Perfect Practice
Years ago, as a boys baseball coach, I learned some valuable lessons that have helped me tremendously as a leader. The lessons I learned apply universally to leadership positions: once you figure out who your players are, what to teach, and how to teach, then you can spend time trying to inspire and motivate. An inspired and motivated idiot is still an idiot. Ben Hogan used to say “practice does not make perfect, it just makes things permanent.” Perfect practice is what we all aspire to on the road to mastery.
Between 1983 and 1996, I managed Little League baseball teams in the San Ramon Valley of California, and All Star teams at the end of each season. In 1993, my All Star team of 12-year-olds lost in the finals of the Western Region, one game short from going to the Little League World Series.
In my 13 years of coaching kids, I learned a lot about managing with the annual goal of winning it all. Once I learned the ropes of drafting, I understood that at least half the teams in the league have the same approximate talent (with the exception of that once-a-generation 6 foot tall, 175 pound 12-year-old that some lucky manager may get. I never did.) So, if the talent is fairly equal amongst the teams, why do some win and some lose?
Honestly, the role of the manager on game day is way over rated. The ability to win all happens behind the scenes, in practice, and that is where managers and teams become mediocre or great.
I learned how to win the hard way. Not knowing any better, I repeated dumb techniques and strategies in my early years of coaching. Eventually, I figured out that I needed to change the formulaic strategies that weren’t working! (My oldest son, who is 40 now, likes to remind me from time to time that he got “dumb” dad as a coach and his little brother got smarter dad.) Oh well! My transition from “dumb” dad to smarter dad was based in my becoming uncomfortable with failure. Failure is the means by which I learned to manage well.
Which brings me to my life lesson learned…it goes like this: In Little League, both the length of each practice and the total number of practices is regulated. You have a pool of talent in your league that is only so deep and everybody chooses players from that pool.
We had 12 boys on each team with relatively equal proportions of 10, 11, and 12-year-olds. Without fail, every manager had about four good players, four average players, and four kids who were “less talented.” In my early years, I spent exactly the same amount of practice time with each player, The less talented improved as did the average players, but we continued to lose.
Once I wised up and applied some sage advice I got from an older, retired league guru, I realized I needed to pretty much ignore the bottom four. After doing the math, I found that 80% of my practice time and drills that were focused on the individual needs of my top eight players produced better results than focusing on every player, all the time. We started to win, but we still weren’t champions.
At long last, I focused 80% of the practice time on the individual needs of the top four players and then we became champions. If I could get my top four kids to hit the low outside fast ball, and the curve, and the slider, great things happened. Spending time with my bottom four on the same stuff produced misses and hurt feelings and discouragement. And more losing.
“When the focus is on winning,
and you have a sold foundation with your leaders,
then everybody plays ‘up’.”
When we started winning, a whole new energy infected the team. My poorer players got better because they knew their contribution could add icing to the cake that was already made. They wanted to show the big guys that they could help and their performance level rose in direct proportion to our number of wins. When the focus is on winning, and you have a sold foundation with your leaders, then everybody plays “up.”
I can say with humbleness, that of all the leadership advice and experience I have gathered in my 40 plus years in new home sales management, I learned about as much from a group of 10 to 12-year-old boys as I ever learned from the giants in my industry.
The 80/20 rule affects a lot of different industries and pursuits and outcomes. In a perfect world, we would follow the Jack Welch mantra of eliminating the bottom quarter of performers. I support that, in theory. But what happens to an organization that is always on the look out for the bottom performers? Does “whack-a-mole” really work?
My theory is: do the best you can with the hand you are dealt, figure out who the stars are in your group, and know that they will define you as an organization and be your legacy in the long run. Focus on them!
About the Author:
Gary Ryness is chairman of the Ryness Company, one of the largest new home marketing organizations in the U.S. Among his many awards: Legend of Residential Marketing from the National Association of Homebuilders.
