Tag Archives: business thinking

August 30, 2012 · 2:50 pm

Bird Poop

I had just walked out of a meeting this morning

Birds on wires

(Photo credit: rkramer62)

and was standing talking to some other folks on the team when something with started dripping down my sport coat.  Despite it being a warm morning I was very certain it wasn’t sweat.  What I was hoping was that it was some excess moisture dripping off a pipe but of course it wasn’t.  It was bird poop.  Well more specifically I think it was bird pee although frankly it doesn’t much matter.

As I was standing there frantically trying to wipe it off my coat, my compatriots informed me that it was good luck.  Apparently in some cultures a bird pooping on you is exactly that.  I’m not so sure it is in my culture – more likely it’s 180 degrees from that.  In checking out their notion I also found that many people believe this to be a major sign of wealth coming from heaven.  Seem to me it’s a sign of an expensive cleaning bill coming.  In any event it did trigger a business thought.

Too many businesses spend their time standing under wires hoping bird will poop on them, figuratively speaking.  They would almost rather be lucky than good.  Rather than looking for wires filled with birds, they’d be way better off spending time looking at analytics, social mentions, and their own financial statements.  Spending money on bird seed trying to attract the birds and the luck they bring is probably not as worthwhile as spending it on an all hands on deck brainstorm.  You know the ones – where no idea is a bad one and outrageous thinking is encouraged.

I’ll let you all know if some great piece of luck follows – there wasn’t a large check in the mail today however.  In the meantime, remember what Hemingway told his son – you make your own luck.  Good business advice – and much cleaner than depending on the birds!

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August 27, 2012 · 9:22 am

Being Fearless

A 15 year old young woman won the CN Canadian Women’s Open over the weekend.

English: Thirteen year old New Zealander Lydia...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lydia Ko can’t drive cars but she certainly showed she could drive into the middle of fairways as she beat the best women professionals on the planet.  She’s not yet one of them – she has retained her amateur status because she thinks she might want to play collegiate golf.  That’s a $300,000 decision but one would think she’ll have many years in which to earn that back and a lot more.  This isn’t a total shock – she is the current U.S. Women’s Amateur Champion but she did beat a strong professional field so it’s very unexpected.

What impressed me most about her post-tournament interviews wasn’t her achievement.  In fact, she sounded pretty much like most almost 16 year olds do – lots of use of the word “awesome” in between the giggles.  But she did say something that really impressed me and it’s a great business lesson for the rest of us.  This is from her post-tournament news conference:

Q. Lydia, you’re 15 years old. You’ve just beaten the best players in the world. Has it sunk in what you’ve just accomplished, and was there ever a point on the Back 9 where you’re looking around going what the hell is going on here?
LYDIA KO: (Laughs). I don’t know. Like the first time I looked at the leaderboard was on I think 17 or something. Maybe I had a peek or anything. But I kind of looked at it because I wanted to become more relaxed, and today I said I’ve got nothing to lose. I already got the leading amateur in my bag.
And yeah, all I need to do is play my game, and my goal was 4 under, so I shot 5 under, even better.

In other words, she was fearless.  Her attitude was “I’m a kid, I’m not supposed to win, I’ve already accomplished a lot by winning the Amateur, I’m learning a lot just by participating so why worry.”  How would each of us perform at our jobs if we kept that perspective rather than getting so caught up in the moment or current crisis?  That’s my thought to start the week – you with me?

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August 22, 2012 · 8:36 am

Good Results

There’s an expression one hears in sports sometimes that a final score is a good result.  It doesn’t pertain to your team winning (which I guess is always a good result).  Instead, it means that the outcome of the match is in line with the way the game was played. The team that dominated the game won even if it was a sloppy match or something unusual like an own goal kept it closer than it should have been.  Ugly play didn’t get in the way of the outcome.  You hear the expression in boxing too.  It means that there was no lucky one-punch knockout or the fight was stopped by a cut on the person who was winning.  The “right” guy won.

I had the same thought when the whole controversy about Jordyn Wieber happened during the Olympics.  Even though she finished fourth during the qualifying round she couldn’t compete for the all-around gymnastics gold because international rules only allow two competitors per country in the finals.  This was seen as a bad result – she played well and yet she wasn’t allowed to continue (one could ask why no one complained about the rules in advance of the Games when the US had such a deep squad but hindsight is always perfect…).

Maybe it’s the notion of fairness that’s inherent in thinking something is a good result.  That’s certainly part of it but I think it’s a bit of a misplaced focus too.  There’s a golf expression – “it’s not how, it’s how many.”  That means it doesn’t matter if you hit a soaring perfect shot to 3 feet or if you skull it along the ground to the same place.  All that matters is the final score.  As Bobby Orr said, forget about style; worry about results.  Here’s the thing: business outcomes often aren’t fair.  Idiot self-promoters get great jobs and smart, quiet people languish.   There’s a lot of focus in business on style, on “how” instead of “how many.”  Are those a “good result?”

We might ask ourselves how many good people or excellent opportunities are we overlooking because they don’t fit into our idea of perfect.  Winning ugly is still winning, right?

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