I returned from my company’s North American controller’s conference Thursday night with a takeaway I’ll share this morning.
One-third of the 18 presentations among the conference’s three days were comprised of the company’s site controller’s owning something that didn’t work well, or fixing a deficiency on their site, then illustrating their path toward success.
They didn’t dwell on the problem and beat themselves up. Instead, they immediately became part of the solution.
If an individual were to take part in criminal behavior, they would have not been at the conference to tell their story. However, the presenters took important steps to turn chicken excrement into chicken salad.
They owned the problem and avoided going down with the status quo ship.
I’ve worked in companies where the lead for a product, process, or other ideas maintained a death grip until one or all of these things ended with hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in losses.
Some of them just hoped for some dues ex machina to reverse their fortunes, and did little in terms of self-reflection, or to change their voyage’s course.
These individuals also had a common issue: each believed asking for help was a sign of weakness.
Look at sports teams and their athletes who maintain a death grip within a game or throughout the season on failing strategies and execution. These teams rarely end the season successfully, and in some cases, coaches are invited by their athletic departments to pursue other interests.
Meanwhile, at the conference each presenter illustrated exposures, deficiencies, and quantified the respective unfavorable impacts. They did not do this in a self-deprecating manner. They did not quit when they realized they reached the bottom of their company’s problem trough.
Almost every presenter not only had to improve processes or create stronger safeguards to control their assets, but they also had to change culture, change key personnel and folks in the trenches, or take both of these painful but gainful steps.
I’m happy to report, with the mix of changing their systems, processes, leadership, and workforce each of these presenters either had a completed success story, or their journeys are currently moving in a continually favorable direction.
I found it most interesting none of these presenters groused about a lack of talent, or lack of technical knowledge. Most of these issues did not surface because people were collectively incompetent.
Instead, some of the sites were staffed with talented people who didn’t address the fundamentals prior to manufacturing and selling products to their customers.
They did whatever it took, and cut some corners on the journey, to get a product to the customer without safeguarding resources, or they did the equivalent of not using off-season and practice week activities to ensure the basics became memory motion.
Once a team or a company attains success the most successful outfits still ensure the basics are in place.
Good football teams in the area don’t stop practicing, they don’t stop conditioning, and they don’t say something like, “The over-under for our season was six wins. We won six games; we are good to go.”
If you ever hear a coach tell reporters, “We just cannot find the talent to get where we want to be,” chances are their staff and/or their athletes aren’t taking off-season conditioning or maintaining competitiveness in other forms very seriously.
The Warsaw Tigers’ 2019 football sectional championship team does not rank among the top five talented, athletic units the program has ever put on the gridiron.
I take nothing away from, nor do I marginalize the collective ability and talent of the 2019 sectional champs.
The 2019 Warsaw Tiger football team was comprised of one of the most well-mannered freshman teams who lacked a constructive level of football violence after two middle schools with two consecutive losing seasons combined resources at the high school level.
Through weight room effort, other conditioning, and embracing Black Plague and Wild Hog cultures within the team’s respective defensive and offensive units as they progressed through varsity play, this team didn’t want to end their season after the final buzzer of the tenth football game.
The 2020 team won their conference title, but didn’t say, “Last year’s team didn’t win conference, so everything else is just icing on the cake.”
They stayed hungry, reached another sectional final by beating a Carroll team who owned them during the past decade, and battled a considerably favored Homestead squad ending their season at 8-3.
Wouldn’t we all want our teams to go undefeated? Of course. We know, however, come tournament time, each level results in half the kids turning in their gear after a quiet bus ride home.
Well, folks, among fall sports this year, the last team standing in each sport will range from one to six depending on the sport, and how many enrollment classes comprising it. The others will turn in their gear along the way, sooner than they wished.
In the meantime, since all the fall sports’ postseason paths are open to all teams or individual competitors, it would behoove coaches and athletes to openly expose in practice what isn’t working and share their collective low point in the trough to climb out of it. In most cases, like the teams whose presentations I heard this last week, things can only get better.
Good luck to each area school among all their fall sports teams’ seasons.