Preparation, Failure, Opportunity

The game was tight. The lead had gone back and forth. And, there was a lot on the line. This was the Men’s AAU Basketball championship game for the greater Denver area.

As the time wound down on the game clock our team had the final possession with less than ten seconds left. My team was down by one point. One of us would take the final shot. If it went in, we won. And if it didn’t, all those championship dreams that we had been harboring since the beginning of the tournament a couple of weeks before would be dashed.

I always loved basketball. I was not good enough in high school to make the varsity. Yet, in college, I had grown four inches and had kept playing and practicing. I kept dreaming that someday I would be good enough to play on a high level.

Now I was in graduate business school at the University of Denver and had become good enough to play on a very good AAU basketball team. We trained and worked out daily. The players in our league were either former college players or players who had played professionally at one time. The competition and skill levels were extremely high.

On our team all the starters had been Division 1 scholarship basketball players, the highest level of college basketball, with one exception, me. As we took our final timeout, we knew that one of us would be taking that final shot. Who would that be?

We didn’t know the answer to that question. We would in bounds the ball from underneath the basket and our center, if he had a layup he would take it, if not he would pass the ball out to one of the corners where myself and our other guard would be.

We got the ball to our center and it looked like he was going to be tied up and not get a shot off. With less than five seconds to go, he was able to pass the ball to the corner, my corner. I was over twenty feet away from the basket. I got the ball and started to take a jump shot. I am six feet two inches. Bearing down on me and jumping at me was a defender who was six feet six inches.

As I released the ball all I knew was that he hadn’t blocked it. I did not see the ball’s flight or see what happened after that. He came crashing into me with such force that it knocked me off my feet and had me sliding backwards into the stands.

Both of us ended up in a heap. I could hear the loud cheers of the crowd! Who were they cheering for? Which team had won? What had happened? Then our center and the rest of my teammates were surrounding me, picking me up and congratulating me. My shot, that I never saw, had gone in. We had won the game and the championship.

At the time, I did not realize the impact this moment had on me. I had played and worked at basketball for almost 20 years with a great deal more failure than success. Yet, all my preparation paid off in that moment of victory. There are many life lessons I took away from that game. I had always heard that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. I certainly felt fortunate to make the winning shot, yet it was all my preparation that allowed me to take advantage of that opportunity.

There were more positive impacts over the years, that positively supported me in many areas. First, was the importance of having a great team, not just in terms of ability, but our chemistry where we were willing to blend our individual talents together to create something bigger than any one of us could accomplish on our own, a great team.

Second, was that failures are the necessary stepping stones to success. I came to understand that I am not judged by the number of times I failed. I was cut from more teams than I made. I am judged by my successes and those come from my ability to find a path up from failure and to keep on trying.

I have discovered that when I keep trying in spite of failure, and keep preparing, that I increase the odds of success when the right opportunity comes along. When you do the preparation, you too will find the opportunities to make your game winning shots.

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About Author:
Self improvement and the opportunity for personal development came at me head on in the early 1980’s. I was educated with two degrees, yet I wasn’t able to handle it. Why? I was not ready mentally, and more importantly, emotionally. I didn’t understand that the true joys of life come with a drive to self education, a focus on Self improvement

What Is Failure?

Failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgment repeated ever day over a period of time.

How often have you or someone you know seen something that is not working in a business and take the attitude that it just doesn’t matter enough to do something correct it, eliminate it or even improve it? Most of us have been guilty of falling into this philosophical trap of “it just doesn’t matter.”

These errors in judgment get repeated because people don’t think they matter. Over time, accumulation of poor thinking leads to poor choices. Read more

The Stages of Team Building

The Tuckman-Jensen analysis of the stages of team building has become a foundational piece in understanding how teams come together or pull apart, how they perform well or fail to meet desired results.

Tuckman and Jensen state that teams go through five stages of team development:

1. Forming—the search for commonalities

2. Storming-breaking away from false harmony into individual power displays, leading to rifts between team members. There is a tension in this stage between unity and individualism.

3. Norming-behavior in this stage is more about consensus between team members and more of a shift from “I” to “We.” Read more

The Formula For Success

One of the questions we must answer to have greater success in business and life is this:

How can we change the errors in the formula for failure into the disciplines required in the formula for success? The answer is by making the future part of our current philosophy.

Both success and failure involve future consequences, namely inevitable rewards or unavoidable regrets resulting from past activities.

So what do we need to do daily to be on the path to success? We must develop the discipline to look down the road every day. Read more

The Fundamentals of Change

Virtually every major change has its roots in success. In almost every case, the need for change is born of past success—of doing the right thing and doing it well.

  1. The first stage of change—The environment shifts and the right thing becomes the wrong thing. The frustrating thing is that, although the old right thing is now wrong, we still do it well.
  2. We start the second stage of change by finally recognizing that the right thing is now the wrong thing-we finally see the light.
  3. The third stage is the new right thing is new. We are usually not very good at it at first. Initially, we end up doing the new right thing quite poorly. Read more

Simplify and Apply

Change, in most instances, is not easy. Why? It presents a whole new set of challenges to the people who have to learn to master it, not to mention, the other who work with them who can be directly or indirectly in the performance of their work be affected by the change.

As we know when we throw a stone in the middle of a calm pond, the waves it creates will wash up on the shore in ways that we cannot see.

To increase the odds of successful change we must simplify it to help those who are going to apply it. To simplify change we must make it something that people can remember and recall how to do it. When change can be remembered and recalled it can be applied. Read more

Integrity and Leadership

According to Dr.Henry Cloud in his book, Integrity, integrity is “courage to meet the demands of reality.” Yes, integrity includes other aspects including but not limited to habitual honesty through and through and having strong moral principles.

Integrity is the quality you find in a good leader. A good leader will meet the demands of reality. Reality may be stormy seas. The leader will see how to navigate the ship to a safe harbor.

Reality may be rapid growth. The good leader sees the danger of overextending the company financially and has plans and options to make sure the financial integrity of the company and the well being of its employees is not compromised.

Leading by meeting the demands of reality allows us to lead from a position of strength, from integrity. How we lead, as Dr. Cloud points out, leaves a wake. Your wake determines three things. Read more

Leading Change

Leading change is one of the top core leadership competencies that is honored in successful businesses large and small. There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things.

When we are leading change, we are leading reform. There is always a large group who profits from keeping the old order. They are quite certain in their stance. Then there are those who see the need for change and who could profit by the new order. Yet they are only lukewarm to it.

How come? Most individuals do not believe in anything new until they have had actual experience with it. We are wired to resist random change for we fear the possible random consequence of being declared irrelevant and let go. We are wired, first and foremost to survive, so we hang on to what has worked in the past. Read more

Attitude

Attitudes are affected by what we know since what we know determines he decisions we will make. Where our philosophy deals with the logical side, our attitude focuses primarily on emotional issues.

What we know determines our philosophy. What we feel determines our attitude. Here is the key point to remember. In business and life it is our emotional nature that governs most of our daily conduct in our personal and business worlds.

I have heard many well intentioned people say to others: “Be more logical. Don’t be so emotional.” That’s an interesting statement. Interesting because there is a strong emotion attached to it. Be more logical. Read more