Tag Archives: life lessons

October 8, 2012 · 9:51 am

Don Larsen And You

Way back on this date in 1956 the Yankees were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series.

The "everlasting image" of Yogi Berr...

The “everlasting image” of Yogi Berra leaping into Larsen’s arms upon the completion of the perfect game (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Yankees’ Don Larsen did something that had never been done before (or since). He pitched a perfect game in the World Series. For those of you who don’t follow baseball (we do have quite a few international readers here!), a perfect game is one in which 27 batters come to the plate and none of them reach first base. 3 outs per inning, 9 innings per game. No walks, no hits. Perfection. It’s an extremely rare feat under any circumstances – there have only been 23 perfect games in the 100+ year history of major league baseball.  To accomplish it under the pressure of the World Series is amazing.

I don’t know what was in his mind as he took the mound that day but I’m willing to bet his focus was on getting the next batter out, not on making sure none of the 27 would reach base.  Let me give you a similar thought.  There are two Swedish golf instructors who operate Vision54.   The thinking is that if we can birdie every hole during a round of golf we’d shoot 54.   That’s perfection of another sort and it sounds impossible.  Then again, as I pointed out to someone over the weekend, he’d made birdie on every hole on our course at one point or another, just not in the same round.  Like a baseball pitcher who’s retired every batter he’ll face that day at one point or another in his career, the task is to turn what you’ve done before into a consistent reality, one pitch or one swing at a time.

That’s the business point too.  We look at daunting tasks – double our sales, find 50 new customers in a few months – as impossible.  Yet we’ve increased our sales and we’ve found new customers.  We have the ability to do the remarkable because the remarkable is just stuff we can do done each and every time.  It’s less about ability than it is about execution (and maybe a little luck thrown in from time to time).

What do you think?  What impossible thing will you do today?

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October 5, 2012 · 9:01 am

Eating Rocks And Bark

Our Foodie Friday Fun this week revolves around rocks, bark, and dried flowers. You probably had all three for breakfast this morning. Seriously.  Salt is the only rock we humans eat on a regular basis (or on any other basis as far as I’m concerned). The bark we regularly eat is cinnamon – you might have sprinkled some on your oatmeal or cereal. The dried flowers are pepper – maybe on your eggs?

You just know there’s a business point lurking here, and you’re right.

What’s interesting about each of the aforementioned food items is that someone had to be the first to figure out that these seemingly unappetizing things were actually quite tasty and useful in the kitchen.  None of them, however, can be used “as is”.  Peppercorns (actually a fruit of a flowering vine) need to be dried.  Cinnamon needs to be transformed from tree bark into a dried and ground form.  Salt comes in dozens of types but is either extracted from the ground or from the sea.  I’m not sure who was the first to figure that out but it’s instructive.  All have been used by humans for millennia and maybe the ancients were smarter than we are in some ways.

Sometimes our first instincts when we see something or someone who doesn’t appear to be particularly useful is to move on.  Our ancestors couldn’t do that – food was not something you ran to the supermarket to get.  In many businesses today, resource availability is in many ways as challenging as food was for the ancients.  Everything they encountered was evaluated (I expect quite a few brave souls didn’t survive the “R&D” phase of new food discovery) before it was discarded.  In the cases of these three items, someone had to figure out how to transform them into something useful.  Maybe a dead animal or fish was preserved in a bath of seawater that dried.  Maybe someone saw an animal eating tree bark and tried some.

We need to have the same mentality in many ways.  Don’t dismiss anyone or anything out of hand.  Take some time to think about how they can be useful in another form or another position (I know a lot of ex-lawyers who are great salespeople and a few accountants who do wonders in marketing).  Rocks and bark may not seem like a great diet but thinking out of the box is at the root of a great business.

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October 1, 2012 · 10:59 am

The Ryder Cup’s Lessons

The Ryder Cup 2012

The Ryder Cup 2012 (Photo credit: proforged)

I said to myelf late last week I wasn’t going to do it.

The notion popped into my head to discuss The Ryder Cup but I said “no, it’s really a business blog and you’re spending way too much time on golf even if it does relate to business.”  Then, of course, The Ryder Cup actually took place and the final day was one of the most thrilling things I’ve ever seen in sport (even the Mrs. sat down and watched which generally requires it to be The Olympics or some sport set to music).

There are some great business points we can take away from the competition, no matter how you feel about the outcome.  The European side made a historic comeback on the last day – equalling the one made by the U.S. side in 1999.  The Americans didn’t lose this thing – the Europeans won it.  That’s a big difference.  When your opponent makes three long (over 25 feet) putts in a row to win the last three holes, you were beaten, you didn’t lose.  I wrote about that a few months ago and that will suffice.

Another thing you might hear about today was how badly a few members of the U.S. team performed throughout.  Tiger Woods earned 1/2 a point in 4 tries.  Steve Stricker, who was put on the team as a Captain’s pick mostly because Tiger likes to play with Steve as his partner, didn’t earn a single point.  Lesson: you can’t count on a high performer who is in a slump to break out of that slump as a strategy.  While Tiger has demonstrated that his game can be what it once was in VERY limited doses (one or two rounds out of a four round tournament), he is far from the consistently dominating player he was 10 years ago.  Counting on any great performer who is off form is not a sound strategy (and Tiger has never played well in Ryder Cup!).

Lesson 2: changing your business strategy to honor the wishes of someone who isn’t a key to the plan (Stricker on the team to benefit Tiger), is nuts.  Even though Steve is a top player, there were other players left off the team who have been playing better the last few months and might have been better choices.   As the CEO (or team captain in this case), you do what’s right for the overall strategy.

Lesson 3:  the power of strong motivation.  The Europeans were playing the first Cup since the death of Ryder Cup legend, Spaniard Seve Ballesteros.  He was a mentor to many of the golfers on the team and the team literally wore Seve on their bags and shirts.   This team would not quit and was highly motivated to honor his memory.  As leaders, it’s our job to foster this sort of passion.

Finally, we learn the lesson of working as a team.  Golf is a solitary sport yet The Ryder Cup forces golfers to play matches as a team two of the three days.  The Captain needs to send out singles matches with the overall team’s play in mind on the third day.  For whatever reason, The European golfers seem to be able to subordinate their own egos and style of play to that of the team while the Americans have more difficulty   Something to think about when hiring and something to stress to your team.  It’s a different game working as a unit.  Not everyone can adjust.

This was great drama and a massive display of skill and passion by the Euros.  Like Seve, who often made impossible shots look routine, they were inspired by their Captain to “believe” (his word) that they could do the impossible and come back.  They did believe, they did come back.  Can you get your team to that same sort of belief in themselves?

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