Football and Business
Why Not Have a Players-Only Meeting?
What I love about sports is they keep it simple. Any member of a sports team can call for a “players-only meeting.” Detroit Lions running back, Reggie Bush said, after his team’s second consecutive loss, “We definitely need to have a team meeting-really dig deep inside and find out what we’re made of.” They had…
Read MoreThink You Can Do It Alone? "Not so fast, my friend."
Why is it that NFL teams with the most talented players aren’t Super Bowl champions that year? Take the San Diego Chargers. Philip Rivers, the Quarterback, has the best individual stats (including accuracy leader in passes completed), so why aren’t they 9-0? The reason: football is not tennis, nor golf nor even basketball. It’s the…
Read More"Worst to First"–the Power of Resilience
One of the great things about sports is you can see the human condition ebb and flow in a microcosm lasting 60 minutes on the football clock (which we all know is not really 60 minutes) and interminable minutes on the baseball clock. We get to see one-year “turnarounds” where teams go from “worst to…
Read MoreStay Poised in the Noise
Statistics are fun. I mean, don’t you love knowing that Edison patented almost 1300 inventions in his lifetime? Or that summer on Uranus lasts 21 years? Or that more than 10 people a year are killed by a vending machine? Where do they get this stuff? Football stats are fun too. I always love the…
Read MoreNFL—Ultimate Employee Engagement
The season of the NFL, or the demonstration of “ultimate employee engagement has begun! “Employee engagement” is defined as “the emotional and functional commitment an employee has to his or her organization.” Statistics from Gallup show that 71% of all American workers are not fully engaged (see Gen Y multi-screening on company time). We CAN…
Read More"Look up, get up, and don't ever give up"
These are the words Michael Irvin used at the end of his acceptance speech when he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007. I am a Hall of Fame junkie as you know (see my blog posts from 2012 and 2011) so this last Saturday I was glued to the 3-hour…
Read More"The work goes on, the cause endures…"
As the song goes, “I am wo-man. W-O-M-A-N.” I love shopping AND sports. (46 days till the first NFL game!) My book encourages women to go for the “points,” using football as the metaphor. And now I’m watching a series of documentaries on ESPN Films: Nine for IX on Tuesday nights. It was inspired by…
Read MoreWimbledon Wows Me!
I was glued to the Wimbledon finals this last weekend. The women played on Saturday morning and the men on Sunday. Ladies first: Maria Bartoli beat Sabine Lisicki in straight sets, meaning two in a row. Maria’s story fascinates me. It is her first win in a major tournament after playing 47 tournaments in the…
Read MoreInspiration Till PreSeason
If you’ve been following my Tweets, you see I am really digging the NBA Finals. Some lessons from football carry over, and are IMPORTANT for us to remember every day: 1. The commitment is 100% and they play to the whistle. 2. Perseverance is their battle cry. I love the definition: “steadfastness in doing something…
Read MoreHow's It Going?
In keeping with my sports fandom, I should be writing about the NBA Playoffs. But with the 4 out of 7-game format, they seem to go on forever. The good stuff is still a couple of weeks away, when we get the Western and Eastern Finals leading to the BIG FINAL. So let’s focus on…
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