Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

Since when did a project or a task have to be perfect before you shipped it?

How many times did “perfect” stop you from making a difference?

What if your project wasn’t perfect when you shipped it? What would happen?

What would happen if you did something crazy like include a movement screen into your traditional pre-participation screening? What if your strength staff and the sports medicine staff looked at the overhead squat pattern of each athlete during your screening process together and then implemented strategies to correct or improve this pattern in an effort to reduce future injury?

“But the research is iffy.  It’s not perfect.”

I know it’s not perfect. But how many of your cross-country athletes ran into a tree during training because they had bad eye sight? Yet we invested time in an eye screening test? Wouldn’t the overhead squat test although less than perfect mean more?

One of the challenges when making change, or should I say prevents change from happening is that most people are afraid of putting their name on something that is less than perfect.  The challenge for you then is to find a gap that needs filling and implement a plan that will improve the services to your student-athletes…

… even if it means being just less than perfect.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu

Barry Zito became Major League Baseball’s highest paid pitcher in 2006, inking a 7-year, $126 million contract from the San Francisco Giants after 5+ seasons of dominating hitters in Oakland.

What did the Giants get for their money? An 11-13 record and a 4.53 ERA in 2007 and a pitcher flirting with minor league assignment over the next three years.

Carl Pavano’s contract year was 2004 where he dominated the National League with an 18-8 record and a 3.00 ERA for the Florida Marlins. The promise which the 28-year old showed landed him a four-year, $40 million deal with the Yankees. Four years later, the Yankees’ investment had bought them 26 starts and just nine wins. 

Did Zito or Pavano hold up their end of the contract? Nope. But could the ball clubs pay them any less for receiving a product that was less than they expected? Not a chance.

Why would an employee work hard to get a big contract and then ease off the gas pedal once he or she has it? It’s about motivation. Are you working for your current contract? Or your next contract? Doesn’t matter if it is up for renewal in four months or four years, we will maximize productivity for our employer and in turn maximize our long-run reward, if we treat every year like a contract year.

Had Carl Pavano kept his focus on the next contract during his time in pinstripes, perhaps Cleveland wouldn’t have forced him to take an 86.3% reduction in pay in 2009.

Can you afford that type of pay cut?

Mark Harris is the Associate Director of Athletics Annual Giving
Loyola University, Maryland

The stop watch is honest.

The tape measure is honest too.

You either ran faster, jumped higher or threw longer or you didn’t.  It’s that simple

When examining the strength and conditioning programming for these sports, if you have not helped in the achievement of these very objective end goals you simply didn’t do your job.  I know there may be a lot of coaches argue with me, and of course I recognize that there are a multitude of confounding variables that may produce a best result on any given day.  Maybe they didn’t get a good nights sleep? Maybe they had food poisoning the week prior and weren’t able to train? Or maybe they just broke up with their boyfriend?

But at the end of the year, when you have to face the stop watch or tape measure, did you see improvement in these measures?  Not an improvement in bench press numbers, or an increase in their lat pull down weight; but an improvement in their sport measures.  Did your program fill the gaps that needed filling?

The nice thing about the stop watch is that it never yells at you.

 
Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.
 

My sister began her professional career as a high school English teacher, but quickly decided that elementary education was more to her liking.  She quickly obtained a job in a school that she very much liked, but there was a wrinkle; it was an ESL school and my sister spoke only high school level Spanish.  To help catch her up her first year, she took a number of classes and purchased tools so that she could continue to learn from home.  It was working, but not as quickly as she would have liked.  Just before the school year ended, her principal came up with the idea of sending her to Panama (her principal's home country) for a month to learn the culture and more importantly their language.  My sister was not much of a world traveler and of course was somewhat nervous at spending a month by herself in a foreign country that did not speak her language.  However, by the time she came home she not only had a new appreciation (bordering on love) for Panama, but she was suddenly fluent in a second language.  It was a skill that was integral in allowing her to do her job properly and to further develop as a teacher.

We have all been at that stage personally or professionally where we needed to learn a new skill (or even a new job), but the task just seemed so daunting.  Of course, training is necessary in any situation, but I think in most instances you can only accumulate a finite amount of prior instruction without the hands-on portion of your education.  Furthermore, if you are in a position where you will be supervising another employee(s) it is an excellent way for you to learn you business from the ground up.  After all, how can you properly evaluate, appreciate, or even truly know your employees unless you know what it is they do.  When it was time for me to incorporate the title of Payroll Coordinator into my position, I sat down for several sessions with our departing coordinator and then took over the position entirely for two weeks.  Sure, I had some questions along the way, but by the time those two weeks were over I had a much better understanding of every aspect of our payroll (over 500 people) from both a departmental and university-wide perspective.  At the end of those two weeks I was confident when handing the responsibilities back to my Financial Administrator that I could support them in any situation that arose as well as being able to properly evaluate any changes that would become necessary. 

At the end of the school year at which my sister utilized her newly found bi-lingual abilities, her principal noticed her new abilities and how it allowed her to interact with students and especially parents.  The end result; she offered her the job of Vice Principal.  You might be saying to yourself though, "Self, do I have time to learn a major skill/job in a reduced time frame with my already large list of responsibilities?"  The truth is, do you have the months that it will take to learn this skill otherwise? 

Shaun Bossio is the Assistant Business Manager and ProShop Manager at Boston University FitRec. He can be reached at sbossio@bu.edu

1. Choose your attitude

There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself.

2. Play

“We can be very serious about our jobs without being very serious about ourselves” - Fish

3. Make their day

Find someone who needs a helping hand, a word of support, or a good ear – and make their day.

4. Be present

“talk to them as if they were a long lost friend”
  - Fish

So go ahead and throw a fish and have some fun at work tomorrow. Just be sure to wash your hands after.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

In a recent post by Seth Godin he challenges one’s normal approach to problem solving which is usually the “wait to be inspired then act” method and asks us to instead actively seek out inspiration.

Seth states, “Simple example: start a blog and post once a day on how your favorite company can improve its products or its service. Do it every day for a month, one new, actionable idea each and every day. Within a few weeks, you'll notice the change in the way you find, process and ship.”

My challenge to you is to take Seth’s example of blogging, but instead of blogging about your favorite company, write down one new actionable idea each and every day this coming month that will improve your department’s service to your student-athletes. It may be as simple as greeting each athlete or patient with a high five as they enter your office or as complex as a new pre-participation exam that actually screens them for risk factors that matter. Or how about an idea that will provide your staff with more opportunities to ship?

Once you’ve committed to writing down these ideas you’ll not only discover there are a number of easy ways to improve your services, but you’ll actually find yourself leading others to the trough of change.

Warning: you can lead a co-worker to water, but you can’t make them drink. But gosh darn it, seeing you drink first makes it a whole lot easier for others to drink the cool-aid.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

There's only one person that can make a difference in your customer's life.

That's right. You're already looking at him.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants"

- Albert Einstein

SAVE THE DATE

The Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group is proud to announce a speaking engagement with Dr. Shirley Sahrmann, June 3/4 2011 in Boston.  Complete details to follow.

A good friend from Australia sent me this clip about workplace motivation. Besides the awesome animation, it’s just under 11 minutes and worth every second of it. 

It may surprise you that monetary incentives are not the lead motivator in the workplace, but instead the three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction are:

Autonomy: desire to be self directed.
Mastery: our urge to become better.
Purpose: When profit motive becomes unmoored from purpose motive bad things happen (bad customer service, crappy products, etc).

How does this change your management strategy this week?

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

I don’t know where I first heard this, but it has stuck with me ever since.  I probably was complaining about a project, or telling my boss it was too hard to get something done on time.

I was giving him my 2 cents.

What I should have been giving him was my full effort and my full investment of time and energy.

When it comes to delivering projects on time, or shipping, I want the finished project, “show me the money!”

I want a sustainable and impactful change, no barbershop talk, no excuses as to why it can’t be done.

I want your money – not your two cents. 

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.