While watching the soccer game that my son was a part of today two different occasions planted two different “thought seeds” in my mind.
Occasion #1: At half-time in the game the Coach skillfully injected encouragement into the hearts and minds of the team he was coaching by using the phrase “you must collaborate if you want to dominate this game”.
This expression led me to think about its relevancy for business. You will see in some of my earlier blogs, the theme of how important it is for people (and organisations) to combine strengths in order to realise a stronger and more commercially effective structure and operation. And at the far end of the “achievement/ performance spectrum”…to dominate.
When the right moment arises during classroom time, I (gently) teach my tertiary students about the importance of combining strengths of well-aligned individuals to achieve commonly-held (organisational) objectives. Already students are learning about how to collaborate, through the group assignment work that they need to complete. Going forward, I believe that collaboration will continue to prove to be one of the most valuable skills for all people to acquire and apply. The seemingly “unobtainable” outcomes become obtainable when peoples’ strengths are combined, channeled and managed effectively.
Occasion #2: From the side-line, the Coach would periodically respond to a player who hadn’t passed the ball accurately to another player in their team – or who had missed their shot at kicking a goal – by saying “Don’t just kick it !” (meaning don’t just kick the ball in any direction).
If we think about this expression in a business context we could equate this expression to a business owner/ senior manager “steering their company by the seat of their pants”. Where the owner/ manager essentially pulls the company in various directions in accordance with their whimsical desire to change direction from week-to-week…day-to-day…and sometimes even during the course of a single day.
“Don’t just kick it !” amounts to making business decisions and applying courses of action without any real plan and/ or contemplated thought. Inevitably the consequence of “just kicking the ball” is likely to be that your business is pulled in many different directions…and quite possibly even “around in circles”; while your competitors steer their course in accordance with their prescribed strategic and operational written plans.