Predictions For 2017!

Foreword:  Yes, you read the title right.  I originally wrote this on December 30, 2016.  I never published it.  Somehow it seemed a little futile.

As I started thinking about this topic for 2018, I looked at this article.  As I had guessed one year ago, not much has changed.

The state of sales and marketing hasn’t changed.  The topics that were “hot” a year ago, or more, are the same topics we are struggling with now, and will be the topics we will struggle with in the coming years.

 

Blog post for December 31, 2016:

It’s that time of year where blogs fill with predictions for sales and marketing for 2017.  Others focus on tips for success in 2017.

Often, I’m asked for my views, depending on how pre-occupied I am, depending on my mood, my responses fall into a few categories:

1. I ignore them.  (That’s the curmudgeonly, “Bah Humbug” response.)
2. I reply with the same responses I sent in 2015, 2014, 2013…., reminding the writer that my responses haven’t changed.
3. I reply with the same responses I sent in previous years–but it’s to someone who’s never asked before.  Next year, they will realize I’m recycling the same list.

We hear the same well-intended predictions/maxim’s every year.  They may be brushed up and updated slightly, for example, technology predictions will shift from analytics to AI.  We may have decided to use some new buzzwords to update concepts that have been around for decades, this year ABM/ABE will be hot in predictions and tips, but it’s the same fundamental concepts that were promoted when I first started selling.

The issue is, these predictions and advice don’t change–and won’t change until we change!

That’s the funny thing about this stuff.  Until we start changing the way we work, how we engage customers, what we do, the same issues persist from year to year.  Consequently, the same predictions and the same tips will constantly be recycled.

We will continue to see customers looking for alternatives to seeing sales people, until we start creating value in every interaction.

We will continue to see response rates from every channel, social and traditional, plummet until we start providing impactful and relevant content/programs.

We will continue to see performance problems in our organizations, until we start taking people and talent seriously–coaching and developing them, providing strategies, systems, processes, and tools that really help them connect more effectively with their people (actually, looking at most marketing and sales stacks, we already have the tools, we just don’t use them.)

Einstein is credited with saying something like, “Lunacy is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.”  We repeat it in various forms, chuckle, yet persist with the same things we’ve always done.

Until we change how we engage customers–executing consistently on the theme of creating value in every interaction (from sales and marketing), until we change how we lead and develop our people, we will continue to face the same issues and produce similar results.

So rather than giving predictions or tips for success in 2017, perhaps the best thing is to challenge each of you (and myself).

1. What 1 thing are you going to do radically differently in 2017 which will improve your abilities to engage and create value for your customers?  How will you measure your success in doing this?  What monthly/quarterly goals are you putting in place to track your progress on the commitment?
2. What 1 areas of personal improvement/learning are you committing to for 2017?  How will you measure success?
3. What 1 new thing will you do to contribute to your community or to make the world a better place in 2017?  How do we measure the outcome?

Yeah, I know you will say, “Dave, those look a lot like New Year’s resolutions, we always break those.”

And that’s the simple truth about every change or improvement initiative.  If we don’t commit to doing the work, we will never achieve the results.

The choice is always with each of us.  The difference between top performers and everyone else is they simply commit to changing and doing the work.

To be honest, for myself, I don’t have the answers to these questions yet.  I have some things I’m thinking about.  There are shifts in how I want to invest my time, things I want to do with clients, who I want to invest time in.  I’m close to figuring those out, but these will transform our business.  Quite frankly, we’ve gotten stuck in a rut.  While our clients tell us we do outstanding work, there are new things we can do, that will have a far greater impact on the results we help our clients achieve.  Part of this will involve some specific collaborations and IP sharing with leaders in other disciplines–helping us innovate what we do with our clients.  But I need to crisp these up and firm up the goals for each of these.  I’ll let you know about each of these so you can help hold me accountable.

On the personal improvement/learning side, I’ve slipped badly on some of the routines important to me–my meditation and exercise have slipped, I need to get my act back together on this.  In the past year, I’ve become obsessed with the issues of complexity–organizational and personal.  I want to do some deep, collaborative dives these issues to learn more about their impact on performance and happiness.  If I am to make a single prediction, complexity is the single biggest organizational and personal effectiveness issue facing each of us.  Until we put understanding the impact and radically simplifying how we work, we will continue to see devastating impacts in organizational and personal performance.

I worry, one year from now, what will I be writing on this day?

 

Afterword:  Back to December 30, 2017.  Nothing seems to have changed in the past year.  However, I’ve become more interested in the concept of micro-improvements.  Little improvements made every day.  I’ve written a couple of articles about this in the past couple of weeks:   Plateauing and The Importance Of Small Changes In Improving Performance.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been using myself as the guinea pig for looking at this micro-improvements.  While it’s way to early to see the cumulative impact, I’m seeing enough positive.

Best wishes for 2018!  I’ll meet you here, one year from now, hopefully, we’ll find at least one new thing to talk about.

 

Related Posts:

• ‘Tis The Season To Declare “The Death Of…
• Clean Water Changes Everything
• Times Are Changing
• Prognostications And Wild Ass Guesses For 2015
• Acting Beyond Ourselves, Having An Impact On Others

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Quotes of the Year

David Laurila picks his favorite quotes from his 2017 interviews. There are so many good ones, but this stands out:

“Some things are only crazy if you approach them from the perspective of, ‘What was done before was totally sane.’ That makes the new stuff sound crazy, but maybe we should challenge the notion that everything we were doing before was sane.” — Dick Williams, Reds GM, March 2017

This rings true for many aspects of life.

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Power Training with Intent

Random Player Report

The Random Evil Player program picked Corey Seager for the next player report. Seager plays shortstop for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He came up at the end of the 2015 season, and in his two-plus years in the majors hit like a superstar. The 2018 campaign will be his seasonal age 24 season, meaning he has still not entered his peak.

Seager may soon develop a reputation as a clutch hitter, as so far he hit very well with men on base, and slightly better with runners in scoring position. Twenty four of his 52 home runs came with men on. His RBI totals are not gaudy, however, as he mostly batted second so far, and the Dodgers tend to bat the pitcher ninth. Seager is mostly moving a man on first into scoring position. Either the Dodgers should adopt pitcher batting eighth strategy, or move Seager down in the order to take more advantage of his power to drive in runs.

On top of that, Seager is an excellent defensive shortstop. If he keeps up the hitting and defense, expect multiple MVPs awards going to Seager.

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Slowing Down a Fielder

Orioles coach Bobby Dickerson talks about working with Tim Beckham on improving Beckham’s defense. He wants Beckham to compartmentalize the tasks of fielding, and not worry about the speed of the game:

“We’re just trying to slow him down and take a little bit of the, for lack of a better word, ‘infielder’ out of him. The mechanical moves and different things that infielders do unnecessarily, especially young infielders,” Dickerson said.

“I don’t want to be naïve and say these are things he hasn’t heard before, but we just did some drills to try to slow him down and get him more focused on the process of getting people out versus the process of looking like an infielder. It’s a fine line. Circling the ball, field through the ball, all these different things. Bottom line is it’s really about just trying to find a hop to catch the ball, control it, keep your emotions in check and not let the game’s speed bother you and then throwing accurately.

“If you look at so many different things that cause bad throws, a lot of times it’s the body position after catching the ball because they’re fielding the ball versus catching the ball, and getting too heavy on the front side or not being loaded or ball transfer too late. There are so many different things. Trying to separate all the steps and make it more of a process of, ‘Once I’ve got ball control, now I just become a pitcher. Get myself balanced.’

Dickerson goes on to note that J.J. Hardy fields like this, and Jonathan Schoop made these changes as he matured.

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Random Player Report

The Evil Player Program picked Mike Morse as the random player to review. Morse decided not to retire before the 2017 season and the Giants called him up in late April. At the end of May, however, he sustained a concussion in the brawl resulting from Hunter Strickland hitting Bryce Harper with a pitch. He did not play the rest of the season. Even without the concussion, Morse might not have lasted much longer as he was hitting .194/.250/.306 when he went down. Morse is a free agent at this writing, but given that he had not recovered from the concussion in time to finish the season with the Giants, I doubt he will play again.

Morse was a good hitter, equally adept against right and left handed pitching. He hit for a good average with decent power. His defense, however, was horrible, which limited his playing time. He probably should have caught on with an AL team as a designated hitter, but he spent the last nine years of his career in the NL.

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Davis Pay Day

Reports put Wade Davis on the Rockies with a record deal:

On Friday, Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reported that Colorado had a deal in place with former Royals/Cubs closer Wade Davis. Jon Heyman of Fan Rag Sports and Passan reported that the deal is for $52 million over three years. The average salary per season of $17.33 million is the highest ever for a relief pitcher, Passan said.

Davis is perfect at Coors Field, if you consider three batters faced a good sample size.

The plan appears to be to resign Greg Holland as the closer, with Davis in the set-up role. If Holland is going to be the closer, he will likely want more money than Davis. That would be a great deal of dollars invested in two relief pitchers.

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Plateauing

As we often do, at this time of year, we take stock of where we are in our business and personal lives.  We look at what we’ve accomplished in the past year, and our goals for the coming year.  Some of us develop “resolutions.”  (I don’t.)

I’ve been reflecting a lot on my personal performance and growth. While, from pure business outlook, things couldn’t be better.  We are involved in truly exciting projects with our clients, making an impact on their businesses and lives.

Part of me feels as though we, or at least I have plateaued.

Plateauing, I think happens to all of us, in some form.  We all plateau at varying levels–both in performance, and in personal growth.  We can be very high performers, we can be meeting our goals, but at the same time may have plateaued somewhat in our own growth.

Personally, I feel I’m at one of those points.  I’ve been thinking a lot about “what’s the next big thing,” “what’s the next big idea.”  In the past, I’ve focused a lot on those, both for my personal and business development, in helping our clients, and in what I write about.

These big things haven’t necessarily been new or tremendously insightful, but recognizing them and applying them have enabled us to make huge improvements in what we do and how we perform.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been reflecting on myself and my own personal growth, trying to find that new “big thing,”  the thing that will help me raise my level of play, my contribution, and my happiness.

I think I’ve stumbled on it, ironically, I think my big thing is actually little things, very little things, or micro improvements.

Recently, I wrote about the concept in, The Importance Of Small Changes In Improving Performance.  I explored the math behind micro improvement.  For example, if we improve our own performance by just 0.% every day, over the course of a year the improvement is close to 10%!

I’ve been experimenting with this concept, particularly over the past 30 days.  The first thing I struggled with was, “what thing do I want to focus on for driving micro improvements.”  The analytic side of me also started looking at, “how do I measure those micro improvements?”

I realized I was over-complicating the process (As I’m sometimes prone to do.)

Coincidentally, I was rereading Marshall Goldsmith’s Triggers.  I was struck by his use of active questions in assessing our own performance, mindset, and so forth.  For example, we tend to phrase goals in ways that are difficult to assess, particularly if you are doing a daily assessment.

For example, one of my goals has always been: How did I contribute to the success and growth of my clients?  It’s something important to me and to our company.  It’s something that sets us apart both in the way we work and the value we create.

But it’s really tough to assess.  After a period of time, we can look, saying, “We helped Company X improve sales performance by 42%, we helped company Y double their win rates,” and so forth.  But those are after long periods of time.  I was looking for that daily improvement, I knew my clients wouldn’t appreciate my calling up every day asking, “How much did performance improve over yesterday.”

Marshall reminded me that, I’m really putting a burden on others, my clients in this case, for the improvement.  I’m not looking at my personal responsibility in supporting my clients in these things.

A simple rephrasing of that goal, changes everything.  He suggests starting with “Did I do my best to….”  In this case, it would be “Did I do my best to contribute to the success and growth of my clients today?”  This changes the context completely.  First, the responsibility is mine, not someone else’s.  Second, while it focuses on what I can control.  I can’t control what my clients do, but I can control my own behavior and actions in how I work with my clients.

Marshall suggests developing a daily scorecard, tracking yourself on the responses to your “Did I do my best to….” questions.  I’ve taken his his approach and re-engineered it a little.

For the past month, I’ve been tracking myself on 19 items.  They are all big, but at the same time, little goals.  I’m not tracking, “Did I do my best to solve world hunger?”  Marshall provided a starter kit of six questions:

1. Did I do my best to set clear goals for the day?
2. Did I to my best to make progress toward those goals?
3. Did I do my best to do the things that make my happy in the day?
4. Did I do my best to find meaning in the day?
5. Did I do my best to build positive relationships?
6. Did I do my best to be fully alive (Marshall suggested “fully engaged,” I rephrased it because being fully alive has a much broader context for me.)

I added a number of others, simple things like “Did I do my best to exercise in the day?”  When I’m really busy, as I often am, I tend to neglect this.  “Did I do my best to stay hydrated?”  Again, that’s a problem for me.  “Did I do my best to express my love and appreciation to Kookie?”  Sometimes, we tend to take our relationships with the people most important for granted.

In total, right now I’m tracking 19 items.  I don’t know whether they are the right things, but I’m going to keep them for another 30 days, then look at revising some of them  (A few seem to overlap a lot and I’m wondering why I identified them in the first place.)

I’m scoring them on a 1-10 scale, as Marshall suggests, but I’ve modified it.  I don’t allow myself a “7.”  7 is an equivocating, MEH number.  If I want to give myself a 7, I force myself to commit to a 6 or 10.  (I did this midway in the month, so you will see some 7’s in the earlier days.

The other adaptation I’ve made to this approach is that I write a single sentence about how I felt in the day.  It’s not what I accomplished, it’s how I felt.  It’s much more meaningful, for example if I accomplished a lot, I probably feel much better.  But, the “how I felt” sentence seems more encompassing to me.

Every morning, I spend my first few minutes scoring myself for the previous day.  I used to do it in the evening, but switched to the next morning.  It allows me a little more reflection, plus it allows me to review what’s important at the beginning of the day–enabling me to focus more mindfully on them.

I’m only 30 days into it.  Have I seen differences?  Absolutely!  There have been ups and downs.  For example, when I’m traveling, I tend to have both the exercise and hydration challenges–but I’m paying more attention.

Can I measure the improvement?  No–but again, I’m looking at micro improvements that will accumulate over time.  I suspect in 3, 6, 12 months, when I look back I will see major improvements in what I accomplish and how I’ve grown, but for today, I’m looking only at if I’ve done my best……

I think the biggest things I can see right now is it’s causing me to be more present, more conscious, more aware/alive.

I had plateaued, even though my performance is at a very high level, I was struggling with my own growth.  For me, changing my approach, focusing on micro-improvements has made all the difference.

 

Related Posts:

• The Importance Of Small Changes In Improving Performance
• Getting Personal About Metrics
• Performance Metric Friday — Personal Development
• What Have You Done Lately?
• Tilting The Revenue Curve

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Adderall

Here is a very informative post on the stimulant Adderall, including how easy it is to get a prescription for the drug. MLB gave medical exemptions for stimulants to treat attention deficit to 106 players in 2017. That’s down a bit from a few years ago.

From the first article:

But “ability to concentrate” is a normally distributed trait, like IQ. We draw a line at some point on the far left of the bell curve and tell the people on the far side that they’ve “got” “the disease” of “ADHD”. This isn’t just me saying this. It’s the neurostructural literature, the the genetics literature, a bunch of other studies, and the the Consensus Conference On ADHD. This doesn’t mean ADHD is “just laziness” or “isn’t biological” – of course it’s biological! Height is biological! But that doesn’t mean the world is divided into two natural categories of “healthy people” and “people who have Height Deficiency Syndrome“. Attention is the same way. Some people really do have poor concentration, they suffer a lot from it, and it’s not their fault. They just don’t form a discrete population.

Meanwhile, Adderall works for people whether they “have” “ADHD” or not. It may work better for people with ADHD – a lot of them report an almost “magical” effect – but it works at least a little for most people. There is a vast literature trying to disprove this. Its main strategy is to show Adderall doesn’t enhance cognition in healthy people. Fine. But mostly it doesn’t enhance cognition in people with ADHD either. People aren’t using Adderall to get smart, they’re using it to focus.

The parts about diagnosis show how easy it is to obtain a prescription. I wonder if MLB, however, is using a stricter standard for the exemption, given all the publicity in the press over the last decade.

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Slow Signings

Joel Sherman wonders if front offices have finally figured out that big free-agent signings are not worth it. He is commenting on the frozen hot-stove season:

But now I think it is even deeper than that. The groupthink has simply come to believe — after more than four decades of evidence — that the massive free-agent deal is more likely to go badly than well; and if nothing else, these analytic front offices understand odds.

An aside to say I am an advocate for players making a ton of dough in a $10 billion-a-year industry. But they are part of a flawed system in which free agency does not come until after six seasons — and often seven as organizations shrewdly (deviously?) manipulate service time. Free agency should come after four years (with governors put in place to prevent the big-market clubs from scarfing up all the talent). This would allow more players to enter the market in prime years.

If, on average, a player’s best seasons come from 25 to 29, the current setup ensures teams will, for the most part, be buying too many declining seasons, maybe even from the outset of a deal.

Or just eliminate the reserve clause entirely and pay players what they are worth, rather than artificially tamping down their salaries.

In addition to the front office getting smarter, this year there are a high number of good players available. A high supply of talent is basically driving down prices. It’s a buyer’s market, and the buyers are willing to wait out the players.

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Random Player Report

The random evil player program chose Ben Gamel for a random report. Gamel is an outfielder for the Seattle Mariners who produced a decent season in 2017, his first full year in the majors. He was pretty much a league average hitter, posting a .275/.322/.413 slash line, versus .256/.324/.429 for the league. He got more hits than the average player, but didn’t produce much power. He’s basically a one-WAR player.

His numbers are what one would expect moving from AAA to MLB. He is already in his prime, so he will not be a star. Gamel will be useful, however. He is not an out machine. His high BA means that not only does he preserve rallies, he moves runners with hits. I think he would be most effective as a number seven or number nine hitter, but his best slots in 2017 were #1 and #2. Both were small sample sizes, but it could be those slots focus him more toward getting on base.

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Defining the Hold

The Hardball Times explores the definitions of holds and blown saves. I sometimes get questions from friends about a particular box score, and why someone got one or the other. I will sometimes point to a STATS, Inc. box score and note the hold or blown save is awarded differently.

While the save has a set meaning (with a possible exception I’ll mention later), different sources have different definitions for both holds and blown saves. Robertson’s Wild Card performance was a blown save to Baseball-Reference and Gameday, but not to FanGraphs. Similarly, in the other 2017 Wild Card game, Robbie Ray of the Arizona D-backs got a hold from Baseball-Reference and Gameday, but not from FanGraphs. (Jorge de la Rosa and Archie Bradley were credited with holds in that game by all three authorities.)

What are the definitions? We looked at that question using several leading sources and found not only the larger-scale rules and differences thereof, but some interesting minutiae.

I know one blown save rule from when I was at STATS is that you did not award a blown save in a situation where the save was at the discretion of the official scorer. I believe that situation is no longer in play, three innings with a lead earns a save.

There are a number of odd situations covered in the story. My advice to people who are bothered by this is to remember that these are unofficial statistics, trying to cover situations in a particular game that are influenced by other factors. Take these numbers with a grain of salt.

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3 Things to Know About Before Remodeling Your Bathroom

Content originally published and Shared from http://perfectbath.com

Giving your bathroom a new look for the upcoming new year is a great way to indulge yourself after the busy schedule you’ve had during the holidays. But before you proceed on your plans, here are some pointers to consider:

Image Source: Flickr

Consider how long you won’t be able to use the bathroom
“How long does a bathroom renovation take?” Many people are surprised when they hear that a quality bathroom renovation takes about four weeks. Renovation shows are not reality!

Many people don’t have a spare bathroom they can use while the renovation takes place. If that’s the case for you, plan ahead. Hire a portable toilet or shower from a reputable builder, join a nearby gym (there are often free trials you can take advantage of) or consider renting elsewhere for a month while the job is done. None of these are ideal, but if you’re going to build a bathroom to last 20 to 30 years, that month of inconvenience will quickly be forgotten when you step inside Source: Houzz

Don’t forget to update the fixtures
No renovation is complete without remodeling or repairing fixtures and features, which could very well make a separate checklist themselves: shower, bathtub, toilet, bidet, sink, faucets and shower heads. You should also update or repair your mirrors and shower doors. You can also change the look of your bathroom very easily by changing out door handles, drawer pulls and the hardware for your shower doors. If you have the budget a new set of shower doors can completely change the look of your room. Source: Freshome

Order fixtures ahead of time
Regardless of whether you are buying from a high-street store or a high-end brand, factor in delivery times. Big name manufacturers might take three or four weeks to deliver, while luxury brands can take around eight weeks. Any custom products will take longer so give yourself plenty of wriggle room to avoid having contractors twiddling their thumbs on site. Source: IdealHome

Check out the latest trends in bathroom fixtures when you visit our site today!

 

Contact:
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Training with a Monster Tire

Mellinger Votes

Sam Mellinger votes for the Hall of Fame, and Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Manny Ramirez make the ballot:

Roger Clemens: Either the greatest or second-greatest right-handed pitcher of my lifetime (Greg Maddux). I just don’t know how much longer we’re all supposed to be mad about highly competitive athletes following the incentives put in place to be their most productive selves.

Yep. The early known ballots are in favor of Bonds and Clemens, but not enough to elect then.

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Random Player Report

Many years ago, in response to the discovery that a Topps employee was assigning the number 666 to players who knocked the Yankees out of the playoffs, I wrote the random evil player generator. Really, it’s just a way of numbering the players in a season without regard to who is actually evil.

Given the lack of action on the baseball hot stove lately, I’m reviving the Evil Player program to generate a name. First off is Jeremy Hellickson.

Hellickson is an eight season veteran pitcher. His most impressive quality is his ability to limit hits despite a rather low K rate. This spreadsheet shows how a pitcher’s strikeout rate (K per 9) predicts hit rate (H per 9) for active pitchers with at least 400 IP in their career. He’s not the most extreme pitcher in the group (that would go to Brad Ziegler), but Hellickson is predicted to allow 9.2 hits per nine and only allows 8.5.

He did start his career with the Tampa Bay Rays, a team that tended to put their scant dollars into defense. His low hit rate continued however as he moved to the Phillies and Orioles. He is not an extreme pitcher, over his career giving up fly balls and ground balls at about the same rate. He gives up a normal number of line drives, so he’s not causing poor contact more than any other pitcher. What he has done over the years is change his mix of fastballs and sliders while maintaining his change up. His success may come from not allowing hitters to develop a good pattern recognizer against him.

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Driving Change

We all struggle with change.  Most of the time it’s impatience with those around us who aren’t changing.  it may be our people, our customers, others in our organization.

They struggle with change, they resist it, they get confused.

Change is always tough, it threatens us, it puts us in unfamiliar situations.  We may be uncomfortable, we may not know what to do or how to do it.  We want to revert to what we know, we take comfort in the familiar–even though we know these things may be holding us back.

Too often we forget that at the root of any change initiative, we are looking at behavioral change.  We think change is about the new initiative, the new training program, the new tools, the new strategy, the new priorities.  Those may be what we are trying to achieve, but to do those things, inevitability, we are looking for new behaviors associated with those initiatives.

If we are leaders, initiating the change, we struggle with “them.”  Why are they resisting, why can’t they move forward, why aren’t they executing?  We focus on thing things we are changing, not the behaviors we need to change.  It becomes about the training or the tool, but not the new behaviors or habits we need to adopt to change.

Then, again, one of the biggest challenges is it’s always them.

We forget that we need to change our behaviors, as well.

Ironically, this may be the fastest route to change.

If we change our own behaviors, we change the people around us.

 

Related Posts:

• Organizations Are Reflections Of Leaders’ Priorities
• Selling Is About Change And Change Management
• Can You Change Your Customer? Can You Change Yourself?
• Principles Of Sales Part 3-Selling Is About Change
• Change, When Will We Put It Behind Us!?!@#!?

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Are Skills More Important Than Experience?

I was reading an article from yet another guru—my apologies, I’m really getting tired of guru’s—with the premise, Skills are more important than experience.

To add credibility to his statement, he quoted Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, but really took one statement out of an interview, removing the context that supported what she was saying.

There’s some sense to that statement.  Having great skills is very important  (at least skills relevant to the role you are seeking to fill).  His argument, is that deep experience in an area doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the skills to perform.  And that a highly skilled person can adapt to various different situations, so experience becomes less relevant.

But there also is a certain circularity to the argument, as well.  How do we develop skills?  Well through certain experience……  So experience is important, in some context, though experience in a particular role/industry/sector may not be as important.

There is also a completely different discussion about experience.  Too often, we become prisoners of our own experience.  Even though we have great skills, we tend to see things the same way, the way things have always been done—in our role, in our company, in our industry.  As a result, we become blind.  Even though we have great experience and great skills, it becomes very difficult for us to recognize the need to change or to innovate.

There is huge power in getting skilled people with different experiences, because they bring fresh ideas, and different perspectives (which was actually the point Sheryl was making–at least based on my experience of her).

But still, I think the skills versus experience discussion is a little simplistic.  I think we have to look a little deeper.

For example, we see many people with great experience that fail to achieve their potential.  We see just as many with great skills, who fail to use them to achieve their full potential.

I think what we are really looking at is the underlying mindsets.  What really drives performance is a growth oriented mindset?  Implicit in this is curiosity, a drive to learn and grow, a certain resilience in dealing with obstacles and failure, a willingness to look at other views/perspectives, openness, seeking help and helping others.

After all, without this, skills and experience become relatively meaningless.  Or they could stagnate (The old maxim “Do you have 10 years of experience, or have you just had the same experience 10 times?)

What do you think?

 

Afterword:  One could fairly argue that I’m being unfair and taking the guru out of context, because undoubtedly, he has a much broader perspective than just that expressed in the article.  That’s why I’m not pointing you to the article or identifying the individual.  Having said that, I do think the individual could have broadened the discussion to have greater impact.

 

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Merry Christmas!

I all my readers celebrating today, have a wonderful time with your family and friends! It’s snowing hard in this part of New England, so we are having a real white Christmas this year.

May your day by merry and bright!

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Christmas Notes

David Laurila talks to broadcasters about Dick Enberg in his latest installments of his Sunday Notes column.

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Improving Players

U.S.S. Mariner wants the Mariners to take a different approach to improving the team. After commenting on how the Astros appear to get more out of players than one might expect:

You may have seen the photo of Tim Lincecum training about 50 miles north of here at Driveline that’s flown around Baseball Twitter. The great Patrick Dubuque wrote about it at BP here, and he’s right – Lincecum doesn’t *need* to do anything more. His career – his meteoric rise to the top of baseball – was enough, and he has nothing left to prove. We all saw Lincecum’s last appearance in the bigs, pitching for the Angels, in what’s sure to be a tough pub quiz question 10 years hence. He pitched 3+ IP against Seattle, giving up 6 runs on 9 hits, and with an ERA standing at over 9, the Angels released him after that day in August of 2016. The statistical record looks pretty damning: declining velo leading to worse and worse results, and there you go – an early peak, an early fall, and hey, pitchers, amirite? As we’ve seen so often, though, players have much, much more control over their true talent than people like me ever imagined. Does this mean Lincecum’s back? Is Shawn Armstrong the next Nick Vincent? Will Ben Gamel hit 30 HRs? I don’t know, I don’t know, and I doubt it. But if I could make the M’s better than their rivals at any aspect of running a team, it’d be this ability to make a player unrecognizable – to blow the trend and the carefully-constructed scouting report out of the water. The Astros did this with a number of players, and that ultimately meant more to their World Series win than drafting Carlos Correa (though for the record, I’d like the M’s to draft the next Carlos Correa). The M’s trail the Astros in talent, and they need an out-of-nowhere leap in ability from a few of their players. That’d make a fine Christmas gift.

At one point in Moneyball, Billy Beane talks about how once a player reaches the majors, it’s tough to teach plate discipline. One thing that changed since that book is that teams found a way to get players to buy into change. Part of that is today’s hitters and pitchers grew up with stats on the internet. Part of that is teams do a better job of relaying the information. Players can change, and we are seeing that more today than ever.

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Roll Out the Barrels

Tom Tango uses a hockey analogy to re-examine production from barrelled balls. Although he doesn’t go in this direction in the post and comments, I think he is really evaluating hitters like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire (barrelled balls tend to go for home runs) versus Mike Trout and Joey Votto (barrelled balls produce a diverse set of hits). Bonds produced a .285 career BABIP, McGwire .255, Trout .355, Votto .354. Lots of home runs can cover other weaknesses.

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IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS BEFORE BUYING AN INFRARED SAUNA

Content originally published and Shared from http://perfectbath.com

If you’re in the market for an infrared sauna, there are several key considerations to make to ensure you select the perfect sauna for your home

Numerous health gurus, fitness experts and medical doctors all agree – saunas, specifically infrared saunas, can deliver a whole host of important health and wellness benefits for people of all ages. From chronic illness to minimizing stress, improving the effectiveness of a workout to cleansing and purifying the skin, modern saunas combine today’s leading technological innovations with centuries-old wellness principles to deliver real, tangible health benefits for the sauna enthusiast. If you’re considering buying an infrared sauna for your home, make sure you ask the following questions:

• What type of heating system is best?

  
  Traditionalists will always seek a way to tout the benefits of a “hot-rock-and-steam” sauna, but the majority of new saunas produced today are outfitted with infrared heating elements – not the old-school heaters that create extraordinary amounts of steam within the sauna. Near-infrared and far-infrared only heating elements are available, but saunas that use Full Spectrum Infrared (near, mid and far infrared) are generally considered the best. This heating system promotes sweat and deep-body infrared wave penetration to eliminate toxins as efficiently as possible. One of the biggest benefits of an infrared sauna versus the traditional sauna is the lower operating temperatures afforded by the infrared heating element.

• What size sauna should I be looking for?

  This obviously depends on your intended use.  If you will mostly be using the sauna by yourself, a compact sauna model might seem like the logical choice.  Many health-minded individuals use their sauna as a contained exercise room. You can add a different dimension to your yoga routine by doing it in a sauna, or add a twist to other exercises in your repertoire. Bottom line? Select a sauna that fits your home and your lifestyle, but make sure to account for future needs when narrowing down the overall dimensions.

• What are the real-world health benefits of an IR sauna?

  Your new infrared sauna will provide a host of tangible health and wellness benefits, with the eight most important sauna health benefits being:

 

• Muscle pain relief
• Immune system boost
• Weight loss and increased metabolism
• Detoxification
• Joint pain and stiffness relief
• Improved appearance of cellulite
• Reduction in fatigue and stress
• Improved skin tone and clarity

 

• What kind of warranty does my sauna include?

  Though a warranty is only one part of the equation, you’ll want to investigate the company and the warranty offered with each sauna. The warranty should cover the heater, electrical system, controls and other peripherals. Better companies will even cover accessories like audio and chromotherapy systems.Also, determine if the warranty will cover the sauna if the unit is used in a commercial location. If you’re looking for a new sauna for your office or commercial building, this is an important consideration. Most warranties are designed for home use and provide coverage in normal operating modes. Spend some time online, and research any consumer’s feedback of the company, including warranty-related issues.

When researching buying an infrared sauna for your home or office, there are various models available for your consideration that will perform admirably and last for years to come. Beauty Saunas Infrared Saunas are wildly popular today and combine several unique benefits for the discerning shopper. Beauty Saunas combine Full Spectrum Infrared heaters with kiln and air-dried wood structures for superior durability and performance. Far Infrared Saunas can also be enhanced with a number of options, such as chroma-therapy lights, custom interiors, sophisticated electronics packages, and more. And it’s all covered by the  Limited Lifetime Warranty for residential use. Even commercial-level users enjoy a lifetime warranty.

 

Contributed by: Aaron Gruenke Foremost expert in Saunas and bathroom fixtures.

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Clean Water Changes Everything

Those who have followed me for some time know this time of year, I shift my focus to a pet project:  Charity:Water, more specifically providing clean water to people in villages I will probably never see.

I’ve been running annual campaigns to raise money for about 4 years.  These, along with donating a part of the profits from the sales of Sales Manager Survival Guide, have enabled us to raise over $40K, providing water to 1000’s of people in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Once again, I’m asking you to contribute to Making A Difference 2017/2018.  If only for a moment, we could stop thinking about the challenges we and our organizations face, if we divert ourselves from our own dreams and ambitions, to think about how we might impact the lives of people we will never meet, we can have a huge impact on the quality of life in the world.  Our past campaigns have proven this.

Please consider contributing to Making A Difference 2017/2018.  No amount is too small or too large.  Alternatively, think of your favorite cause (other than yourself )  and consider contributing your time, money, or both.  Make A Difference on an issue you care about!

Clean water is at the root of many challenges that face all of us.  Some interesting data points:

• 663 million people live without clean water  (That’s twice the US population!)
• Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.
• 43% of those deaths are children under the age of 5.
• Access to clean water and basic sanitation can save 16,000 lives each week.
• In Africa alone, women spend 40 billion hours a year walking for water.  Imagine re harnessing that time to go to school, grow food, earn an income, start a business!
• Clean water helps keep kids in school, particularly girls.
• Women are responsible for 72% of the water collected in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Again, imagine harnessing their time to start businesses, raise families, get educations.

What I’ve always liked about Charity:Water’s programs, is that 100% of what we raise goes directly to a project in a needy community.  If you contribute, you will get status updates, so you can watch the progress and impact of your contribution.

Please consider joining me in this year’s campaign, Making A Difference 2017/2018.  Please encourage your friends, colleagues and family to join, as well–forward the link to this post to them.

Thanks so much for your support of my blog and related efforts this year.  Thanks, especially, for your support of Making A Difference 2017/2018.

 

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International Closer

The Diamondbacks took a gamble on Japanese closer Yoshihisa Hirano on the international free agent market. He will cost them just $6 million during his two-year contract. If he can land the closer’s job, the deal will be a big win for Arizona:

His repertoire consists of a low 90s fastball that’s complemented by a really devastating splitter and the occasional curveball. His game is mostly attacking the top of the zone with the fastball and the bottom of the zone with his splitter. This type of reliever is not unique to the Diamondbacks organization, as previous closers J.J. Putz and Jose Valverde were riser-splitter type pitchers and had great success in their tenures in Arizona.

This strikes as a possible low-risk high-reward type move that’s been Mike Hazen’s modus operandi since being hired as the GM of the Diamondbacks last offseason.

There appears to be little downside to the deal.

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Enberg Passes

Dick Enberg died Thursday morning.

Enberg was a fixture in American households for years, calling NFL and MLB games and Wimbledon for NBC, CBS and ESPN. He was best known for his catch phrase, “Oh, my!”

He spent his later years in San Diego, calling games locally for the Padres.

The Padres released an official statement late Thursday night, saying, “We are immensely saddened by the sudden and unexpected passing of legendary broadcaster Dick Enberg. Dick was an institution in the industry for 60 years and we were lucky enough to have his iconic voice behind the microphone for Padres games for nearly a decade. On behalf of our entire organization, we send our deepest condolences to his wife, Barbara, and the entire Enberg family.”

My thoughts go out to his family, friends, and many fans throughout the sports world.

Both the baseball and football halls of fame honored Enberg’s broadcasting. His voice was immediately recognizable. He was clear, concise, and never overwhelmed the spectacle he broadcast. The state of Michigan honored him earlier this year.

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I’d Hate to See the Criminals

Jean Segura reports he was robbed by Dominican police:

“The DICAN stops me with rifles, they hit me, they throw me to the ground, they take my belongings, they crash my vehicle,” the post translates to, in part. “Today it is me, tomorrow it will be another player.”

DICAN, the Dominican anti-drug police, has been cited for extortion and drug trafficking charges on multiple occasions in recent years.

Maybe the former players from the DR should follow the lead of the players of Palau and go into politics.

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Bye Bye Bowman

Bob Bowman resigned from MLB, although it appears resigned is a euphemism.

But a Wall Street Journal report Thursday indicated that Bowman shoved a member of the Boston Red Sox ownership group at an All-Star Game function in July and more recently verbally berated a staff member in the weeks before his departure.

More disturbingly, according to the Journal, citing people familiar with Bowman, he cultivated an atmosphere toxic to women employees, including propositioning them, engaging in relationships with subordinates and using pejoratives directly in their presence.

Then-commissioner Bud Selig was made aware of Bowman’s behavior by former chief operating officer Robert DuPuy. Yet no apparent action was taken against Bowman as he was building MLB’s advanced media wing into a virtual cash machine.

It seems to be a pattern lately that when one of these moguls starts to fall, the bad blood built up of the years comes back to haunt them.

I’ve been around a long time. I was in my early 20s when I came across the kind of behavior that hyper-competitive athletes exhibit, but it really generalizes to all professions. Some people just need to be the best, and will destroy anyone in their way. After a while, they don’t have any friends, and wonder why. They see themselves as someone striving to be the best, and don’t understand how they alienate people.

The joke when I worked at ESPN was that you cannot have a friendly game of checkers with a professional athlete. The athlete always felt the need to win. Ray Knight and Nancy Lopez could not play golf together because they could not turn off their competitiveness to enjoy a game as a couple. I suspect most of the people recently brought down by scandal are the same way.

They were all extremely successful, however. I like to think that the need to have the most money, the most women, the most trophies, isn’t required for great success, but right now it sure seems that way.

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Mahogany at Mill Lake

Mahogany at Mill Lake is a new condo development By Quantum Properties
currently under construction at 2180 Gladwin Road, Abbotsford. The development is scheduled for completion in 2018. Mahogany at Mill Lake has a total of 152 units.

The post Mahogany at Mill Lake appeared first on Vancouver New Condos.

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Defining the Strike Zone

One thing I like about Tom Tango is that he tries to get people talking the same language in terms of sabermetrics. Here, he mathematically defines the strike zone, introducing the terms heart, shadow, and ozone to describe the areas in question. You may need to read it two or three times, but it’s well worth the effort. I suspect we are going to see some interesting research tied to this.

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Replacing Santana

The Indians go to Yonder Alonso to fill the hole at first base left by the departure of Carlos Santana:

Free agent 1B Yonder Alonso in agreement with #Indians on two-year, $16M contract, sources tell The Athletic. Deal includes $8M vesting option for a third year. Agreement first reported by @BNightengale.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 21, 2017

While Santana posted better number long term, Alonso posted a better 2017 season. They were very close in terms of OBP, but Alonso slugged at a higher rate. Alonso is also a year younger. If he can repeat his 2017 season, the Indians get a nice replacement for under half the cost per season.

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Palau and Baseball

Via Marginal Revolution, how baseball shaped the modern island nation of Palau. The issues covered are big; colonial history, sports replacing violence, gender issues, and how men gaining fame in baseball led them into politics. Absolutely fascinating.

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Darkest Hour

It seems Zach Britton won’t be battling in at least the first half of 2018:

Britton ruptured his right Achilles tendon yesterday while working out at agent Scott Boras’ training center in California. The Orioles found out about it last night, according to executive vice president Dan Duquette, who confirmed the injury.

“We’re trying to get our arms around it and it looks like surgery is indicated,” Duquette said.

Asked for a timetable, Duquette replied, “We have to get a little bit more information from the surgery, but it looks like six months.”

This is going to be a really interesting off-season for the Orioles. They don’t look like a very good team, especially if they trade away Manny Machado. Duquette is a very good GM, so I’m really interested to see if he tries to put together a better than expected team, or steps back to take a couple of seasons to rebuild.

By the way, here are Britton’s relative discussing politics:

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What Did Manfred Know, and When Did He Know It?

Via Bleed Cubbie Blue, Dan Le Batard held a heated interview with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred about when Manfred knew the Marlins were going to cut payroll:

In a combative interview on ESPN Radio, host Dan Le Batard told Manfred: “We are starting with a lie” when Manfred said he did not know the plans of new owners Derek Jeter and Bruce Sherman during the approval process.

“I’m not going to have you call me a liar!” Manfred said.

Two people directly involved in the sales process said that Jeter and Sherman were required to tell other owners their intentions with payroll during the approval process, and that they informed the other owners that payroll would be cut from $115 million to the $85 million to $90 million range, with $85 million used at times and $90 million other times in those discussions.

Why are things never easy with the Marlins? My answer would have been, “Yeah I knew, but we had to get rid of the Loria clan, and this was the best group offering money. Plus, diversity!”

Derek Jeter took a lot of flak at a town hall meeting, but at least he put himself out in front of the fans. Better that fans are angry with him than at the players. If the team performs poorly, the fans won’t take it out on the team, but on the GM.

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Long Move for Longoria

Evan Longoria switches coasts as he brings the Rays four players from the Giants:

Longoria has five years remaining on a six-year, $100 million contract that also includes a seventh-year club option.

The Rays will be getting infielder Christian Arroyo, minor league pitchers Matt Krook and Stephen Woods and must take on the last year of outfielder Denard Span‘s contract. He will earn $9 million.

The 32-year-old is a three-time All-Star who has spent his entire 10-year career with the Rays and in many ways was the face of the franchise.

Longoria serves as a template for how a team gets the most out of a player. Signed to a six year, $17.5 million deal a few days after reaching the majors, the Rays made Longoria and the fans happy that they were willing to pay a top prospect to stay on the team. The Rays received about 35 fWAR from Longoria in those six years, worth about $237 million. The current contract is back loaded, so he’s still owed $81 million, more than half the contract. Given that he only produced 14.5 WAR over the last four seasons, the Giants are not getting the superstar the Rays fans knew and loved.

The Rays get Arroyo, who does a good job getting on base, Krook who blows away batters but has not learned control, and Woods, who is similar. I suspect all will see MLB action sooner than later.

The Giants plug a black hole at third base, where their crew posted a .216/.268/.300 slash line in 2017. Even a declining Longoria is much better than that.

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Dealing with Change

Eno Sarris talked with front office and field managers about how the game is changing, and how to react to that change. There is so much good commentary in the article, but here is one response that resonated with me (emphasis added):

“I do think there’s been a fairly extreme shift in the makeup of front offices and even media coverage,” said the higher-up. “The general framework of a lot of conversations about the game has really changed. Roster-building is a year-round sport, and it does tend to feel at times like we’re all a part of some meta theater that’s somewhat loosely attached to dudes playing on a field. The focus of what it means to be a fan or follow a team has shifted at least somewhat from simply knowing the players and what happened in games toward some bigger picture perspective that accounts for assets in the farm system, where you are on the win curve, and how efficiently resources are being utilized.”

This is why some people rebel against analytics. They want Jack Morris in the Hall of Fame because pitching 10 shutout innings in game seven of the World Series confirmed everything we knew from watching Morris’s career. Analytics does take some of the romance out of the game.

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3 Ways to Keep Your Bathroom Clean Longer

Content originally published and Shared from http://perfectbath.com

The household chore that we all probably hate most is cleaning the bathroom. It’s just so difficult to scrub stains once they’ve already built up. Don’t let your hard work go to waste by making your bathroom’s cleanliness last longer. Follow these amazing tips:

Image Source: Flickr

Take a little time to clean up your shower every day
Nothing helps delay mildew stains like a dry shower. Hang a squeegee over the shower head and make it a rule that the last one to take a shower wipes down the walls, tub, and shower doors. A couple extra minutes of work can really minimize cleaning time in the long-run.

You can also quickly zap moisture by opening a window and turning on the exhaust fan while showering. Leaving the door open, even a crack, helps it dissipate. And don’t forget to stretch the shower curtain open when it dries, too. Source: GoodHousekeeping

Tilt your head down when brushing your teeth
Well, I’ve always done it this way, but I see a lot of people who brush their teeth facing the mirror. You know what that does, though? It sends lots of little toothpaste bubbles on the mirror and everywhere on the countertop.

I’ve noticed that if I bow my head and keep it close to the sink, most of these bubbles end up in the sink and rinsed away. Silly? Maybe. But I find it saves me a lot of mirror-cleaning.  Source: TheSpruce

Put soap in the flush tank
You can either add a piece of soap to your flush tank or drop one of the ready-made toilet cleaner bulbs into the tank. In this way, your toilet bowl is getting cleaned every time you flush. Soapy water is slippery, so it doesn’t allow the stains to stick. Source: BoldSky

Replace your old bathroom fixtures with new, high quality ones. Call us today!

 

Contact:
Perfect Bath
Phone: Toll Free 1-866-843-1641
Calgary, Alberta
Email: info@perfectbath.com

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If A “Fool With A Tool Is Still A Fool,” Why Do We Keep Giving Them Tools?

A colleague specializing in sales and marketing automation tools is fond of saying, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.”   My variation of this is that often tools enable us to “Create crap at the speed of light.”

Tools have a wonderful way of amplifying our capabilities.  We can not only drive greater velocity, but also far greater volume and reach.  In the hands of fools, tools enable us to not only execute poorly at very high velocity, but to spread the pain of that poor execution across a much broader range of victims, I mean prospects/customers.

With that as a starting thesis, there some interesting and ironic pieces to this story.  One of the hottest segments is Marketing And Sales Automation.  Every year organizations like Martech inventory the number of vendors supplying sales and marketing automation tools.  The number of firms providing these tools is skyrocketing.  Literally 1000’s of new tools appear on the market every year.

Companies are spending 10’s of billions in providing their sales people these tools.  Presumably, they invest in these tools to help their people sell more, more effectively and more efficiently.

The other side of the coin is the data on sales performance.  One of the favorite data points is percent of people making plan.  For some years, CSO Insights has shown a continued decline in that number.  Right now it’s somewhere in the mid 50% range, dropping from the 60’s some years ago.  Other market research firms show similar trends.

As you pause to reflect, none of this makes sense.  If we are investing more and more in tools, along with that, training, content, and other things to enable sales people, we would expect performance to be improving quite remarkably.

Instead we see the exact opposite, performance is declining.

As I speak to sales executives, qualitatively, I see similar things happening.  They are spending more and more on these tools, but not seeing the return.  A lot of it is people aren’t using these tools.  It’s astounding that we are seeing second and third generation CRM tools, yet compliance is still the dominant issue—people aren’t using them.

Should we blame the tool suppliers?  Well, not entirely.  They have outstanding data about producing great results.  Tools in the hands of great sales people amplify their abilities to perform tremendously.  I’m a great fan of many of these tools and we leverage them to great impact.

It seems the problem is that we aren’t addressing the “fools” piece of this issue.  We aren’t looking at the sales people, improving the quality and capabilities of the people in our organizations.  We can’t take mediocre or poor sales people and expect them to get better by providing them tools.

Yet too many managers have this strategy.  Too many managers think that providing the tools will make mediocre and poor performers get better.  Rather than addressing the selection and performance of sales people, they think that technology will make the mediocre or poor sales people better.

“If we just give them better leads……”

“If we give them more insight about the customer….”

“If we give them tools to be more productive…..”

Whatever the rationalizations, a fool with a tool is still a fool.  Extend that to our average and mediocre players, they will still be average, unless we directly address the issues that stand in the way of performance.

There are basically two strategies to address this.

One, as many people  write about, is to displace the sales person.  To move as much online as possible, enabling the customer to self educate, evaluate, and buy completely untouched by human hands.  In some sense, one might think of Amazon as the greatest sales automation tool invented.

Clearly, there are products and services that are more transactional in the buying/selling process, where it makes huge sense to move these to some sort of online platform—there go all the order takers (even the good ones).

But we’re still left with the complex B2B buying processes.  Where customers really need help.

Digital helps, it enables customers to conduct some of their buying journey digitally through web research.  Huge amounts are being invested here, unfortunately, too much of is is still self promotional, offering little more than web based billboards screaming “buy my product.”  But learning about a product is just a small part of the customer buying/problem solving journey.

We need sales people to help customers with the remaining parts of that journey.

It’s here that we have the problem, and the tools won’t fix this.  Until we address the basic issues of performance of our people, we will never be able to leverage the tools to their full potential.

Managers can’t ignore this.  Managers can’t keep thinking, “just give them more tools….”  Managers have to make sure they have the right people in place.  They have to coach and develop those people to reach the levels of performance required in the organization.  Only then, will we be able to leverage the real value of the tools.  Until managers focus on this, we are just providing fools more tools.

 

Afterword:  There’s an interesting way to think about AI in this context.  There are those that speak about Artificial Intelligence.  Artificial Intelligence is really focused on displacing the sales person.  It’s just the next generation of web based shopping tools.  There are those that speak about Augmented Intelligence (I tend to be in this camp).  These tools can help great sales people perform even better, but a fool with Augmented Intelligence is still…….

Related Posts:

• Tools Don’t Change People
• Leveraging Tools To Make Us Better
• Creating Crap At The Speed Of Light
• Does Sales 2.0 Make You A Better Sales Person?
• Who Is The Beneficiary Of Sales And Marketing Automation?

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Let Timmy Smoke Again!

Tim Lincecum appears to be making a comeback:

Kyle Boddy of Driveline Baseball in Kent, Wash., posted a photo of the former Giants right-hander working out at the facility.

“Yes, this is Tim Lincecum at @DrivelineBB ,” Boddy tweeted from his KyleB@Driveline account. “Yes, Adam Ottavino took the picture while training here. Yes, Tim will throw for teams at a showcase in the near future. No, I have no other information for you.”

Lincecum looks ripped in the picture. He’s 33 so he may be able to make a return. Bartolo Colon when through a worse stretch at an older age and then came back strong for another solid six years.

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Helping Retirees

Douglas Gladstone chides the MLBPA for not doing more for players who retired before the better health care and pension provisions kicked in:

That’s why this statement found on the history page of MLBPA’s web site is so comical:

“Each generation of players has passed along a legacy and a responsibility to the next generation — a legacy built on equality, loyalty and fair play.”

And the thing is, some sports columnists are so afraid of losing their access to the clubs they cover and write about, and they’re so petrified of not being able to talk to ballplayers, they don’t challenge the union over its hypocritical statement.

Maybe the New Year will be different. Maybe 2018 will finally see Clark come to his senses. Maybe he’ll live up to the nickname that was bestowed upon him when he was an All-Star in Detroit — “Tony the Tiger.”

‘Cause the way I see it, to paraphrase the late E.Y. Yip Harburg, this Tiger is just a dandelion. He has no courage.

Whenever a person or group goes into a negotiation, there are items there can can be abandoned so that a side can give up something, without losing anything it really wants. I suspect better benefits for former players is an easy one to toss aside.

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The Hamels Gift

Cole Hamels and his wife Heidi Hamels donated a house to charity:

In doing so, the Hamels are donating a 32,000-square-foot home in southwest Missouri to charity. The home, on Table Rock Lake, is being given to Camp Barnabas.

“There are tons of amazing charities in southwest Missouri. Out of all of these, Barnabas really pulled on our heartstrings,” Hamels said in a release. “Seeing the faces, hearing the laughter, reading the stories of the kids they serve; there is truly nothing like it. Barnabas makes dreams come true, and we felt called to help them in a big way.”

The house is worth nearly $10 million. It’s a wonderful Christmas present.

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Realmuto Wants Out

J.T. Realmuto requested a trade from the Marlins. The Marlins don’t want the players dictating trades:

“We used the last couple of weeks continuing to lay the foundation for building a first-class, winning organization,” president of baseball operations Michael Hill said in a statement released after Realmuto’s request became public. “Should we feel like we need to make a trade involving any of our under-contract, controllable players, we will be the ones who initiate that conversation and always do what’s best for the organization.”

Players are pretty good at getting themselves traded. It’s pretty easy to become a clubhouse cancer. Complaining a lot usually gets one off the team. While the Marlins want to be in control of the situation, it’s tough to keep a player that doesn’t want to remain on the team.

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What If We Start Designing Our Organizations For “A Players” Only?

All of us, me included, tend to think of our organizations as mixes of A, B, C players.  Implicitly, we tend to believe that’s the way things are.

We settle into routines about how we coach and improve each, at best, shifting the bell curve (or normal distribution curve) a little to the right.  All the time wringing our hands about how we improve performance.

But what would happen if we start designing our organizations to have only A players, or those that will become A players in a reasonable period of time?  Why should we accept the idea that there will always be B an Cs?

What would we have to do differently to create organizations only if A players?

First, we have to know what makes an A player.  To do this, we have to create very rich competency models describing behaviors, attitudes, skills, capabilities, experiences, psychometric qualities, cultural fit, and other areas.  We have to do this for each role in the organization.  As our businesses change we have to keep these updated.

Then we have to rigorously recruit based on this model.  Rather than settling for what we get or the best of the half dozen we chose to interview, we have to recruit for those who fit the model (or will do so after onboarding).

We have to have strong and aggressive onboarding, making sure the person we have can step into the role, performing at the level that we want.  We know if we are recruiting top talent, they will be hungry to contribute as much and as quickly as possible.

We have to recognize maturity levels in the model.  That is, there we would expect some spread between the capabilities of a new person and a senior person.  A person one year in the role might be an A player for that stage of their job maturity, but would not be an A player when compared to those five years in the role.  This drives us to think about developing our people, helping them constantly grow, enabling them to continue to be A players.

An organization built of A players only, will challenge each of us.  We have to continue to coach, develop, and grow them.  It is their expectation of us.  Because they are A players, they will constantly push us, they want to get better, they want to grow.  If we don’t challenge them, if we don’t create these opportunities to grow, if we don’t constantly challenge them, they will go someplace where they can find that challenge.

As we think of designing an organization of A players, we suddenly must realize what it means for each of us, as leaders.  We have to be the top of our games, we have to be A players ourselves,  We have to continue to develop, we have to constantly be growing and innovating.  We cannot design organizations of A players if we have B or C level managers.

Organizations that are dominated by A players exist.  They are rare, but we see them all around us.  They tend to be the leaders in our industries and markets,  They tend to be the ones we envy and strive to emulate.  Their performance eclipses the performance of their competition.

It’s actually not that difficult, we have to start with ourselves, we have to be uncompromising in the standards we set for ourselves, our people, and our organizations.  But think of what that looks like, think of the pure fun, the energy, and learning that comes from such an organization.

It’s a choice, we as leaders , make—we just have to be up to what it takes, when we make that choice.

 

 

Related Posts:

• “Behind Every C Player, There’s A…
• Proving Math Works, Flawed Coaching Arguments
• Fallacies In Our Thinking About A, B, And C Players
• Settling For Non-Performance
• Should “A Players” Care About Grammar?

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Phillies Getting On

The Phillies addressed a glaring offensive problem in the last few days, adding Carlos Santana on a three-year deal and trading away Freddy Galvis to the Padres. The Phillies posted a .315 OBP in 2017, ten points below the NL average. That ranked 13th in the league. First base came in at .309, while shortstop was a little better at .316. Galvis, however, holds a .287 OBP for his career, while his replacement, prospect J.P.Crawford did an excellent job of getting on base in the minors. Carlos Santana owns a .365 career OBP, and brings power to boot.

The Phillies may have gotten better on the other side of the ball, also. Enyel De Los Santos, the pitcher they received from the Padres, walks very few batters. Drawing a good number of walks while issuing few is a nice path to success.

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A Baseball Love Story

A couple married thanks to work for the Washington Nationals. The bride is the daughter and grand daughter of Joe Garagiola, and the groom is the director of scouting operations for the Washington Nationals:

The couple met during the 2013 baseball season when both were working for the Washington Nationals. Ms. Garagiola, new to the team’s marketing department, was given a tour of the stadium by Mr. Longosz, then the team’s coordinator of scouting.

Congratulations to the couple, and may they have many curly Ws.

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Injury Blockbuster

The headline on this story describes the Braves trade with the Dodgers as a blockbuster, but it really just seems to be a salary dump as a bunch of injured and/or not very good players trade places:

Matt Kemp is heading back to Los Angeles and the path is officially cleared for superstar prospect Ronald Acuña after the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers completed an expensive five-player blockbuster.

Los Angeles sent veteran pitchers Brandon McCarthy and Scott Kazmir, utility option Charlie Culberson, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and cash considerations to Atlanta in exchange for Kemp. The Braves immediately designated Gonzalez, who waived his no-trade clause to complete the transaction, for assignment to allow him a chance to earn significant playing time somewhere in 2018. Atlanta’s 40-man roster is now full.

The Dodgers reportedly sent $4.5 million to balance the two salary dumps.

So the Dodgers can now dump Kemp and in one move pull themselves under the salary cap. If they stay healthy, Kazmir and McCarthy, but their injury history argues against that. Gonzalez was released by the Braves, and becomes a free agent.

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Angels Keep Improving

I like the Zack Cozart deal for the Angels. At $38 million over three years, the Angels are paying him for about 1.5 WAR per season. That’s pretty much his historical level. They were not tempted to over pay him after he posted a five-WAR season late in his prime. Even if Cozart fall apart in his early 30s, the Angels are not committed to him long term.

Right now, the Angels are doing a good job of putting capable veterans around Mike Trout on offense. With healthy pitching, they could make a better run for a wild card, or even a division title if the Astros falter.

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Family Trade

Stephen Piscotty‘s ailing mother appeared to be a big reason in the Cardinals decision to trade the outfielder to Oakland. She suffers from ALS:

As the 2017 Cardinals lost steam and the focus turned to the future, the team decided it would look to move Piscotty — with a preference on sending him close to the Bay Area if a deal to do so was palatable. It worked out nicely that the A’s were shopping for a righthanded hitting corner outfielder with a locked-in contract.

“You are never making a player trade simply for geographic or sentimental reasons,” Mozeliak said. “It had to be something that made sense for us. There were certainly some opportunities to move him elsewhere. When you are looking at how to break a tie, clearly that (sending Piscotty home) did play into it.”

Although Piscotty hit poorly for average and power in 2017, he maintained his OBP. He hit well on a west coast trip in September, where his mother was able to attend games. It was only 26 PA, so take the .391 BA with a grain of salt. The A’s, however, should be optimistic that he did maintain his OBP, and that he will be playing for them in the middle of his peak years. He looks like a great candidate for bouncing back from an off year.

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Rodriguez Talks Stats

Alex Rodriguez will join the MIT-Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2018:

We are thrilled to welcome Alex Rodriguez, 3-time MVP, 14-time all-star, and World Series Champion, as a speaker at the 2018 Conference! His success extends beyond the field and includes investments, real estate and philanthropy. The insights of this all-time great will be one of the highlights of SSAC18, and we look forward to welcoming him to Boston in February!

The rebranding of A-Rod continues.

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Holland Park By Townline in the heart of Surrey

Holland Park By Townline is a 25-storey residential high-rise tower offering 248 well-finished city homes, consisting of condominium suites and three-level townhomes. Located in the heart of Surrey’s emerging City Centre and overlooking Holland Park. This high-rise tower boasts close proximity to the King George SkyTrain Station, SFU’s Surrey Campus, and the Central City Shopping Centre.

Opening 2018

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Bordeaux Living – Brentwood

After the sucessful launch of Milano, Solerra is bringing Bordeaux to the Brentwood area. Further expanding what is becoming the hottest real estate market in Great Vancouver.

Bordeaux Living will be located on the corner of Juneau Street and Willingdon Avenue, 1 block south of Lougheed Highway.

Bordeaux will consist of 141 concrete apartment residences, including a limited collection of 3 bedroom townhouses.  Bordeaux will include luxurious Italian kitchens, premium appliances, air conditioning, oversized outdoor spaces and a plethora of building amenities.

To be kept up to date on Bordeaux, and many other like it in Brentwood, register with us to be kept in the loop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is not an offering for sale. No such offering can be made without a disclosure statement. E.&O.E.

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