I was working with a business coach a few years ago who would challenge me to keep at the forefront of my mind a focus question. The question was “what would a winner do?”
When I get up in the morning, when I get to the office, when I was faced with a challenge this question would drive my behavior focusing attention on the thoughts, feelings and actions of a “winner.” That was five years ago.
I realized on Monday, December 29, 2008 that being a being a winner is no longer enough, in sports, business and in life. The firing of the National Football League’s New York Jets’ Head Coach Eric Mangini opened my eyes to this phenomenon. Mangini, having just completed his third season with the Jets with a winning record of 9-7, just one year removed from a 10-6 season and a berth in the playoffs, lost his job.
I did some research and found that of the five other NFL head coaches given pink slips immediately after the completion of the most recent season, fifty percent of them had won at least as many as they lost. Two of those three had winning records and had won at least one Super Bowl during their overall tenure with those teams. Interesting.
I decided to look deeper. In 2008 four Major League Baseball Managers were fired, all during the season. Only one of those four had a winning record at the time of their firing. But two of the four were just a few games shy of a winning record and were released before the season reached the half-way point.
Now, for the really absurd. In the National Hockey League (the sport I follow most closely) three coaches were fired in the fall of 2008, less than one-third of the way through the current season. One of those won a Stanley Cup Championship just three years ago and one of those three came off a winning season last year. And then there is the story of Claude Julien, former head coach of the New Jersey Devils in 2005. After winning the division championship with a 49-24-9 record and qualifying as the top seed for the playoff tournament, he was fired between the end of the regular season and the first game of the playoffs (this year Julien’s Boston Bruins lead the league with a 33-8-4 record, look out Claude!).
What this means for those in the business world is that it is time to think about how performance is managed. Is mediocrity accepted in your organization?
Not one business leader I’ve spoken to regarding the personnel changes they have had to make during their career expressed regret that they pulled the trigger too early. Every one lamented they waited too long to make the change.
It’s time to move beyond hoping to hire winners for your organization. It’s time focus on hiring and developing Champions. As you can see from the recent examples of professional sports franchises, being a winner is no longer enough.
Striving to be a winner puts the focus on just winning more than losing. A winner needs to win one more game than they lose and that is mediocrity. In sports that is never enough to get a team into the playoff tournament for a chance to win the Championship.
There are five personality traits of a Champion in Business. I will be sharing those in a workshop on Tuesday, January 27th at the Orange County Chamber of Commerce from 8am – 10:30am. Tuition is only $20 and all proceeds benefit The Community Foundation of Orange & Sullivan. To register please visit:
