Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

Which Of The Four Are Getting The Way? by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Mon, Jun 20, 2011 @ 16:06 PM

Which of the four are getting the way?

You don't know what to do

You don't know how to do it

You don't have the authority or the resources to do it

You're afraid

Once you figure out what's getting in the way, it's far easier to find the answer (or decide to work on a different problem).

Stuck is a state of mind, and it's curable.

 

Topics: Basketball Related, Art Horne, basketball training programs, athletic training, Seth Godin

Agency by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Wed, Jun 15, 2011 @ 07:06 AM

Agency

A door is not responsible if it swings and hits you in the nose. Neither is the hand of the guy who punched you.

Philosphers and lawyers talk about agency. Responsibility comes with the capacity to act in the world. If you can decide, if you can act, you have agency.

Life without agency would be a nightmare. Trapped in a box, unable to do anything by choice, nothing but a puppet...

Why then, do organizations and individuals struggle so intently to avoid the responsibility that comes with agency? "It's not my job, my boss won't let me, there's a federal regulation, we're prohibited, it's our supplier, that's our policy..."

It's not something you can turn on or off. Either you have the capacity to act in the world. Or you don't.

 

Topics: basketball performance, basketball resources, basketball conference, basketball training programs, athletic training conference, boston hockey summit, Seth Godin

Caring by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Thu, Jun 9, 2011 @ 06:06 AM

Caring

No organization cares about you. Organizations aren't capable of this.

Your bank, certainly, doesn't care. Neither does your HMO or even your car dealer. It's amazing to me that people are surprised to discover this fact.

People, on the other hand, are perfectly capable of caring. It's part of being a human. It's only when organizational demands and regulations get in the way that the caring fades.

If you want to build a caring organization, you need to fill it with caring people and then get out of their way. When your organization punishes people for caring, don't be surprised when people stop caring.

When you free your employees to act like people (as opposed to cogs in a profit-maximizing efficient machine) then the caring can't help but happen.

 

Topics: basketball conference, athletic training conference, boston hockey summit, boston hockey conference, Seth Godin

Bar Gymnastics by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Wed, Jun 1, 2011 @ 06:06 AM

athletic training

 

Bar gymnastics

Some people I know work hard to lower the bar at work.

That was my strategy at gym class in high school. Not only did I do the minimum amount permitted, I worked hard to do just a little bit less than that. By the time the semester was over, the teacher was relieved if I even bothered to show up at all.

Most people seek to meet the bar. They figure out what's expected, and do that.

A few people, very few, work to relentlessly raise the bar. She's the one who overdelivers on projects, shows up ahead of schedule, instigates, suggests and pushes.

Raising the bar is exhausting, no doubt about it. I'm not sure the people who engage in this apparently reckless behavior would have it any other way, though. They get to experience a fundamentally different day, a different journey and a different reputation than everyone else.

Why now? What has changed that makes promoting bar gymnastics more than a selfish effort by the boss to get more labor out of the workforce?

Simple. This is the post-industrial era. Success is not about speeding up the assembly line as much as it relies on individuals able to create leaps forward. The person capable of doing that sort of work is in far higher demand than ever before.

Topics: basketball resources, basketball conference, athletic training conference, boston hockey summit, boston hockey conference, Seth Godin

Looking For The Right Excuse by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Fri, May 27, 2011 @ 06:05 AM

Looking for the right excuse

This is the first warning sign that a project is in trouble. Sometimes it even begins before the project does.

Quietly, our subconscious starts looking around for an excuse, deniability and someone to blame. It gives us confidence and peace of mind. [It's much easier to be calm when the police car appears in your rear view mirror if you have an excuse handy.]

Amazingly, we often look for the excuse before we even accept the project. We say to ourselves, "well, I can start this, and if it doesn't work perfectly, I can point out it was the ..." Then, as the team ramps up, bosses appear and events occur (or not), we continually add to and refine our excuse list, reminding ourselves of all the factors that were out of our control. Decades ago, when I used to sell by phone, I often found myself describing why I was unable to close this particular sale--and realized I was articulating these reasons while the phone was still ringing.

People who have a built-in all-purpose excuse (middle child syndrom, wrong astrology sign, some slight at the hands of the system long ago) often end up failing--they have an excuse ready to go, so it's easier to back off when the going is rough.

Here's an alternative to the excuse-driven life: What happens if you relentlessly avoid looking for excuses at all?

Instead of seeking excuses, the successful project is filled with people who are obsessed with avoiding excuses. If you relentlessly work to avoid opportunities to use your ability to blame, you may never actually need to blame anyone. If you're not pulled over by the cop, no need to blame the speedometer, right?

 

Topics: basketball conference, athletic training conference, boston hockey summit, athletic training, boston hockey conference, Seth Godin

Who Is Making You UnComfortable? by Seth Godiin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Wed, May 25, 2011 @ 08:05 AM

basketball resources

 

Who is making you uncomfortable?

 

Who looks you in the eye and says, "given your skills, you could do better..."

"You have enough leverage to really make a difference."

"What would happen if you doubled the amount you donated?"

"Could you set aside the fear and go faster?"

"I know you're holding back..."

It takes love and kindness and confidence to bring the truth to a friend you care about. If you're insulating yourself from these conversations, who benefits?

 

Topics: Art Horne, basketball performance, basketball conference, athletic training conference, boston hockey conference, Seth Godin

Moving Beyond Teachers And Bosses by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Mon, May 23, 2011 @ 06:05 AM

basketball resources

 

 

Moving beyond teachers and bosses

We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a 'good student.'

We train employees to deal with bosses in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to do. Figure out how to do exactly what they want, with the least amount of effort, and the last risk of failure and you are a 'good worker.'

The attitude of minimize is a matter of self-preservation. Raise the bar, the thinking goes, and the boss will work you harder and harder. Take initiative and you might fail, leading to a reprimand or termination (think about that word for a second... pretty frightening).

The linchpin, of course, can't abide the attitude of minimize. It leaves no room for real growth and certainly doesn't permit an individual to become irreplaceable.

If your boss is seen as a librarian, she becomes a resource, not a limit. If you view the people you work with as coaches, and your job as a platform, it can transform what you do each day, starting right now. "My boss won't let me," doesn't deserve to be in your vocabulary. Instead, it can become, "I don't want to do that because it's not worth the time/resources." (Or better, it can become, "go!")

The opportunity of our age is to get out of this boss as teacher as taskmaster as limiter mindset. We need more from you than that.

 

Topics: basketball resources, basketball conference, athletic training conference, hockey conference, hockey DVD, Seth Godin

Easy and Certain by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Fri, May 20, 2011 @ 08:05 AM

 

 

Easy and certain

The lottery is great, because it's easy. Not certain, but easy. If you win, the belief goes, you're done.

Medical school is great because it's certain. Not easy, but certain. If you graduate, the belief goes, you're done.

Most people are searching for a path to success that is both easy and certain.

Most paths are neither.

 

Topics: basketball conference, athletic training conference, boston hockey summit, Seth Godin

How To Fail by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Fri, May 13, 2011 @ 07:05 AM

 

How to fail

There are some significant misunderstandings about failure. A common one, similar to one we seem to have about death, is that if you don't plan for it, it won't happen.

All of us fail. Successful people fail often, and, worth noting, learn more from that failure than everyone else.

Two habits that don't help:

  • Getting good at avoiding blame and casting doubt
  • Not signing up for visible and important projects


While it may seem like these two choices increase your chances for survival or even promotion, in fact they merely insulate you from worthwhile failures.

I think it's worth noting that my definition of failure does not include being unlucky enough to be involved in a project where random external events kept you from succeeding. That's the cost of showing up, not the definition of failure.

Identifying these random events, of course, is part of the art of doing ever better. Many of the things we'd like to blame as being out of our control are in fact avoidable or can be planned around.

Here are six random ideas that will help you fail better, more often and with an inevitably positive upside:

  1. Whenever possible, take on specific projects.
  2. Make detailed promises about what success looks like and when it will occur.
  3. Engage others in your projects. If you fail, they should be involved and know that they will fail with you.
  4. Be really clear about what the true risks are. Ignore the vivid, unlikely and ultimately non-fatal risks that take so much of our focus away.
  5. Concentrate your energy and will on the elements of the project that you have influence on, ignore external events that you can't avoid or change.
  6. When you fail (and you will) be clear about it, call it by name and outline specifically what you learned so you won't make the same mistake twice. People who blame others for failure will never be good at failing, because they've never done it.

If that list frightened you, you might be getting to the nub of the matter. If that list feels like the sort of thing you'd like your freelancers, employees or even bosses to adopt, then perhaps it's resonating as a plan going forward for you.

 
 

Topics: basketball conference, athletic training conference, boston hockey conference, Seth Godin

The Agenda by Seth Godin

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Mon, May 9, 2011 @ 06:05 AM

 basketball resources

 

The agenda

The job of the CEO isn't to check things off the agenda. Her job is to set the agenda, to figure out what's next.

Now that more and more of us are supposed to be CEO of our own lives and careers, it might be time to rethink who's setting your agenda.

 

Topics: basketball resources, basketball conference, basketball training programs, athletic training conference, boston hockey summit, boston hockey conference, Jonas Sahratian, sports medicine conference, Jim Snider, Seth Godin