The Winning Edge is Razor Thin

The fine line

Why do the people fighting for championships work so hard? Because they know they know how hard it is to reach the top. At the top everyone is talented, everyone is driven and everyone works hard. So what separates those at the top? It’s the winning edge.

The winning edge is elusive
People work all their lives to develop it. Teams work like crazy to develop it. It’s scary because you don’t know when you have it and you don’t know when you lose it. You only find out only when you compete. But when you have it you work around the clock to keep it.

Ever notice a team come out flat when they have everything on the line?
It’s perplexing, infuriating and exasperating! It’s what gives coaches heart attacks. Just this year the World Champion Green Bay Packers had an unbeaten season going. They were beating everyone! They were barely even challenged. They won easily. Everyone was impressed because most Super Bowl champions have disappointing follow-up years. The Packers looked like a juggernaut. They were on a mission. They were on their way to win their second Super Bowl!

So what happened?
They lose to the sad Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs! The same Chiefs who had been playing so bad their coach had just been suddenly fired. The same team playing with an interim coach. How did this happen. Green Bay had all the momentum. They came out flat. The Chiefs season was over. They had no reason to make an extra special effort. Yet, that day they amazingly had the winning edge! The Green Bay players and coaches were shocked - they had no idea how they got off track. The Packers lost their confidence and mystique that day and were washed out in the playoffs, long before they got to the Super Bowl. 

This explains a coach’s maniacal attention to detail
They know every detail is important, everything matters. They know in the heat of battle every player will be tested. They know any weakness will be exposed. They can’t assume anything will be O.K. They have to check, re-check and check again to make sure their team is absolutely as ready as they can be to play their best. They know that their players’ skills have to be razor sharp. But equally as important, their attitude has to be at a peak. The frustrating thing is that there’s no way to tell you exactly how to get it. There is no manual on building the winning edge.

The winning edge is elusive but incredibly powerful. 
It gives you the  determination and confidence to perform at your absolute best at the most important times. When you have it you play instinctively, you see things in slow motion, you see the game unfolding in advance. You are in a zone and your competition can tell.

It’s worth the price to get it because when you have it you have an unshakeable belief that you will someway find a way to win no matter what happens during the game.

What Alabama Beating LSU Means for You

Some great lessons for competing in 2012

Many were shocked when Alabama shut out LSU in BCS Championship game January 9. It wasn’t that they won but how they won. LSU was unbeaten. LSU was frighteningly talented. LSU was powerful at every position.

They had even beaten Alabama previously at Alabama. This time the game was to be played in New Orleans just down the road from Baton Rouge. It was essentially a home game for LSU.  

That’s what so great about competition
It didn’t matter that the odds were in LSU’s favor. Once the game began it was all about who was going to get the job done then! None of the past mattered—beyond the fact that it put them in position to do well. For some reason, maybe it was the ferocity of the Alabama players who wanted to redeem themselves, LSU was uncharacteristically jittery as they started the game. They were stumbling, fumbling, and out of rhythm. They certainly weren’t relaxed, confident, and aggressive.

Alabama sensed their hesitation and indecision and kept the pressure on. They were so effective the unthinkable happened, LSU not only got beat, they didn’t even score! They have no moral victories to take out of the game. They didn’t end on a high note. The decision was totally in Alabama’s favor. Alabama won big!  

What does that mean for you in 2012?
You can win big in 2012! You can win decisively in 2012! Things that have stood in your way in the past can be beaten. It doesn’t matter what has happened beforehand. It doesn’t matter what people think. It doesn’t matter how the odds may be stacked against you if you’re willing to compete you can still win.  

Alabama’s huge win over LSU is a loud message to all of us that if we’ll fight and compete we can win in 2012.

Tim Tebow: What the Analysts Miss

Tim Tebow is one of the biggest sensations in the NFL right now.

The Denver Broncos were 1 and 4 when he was installed at quarterback. The analysts and critics howled. He can’t throw. He is inaccurate. He has a long wind up and release. It takes too long. He can’t make the professional throws. He doesn’t have the skills to lead a team to the Super Bowl. No team has ever won running the option attack that best suits his strengths.

There was an explosion of criticism unlike any that’s ever occurred over a first round draft pick. The verdict seemed to be unanimous—he would fail, he wouldn’t last.

Set up to fail
The team was depressed. There’s nothing worse than being in a losing locker room. They had just lost 4 out of 5 games with Tebow installed as quarterback, in spite of the fact that they have mediocre talent and almost no receivers who can catch a pass because they had even traded away Brandon Lloyd who was their best receiver one a week before Tebow took the starting job. It seemed like Tebow was set up to fail. 

Then something shocking happened
When Tebow went in he asked the team just one thing, “all I ask is that you believe in me.” They were energized by his excitement and intensity. They became filled with hope and their spirits renewed. They started playing inspired ball and 5 out of the next 6 games which gave the Tebow Era a 5 and 1 record. A dramatic and immediate turnaround, once Tebow took over at quarter back.

It was astounding because they won on the road—the toughest place to win. They did the unthinkable; they beat every one of their division opponents in their own stadiums. That almost never happens, certainly not with a rookie quarterback in his first start. 

What the analysts missed
They missed the fact that a players impact and performance goes way beyond his skill set. It has to do with how few errors he makes. Does he throw interceptions? Does he fumble the ball? Does he make stupid decisions?

It also has to do with sprit and inspiration. Does he energize his team? Do they play better because he’s in the game and they believe in him? Do they feel like as long as he’s in the game they have a chance to win? And also how does he play in the clutch when the intensity and anxiety is in the highest? Does he fall apart or does he rise to the occasion? You can be a picture perfect passer of the ball, but if you panic during the game, you’re useless. 

Tebow excels at all the intangibles
What the critics have underestimated are Tebow's strengths. Just take a look at his stats. He makes great decisions plus he’s turning out to be one of the greatest running quarterbacks the NFL has ever seen. He’s so dangerous and smart about his running that it has opened up the line for the other running backs to have huge games.

And in crunch time his passes are deadly accurate. The Denver Broncos have become very dangerous for the senses to face. And the other thing is he’s just now getting his first chance to play regularly and he’s improving every game.

That’s what the inexperienced players do. They improve when they’re given a chance. You can’t learn how to play and perform as an NFL quarterback until you get a chance to get experience in the game. Tebow is getting that now and is developing rapidly. But all of these things seem to fly right over the radar of the expert analysts. Maybe they’re not so expert after all. 

The lesson for me and you 
Don’t give up your dreams because you might not be as talented as someone else. You can win anyway. You can improve. There are a lot of ingredients that go into winning and talent is just one—and talent will only take you so far.

A willingness to compete, a love of the “game” and a determination to improve and win is what really takes you to the top. If you’re driven you can do amazing things in your life and… like Tim Tebow you can astound your critics as well!

To Become a Champion

What does it take to become a champion?  

First you need to be making a championship effort.

Then you’ll need two additional things: 

1. Championship level coaching
2. Championship level competition.  

Championship Level Competition. 
Until you get into top level competition you'll never find out exactly where you are in your development.  

When you compete at the highest level you either win or lose. When you are on your way up and compete at the championship level, you're a winner regardless of how the match or game turns out because even if you lose you're going to learn. 

You’re going to win knowledge of what additionally you need to do, what skill you need to develop, where your areas of weakness are that will allow you to move up and when it comes. 

Championship Level Coaching
On the other hand, when it comes to making those changes you'll need coaching from somebody who has been there, coached and preferably competed. You don’t want to waste your time training under someone who really has no first hand knowledge of what it takes. That would be a blind leading the blind situation and you don’t have time for that.

The experience of coaching and/or competing at the highest levels gives a coach the experience to show you the secrets that only the champions know. Winning is getting a specific thing done in a specific time period and doing it better than anyone else at that moment.  

Winning involves making lots of things happen. A winning performance involves making lots of critical things happen at the right time. At this level you don't learn how to be a champion out of a book.  

The Road to Becoming a Champion: You learn and develop into a champion from combining your own Championship Level Effort with the benefits that only come from Championship Coaches and Championship Competition.

Idiotic Ideas: "Let's Not Keep Score"

Crazy!

There are school districts in the country that have discontinued the practice of keeping score in games! No scoreboards!

Who are they kidding? Having kids compete in sports and not keeping score?!

The kids aren’t dumb.
It’s funny to hear reports that the kids keep score on their own. They are smarter than the parents! Even young kids are smart enough to know that there is no reason to play a game if you aren’t going to keep score.

Sure, there are always some overzealous parents at these games, but the solution is not to stop scoring. The solution is to exclude parents who can’t behave. 

The point of this is?
What do they think they are “teaching” their kids? Ribbons, trophies and medals for all—just for running around on a field? Life doesn’t work like that. You not only have to get in the game, you have to do well. If you aren’t any good you have to get better. Or find another sport. 

We want more emotional cripples?
Teaching kids to live in denial, to operate in a fantasy world of no judgement does nothing but create emotional cripples unable to deal with the tresses and realities of life. Sure its tough. Sure it hurts to lose. 

But if they can’t learn to handle the emotions of youth sports they’ll never survive in the real world. They need to be comforted, but its equally important that they be encouraged to stand up and fight and improve. Teaching them its good enough to show up and just go through the motions, that effort doesn’t really matter is idiotic and destructive.

Who comes up with this stuff?
Who are these eggheads who come up with these theories? How to they get to positions of authority? Somebody hasn’t been checking credentials, because this is nuts! They’re so out of touch they are oblivious to the fact that kids want a chance to become winners!

When you don’t keep score you deny that to them.

The real world has no use for these theories
Here is reality: In life you have to deliver. You have to perform. You have to meet standards. You have to get emotionally involved. 

If you want real jobs with responsibility and big income you have to be reliable. That ability is not inborn. It’s something that must be developed. 

Kids need chances to develop toughness
As you grow up, you need chances and opportunities to develop emotionally as well as intellectually. That happens by giving kids chances to perform and compete. They need to find out for themselves what levels of effort and intensity they need to exert. They need to develop their own coping skills to deal with disappointment. 

Let them compete! Let them learn how to overcome disappointment and Win! 

Let them keep score!

“I don't know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.” —President Richard M. Nixon 

Winner's Book Club Selection of the Week: When the Game Was Ours

What are their Winner Credientials?

These men are basketball legends and hardly need introduction. Together Bird and Johnson collected eight NBA Championships and six MVP awards.

Book Description

From the moment these two legendary players took the court on opposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychological battle. In Celtic green was Larry Bird, the hick from French Lick, with laser-beam focus, relentless determination, and a deadly jump shot, a player who demanded excellence from everyone around him and whose caustic wit left opponents quaking in their high-tops. Magic Johnson was Mr. Showtime, a magnetic personality with all the right moves. Young, indomitable, he was a pied piper in purple and gold. And he burned with an inextinguishable desire to win.
 
Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize the most thrilling rivalry in the NBA—East vs. West, physical vs. finesse, old school vs. Showtime, even white vs. black. Each pushed the other to greatness, and, helping to save a floundering NBA. At the start they were bitter rivals, but along the way they became lifelong friends.   
 
With intimate detail, When the Game Was Ours transports readers to an electric era and reveals for the first time the inner workings of two players dead set on besting each other. It is a compelling portrait of two giants of the game, during professional basketball’s best times.

Read the Amazon Exclusive Q&A with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson

Have you read this book? If so, did you enjoy it and if not, do you plan to read it?

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To next post, "Cold Blooded on Clutter"

Kids, meet your competition

“Everyone from junior high students to Olympians runs faster when there is someone in the lane next to them.”
—Jeff Castolene

Value is established by comparison.

If you want to know how valuable something is, you compare it to something else. If you say this is GREAT, how do you know? Only by comparing it to something else!

This is not just true of products and services—it's true of people as well.

As we raise our children, we encourage them in everything they do, we want them to feel good about themselves. But as they grow up they need to realize that just because Mommy or Daddy said they are a great artist or athlete that doesn’t necessarily mean they are.

One of the best ways to help them realize that is through competition. That gives them the chance to find out for themselves how good they are.

“Competition is not always nice, but it's necessary." —Art Williams

Competition teaches you about making your best efforts, it teaches you about pushing yourself. It lets you find out how good you really are by introducing you to challenges and stresses. It helps you grow by showing you how to work with others to get things done.

It lets you taste the rewards of Winning and the sting of disappointing defeats.

There is nothing like competition to prepare kids for the realities of the real world.