In everything we do, or with anything our organizations do, we have to rely on a set of fundamental tenets. That is, here are our goals, and here are the basics to how we reach those goals. These fundamentals, if you will, are at the core of what all of us do. If we master them and stick to them we should be successful. If we don’t, we may lose the race.
As many of our readers know, I help coach a couple of our son Brock’s sports teams. I’m the defensive coordinator for his flag football team (for now anyway, after this story they may replace me, but I digress). Every week at practice we work on just two fundamental things. One, we work on flag pulling (a lot). Two, we work on keeping the opposing ball carriers from getting to the sidelines. At this age level when a fast kid gets to the outside it’s usually a touchdown. So we tell the kids repeatedly to stay wide and force the runner back into the middle of the field where all their teammates can come help pull flags.
The first round of the playoffs was this past weekend. We are the Raiders and the opposing team was the Bears, who we had defeated in a close regular season game. The Bears have two really good players and one GREAT one. Without going into too much detail, we let the great player get outside three times in the first half. Touchdown. Touchdown. Touchdown. One of them was equivalent to a 90 yard run in the closing seconds of the first half when the game was still close.
We didn’t execute one of our core fundamentals of forcing the ball carriers back inside, and our flag pulling was mediocre, so next week we get to stay home and the Bears moved on to the second round.
What does this story have to do with people and organizations? Here you go…..
Our kids can recite our two defensive core tenets of our team verbatim (I actually tested our son Brock on the way to baseball practice on Sunday and he hit them both right on script). They know that we are to (1) force the ball carriers to the middle of the field, and to (2) rally to pull flags. So here begs the question.
Does your team know what your core fundamentals are? Can they say them out loud if asked? Do they execute on those key things every day?
Here is an even better question.
Can your board members and stakeholders recite the organization’s core beliefs like bible and verse?
If the answers to either of these questions is no, it’s probably time for a pow wow to define what the goals for the organization look like and how we plan to chip away at those targets each and every day.
For example, “We enrich our community through sport, and we do so in three ways. Boom. Boom. Boom.” Whatever those big goals are and the three booms to get there may be, we should all mutually understand them and know that is what we are trying to do now and into the future. Until a time comes that we want to redefine those targets and methods.
Define the goal (pull flags) and the method for the team to achieve that goal (force the runner back to the middle where the rest of the team can help out).
Whatever the mission, defining IT and the pathway towards IT, is key for the whole team.
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