Tag Archives: sports

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?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 3, 2012 · 9:27 am

Overtime

I’m kind of tired this morning.  I stayed up to watch the first overtime period of a hockey game last night, which turned into a second period and then a third.  In the NHL, playoff overtime periods are the same 20 minute length as a period in a regular game, so it was the equivalent of watching almost a complete second game.  The thing that always strikes me about OT (as overtime is commonly known) is how the players deal with it.  After all, they’re told to put out 100% effort during the game, so what’s left in their tanks if they’re doing that?

into.overtime

(Photo credit: MelvinSchlubman)

It’s a good question for all of us in business.  Then again, we don’t play OT since there’s really no game clock any more.  Overtime is the quaint notion that there is work beyond normal working hours for which we get paid additional money.  Of course, with our “always on” technology, it’s not unusual to receive (and reply to) emails and documents at any hour.  In fact, I’ll bet most of you get antsy if you send a note at any time and don’t receive a reply within an hour.

There are lots of issues here.  The biggest is the same one the players face.  They’ve given everything they have to win during the allotted time and then find out that because they haven’t accomplished the goal they’ve got to continue to give more.  Can they?  These OT games often come down to conditioning and team management – who’s got the fresher legs.  That’s why as managers, we need to make sure our people are pacing themselves since there is no clock in business any more.  Sometimes our best performers will burn themselves out if we don’t make sure they’re turning off the mail and setting the phone to mute, at least on the weekend.

The notion of paying people for overtime work is a fair one yet I don’t know how anyone keeps track.  Business is not just done in the office and burnout can happen anywhere.  There is no clock in business – most of us don’t “punch in” and “punch out.”  As a result, we need to be cognizant that the game might go into OT, the little breaks in between periods of game action won’t be enough to fully recover, and we need to have the stamina to compete.

Make sense?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud, What's Going On

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

April 11, 2012 · 9:48 am

Can Major League Tech Overcome Apathetic Fans?

I noticed something yesterday that got me thinking about the role tech plays in rejuvenating “old” products.  In this case, the product is baseball.  If you’re over the age of 50, baseball was probably the first sport you came to love and follow because when my peers and I were kids it truly was the American past-time.  College football and the NFL were a distant second; the NBA was barely surviving, and soccer was something they did in Europe.

The Harris Interactive folks have been running a poll for many years which tracks which sport fans label as “their favorite.”  As you can see in this document, baseball has been falling for most of the almost 30 years they’ve been measuring this.  In 1985, baseball was about even with pro football when fans answered the question “If you had to choose, which ONE of these sports would you say is your favorite?”  By 2011, those responding “pro football” were 2.5x greater than those responding “baseball.”   One might expect that baseball’s audience would be older – there’s plenty of research to support that – and this poll identified the 50-64 segment as the one with the most avidity for the game.

The modern MLB logo was first used in 1969.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That’s why, when I read this piece yesterday, I had a thought.  Another research company, Scarborough, found about the same percentage of “avid” baseball fans as did the Harris study.  However, it also found a lot of strength for the game among Gen Y fans.  Generation Y are the “echo boomers,” the children of boomers like me.  In fact:

54% of Gen Y MLB Fans more likely than all MLB Fans to have used a mobile device to read a newspaper in the past 30 days, 84% more likely to have listened to internet radio in the past 30 days and 22% more likely than all MLB Fans to typically watch reality TV. Gen Y MLB Fans are more than twice as likely as all MLB Fans to have visited Twitter in the past 30 days, 59% more likely to have read or contributed to a blog in the past 30 days and 68% more likely to have watched video clips online in the same time period. Gen Y MLB Fans are 131% more likely than all MLB Fans to have visited Hulu.com in the past 30 days and 65% more likely to have visited YouTube.com in the same time frame.

So this is my thought.  The game isn’t any faster nor has there been a breakthrough in game presentation that is stirring interest.  What is going on here in my mind has to do with the thing that MLB does better than any other sports league ( and I say that as someone who was once responsible for this at a major sports league):  digital media and technology.  Baseball’s tech arm, MLBAM, is widely recognized as the leader over the last decade.  Their commitment to make their games available on all devices was revolutionary at the time and their “At Bat” product is terrific.  I think this is what’s driving the reemergence of the sport among younger people.  It’s accessible, it’s presented in a manner they understand, and it’s everywhere they are.

Could it be that new technology is making our oldest professional sport new again?  What do you think?  How can it do the same for other “old” businesses?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under digital media, sports business, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,