to write about inspiration vs. preparation.  I try to be prepared by clipping articles I think might provide good fodder for the screed on those days when the inspirational spirit is weak.  The process is one that many businesses use in product development   Find something that’s interesting, add your own twist (hopefully making it better in the process) and market the heck out of it.  The articles I’ve got clipped are fine but my own twisted thoughts seem to be lacking.

Maybe it’s a good day to write about that there’s not a lot to write about.  Businesses seem to be in a rut – there’s a lot of more of the same but not a lot of innovation.  Perhaps that’s because we’re finally on a more sound economic footing and business is getting a chance to see what works in a more normal economic environment.

Maybe it’s a good day to wish one of my dearest friends a happy birthday and write about how the lessons I’ve learned from our relationship over the last 20 or so years have helped me be better at business.  Too many of us tend to think that personal and business behavior should be different.  Not me.   In part that’s because he’s helped me to understand that people who are nice to you in a restaurant (business) and nasty to the servers (personal) are going to turn on you as soon as they no longer think you can help them.  All too true.

Then again, maybe I’ll expand each of those thoughts later on.  In the meantime, we’re done here today unless you have something to add.  Do you?

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