Be enthusiastic about our culture, the why and how we do it every day. Sustained achievement follows disciplined process.
Lecturers inform but teachers inspire. The best lecture I attended was at Boston City Hospital, as a medical student, about drug abuse. Visiting professor Dr. Faith Fitzgerald (1980) recounted her many experiences in San Francisco caring for patients, including details about the tattoos common in addicts. She explained how she often saw "cross" tattoos on the wrist, "spider web" tattoos in the antecubital fossa (inside the elbow) and track marks and "skin pops" left by needles (below).
Aspire to make every presentation, every practice a MasterClass. What's sticky that gives players an edge? I listened again to Sam Jackson's presentation on auditioning. "The most important objective is to make a lasting impression so that the casting director wants to follow your character out of the room. Remember that you’re an actor and this is a “look-at-me” business, so make them look at you—keeping in mind, of course, the given circumstances of the scene and character. Be your best self." This is true trying out for a team, a job introduction, or a school interview. Be memorable.
Define yourself.
Scott Frost imprints three elements of coaching - connection, competence, and communication.Scott Frost defines Coaching— CoachTube.com (@thecoachtube) May 26, 2020
➖Make a connection
➖Know what you’re talking about
➖Communicate clearly to your team
📽 Youtube via afjacque pic.twitter.com/sby3zLy9ob
Get players reading. Coach George Raveling is a prolific reader. Kevin Eastman reads two hours a day. "The difference between who we are today and whom we become in five years are the people we meet and the books we read."
Some of my favorites...
1) Reread excellent books and abandon a bad read.
2) Use the author's passion and prose to better our own.
3) Matt Haig says every book is about "someone searching for something."
Get everyone thinking. Warren Buffett's partner, Charlie Munger, is one of the great thinkers of our time. He shares:
"To get what you want, deserve what you want. Trust, success, and admiration are earned."
Acquiring wisdom is a moral duty as well as a practical one.
Learn to fluency the big multidisciplinary ideas of the world and use them regularly.
Learn to think through problems backwards as well as forward.
Be reliable. Unreliability can cancel out the other virtues.
Get rid of self-serving bias, envy, resentment, and self-pity.
Work with and under people you admire, and avoid the inverse when at all possible.
Learn to maintain your objectivity, especially when it’s hardest.
Use setbacks in life as an opportunity to become a bigger and better person. Don’t wallow.
In your own life what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust.
Grow wise by listening to people wiser than we.
Summary:
Lecturers inform but teachers inspire.
Make every presentation a MasterClass.
Define yourself through connection, competence, and communication.
Get people reading.
Get people thinking.
Lagniappe: The Checklist Manifesto is not Atul Gawande's most well-known book (Being Mortal is), but offers a process used in construction, aviation, investing, restaurants, medicine, and more.
What might belong on NBA checklists for resumption?
This forms a monumental challenge for everyone involved. It can work if all commit to making it work because of the money at stake. "The money nerve" is the most sensitive in the body. Touch it and everybody jumps.
If I were an NBA mogul, I'd pledge to maintain the same conditions as those demanded of players, coaches, and staff during the restart through conclusion of the season. Nassim Taleb would call that Skin in the Game.
Distractions mean defeat during games but diversion during downtime.
Lagniappe 2: Kaizen (Small Steps) versus Innovation (from One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer, Ph.D.
"Kaizen and innovation are the two major strategies people use to create change. Where innovation demands shocking and radical reform, all kaizen asks is that you take small, comfortable step toward improvement."
Lagniappe 3: If you could lunch with anyone, living or dead, whom would you choose? What benefit, knowledge, or wisdom would you hope to gain?
