Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 11:35AM
Joey Brannon in Consulting
I love golf! I love everything about it: being outside, the competition, the mental challenge, the constant improvement. The only thing I don't like is that I don't get to play often enough. Golf and business have long been associated with one another. I personally don't like to do deals on the golf course, but there's no denying that it can be a great place to build relationships, business or otherwise.
In my constant search for analogies that illustrate the challenges our clients face I recently found myself relying on a golf metaphor to get my point across. I've been to a few professional golf tournaments and I've yet to hear a player in the fairway ask his caddy "How far away are we from the tee box?" To the uninitiated, players "tee off", land in the fairway, and then hit an approach shot from the fairway to the green where they putt the ball in the cup. What is important when you are in the fairway is how far you must hit the ball to the green, NOT how far you just hit it from the tee box. It's the NEXT shot that's important, not the LAST one. I was once standing beside the fairway at a PGA event and a player asked his caddy how far it was to the hole. The caddy replied "It's 156 or 157 yards" to which the player responded indignantly "IS IT 156 OR 157?!"
Here's the problem. Most business owners are much too concerned with how far they hit the ball from the tee box. Rather than focus on what comes next, rather than get their yardage 100% accurate so they know how to plan and execute the next shot, they spend their days worrying about the fact that they just hit a lousy shot. Or worse, they bask in the glory of some recent accomplishment and spend little or no time thinking about what should come next.
Competitive golfers and good business people always have their focus on what comes next. The execution that occurs in the present is a bi-product of long hours of preparation and practice. For the golfer this means going to the practice range and hitting shot after shot until the execution is automatic. For the business person it means finding and mentoring good people and putting good business processes in place. What separates great golfers from good ones and what separates great business leaders from the rest is an ability to envision the shot that comes next. They know where the ball needs to be after the next shot to give them the greatest chance of success. When execution doesn't deliver the shot they expect they adjust and plan the next shot. They don't get distracted by the mis-hit.
I've played golf with guys who hit one bad shot and it ruins their entire day. They get mad and frustrated and so they hit another bad shot. They start to feel the pressure and then they try to pull off a shot that they just can't hit because they haven't put in the hours of preparation and practice to hit those types of shots consistently. Soon it's an ugly down hill spiral that makes for lousy golf scores and lots of ribbing from the rest of the group.
I've also played with guys who hit a bad shot, maintain their composure, get back on track, limit the damage done to their score and move on to the next hole to resume a great round of golf. This resilience has more to do with mental maturity and toughness than physical ability or preparation. Business is much the same way except that our "shots" are played out over weeks and months instead of minutes. The ability of a business owner to gather his thoughts, regain composure and move on is a key ingredient in long term success.
One final golf analogy, and this one's important. I can't tell you how many times I have hit a booming shot off the tee box 270 or 280 yards, then hit a phenomenal approach shot another 120-130 yards. Then when I got up on the green I missed a four FOOT putt to win the hole. Very often in business it's easy to do the big things successfully, but at the end of the day it's executing the SMALL things to perfection that determines ultimate success. Here's the thing, in golf sinking a four foot putt is not as glamorous as hitting a ball 300 yards. But it doesn't matter, whether you hit it 300 yards or 4 feet the strokes count the same. In business you can do everything right and forget a prospect's name and the sale is lost. You can build a great compensation scheme but if you fail to tell your employees you appreciate them they won't care about your company. You can manufacture a great product and put the wrong packaging on it and it won't move off store shelves.