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MYTH: "TALENT ALWAYS BEATS EXPERIENCE"

In business and in sports, trading on your experience is a talent. Experience helped me survive longer in the pros than most players. And my best lessons in experience were the result of studying my own mistakes. Far more important than the quarterbacks at the barber shop and in the restaurants is the one who can really do something about the problems: you. You are the only important quarterback in anything involving your own business. You are the one who has to learn to take stock on Monday morning and decide what must be done to win again, win more, win better.

The football quarterback does this nearly every week. Let me tell you, it can be a painful experience to sit in a room watching films on the day after a losing game with all the guys you work with every day. I've watched myself throw interceptions, fumble the football and call stupid plays. And I knew that fifty thousand other people had gone to bed the night before wondering how I could do those things. (So much for the great feeling of fellowship.)  It's a brutal although sobering and instructive experience.  Your belief in yourself nearly gets destroyed. You're like the golfer whose putting turns sour and he becomes convinced he can never sink another five-footer. But as soon as I could get over the embarrassment, I tried to turn Monday mornings into a learning experience. And the only way to rebuild my confidence before the next game was to go back to basics.

Whenever my confidence was shot, a return to the basics helped me establish a sense of perspective. For me, going back to basics might mean simplifying my game plan, improving my "reads" of the defense or practicing my footwork. Most often, it was in doing things I thought were instinctive that I'd slipped up on, like reading the defensive keys. Every quarterback is tempted after a while to think that he can "instinctively" pick out that fine seam in the defensive backfield and always throw the ball to the right man. But the truth is that this happens only with luck.  If a quarterback tries to watch everybody, he sees nobody. Dark shirts and light shirts begin to blend, and then come the striped shirts of the officials. By now, the passer doesn't know where there's single coverage and double coverage.

There's nothing like seeing yourself in livid color on Monday morning throwing the ball to the fleet-footed guys on the other team to remind you of such basics as reading your keys. Most of the time, this means concentrating on the free safety or the middle linebacker, or both. Their moves will lead you to the weak spots in the defense. Reading keys is like flying on instruments in an airplane. You've got to trust what the radar is telling you.

By forcing myself to concentrate once again on this long-taught fundamental of passing, I was able to break the successful play down into its components - and regain my confidence. Concentrate on the components of success, not on the abstract concept of winning.  

You should use the same techniques in business. If you concentrate on the loss of sales, you're overlooking the fundamentals: prospecting, making calls, presentations and good closes. Are you asking for the buy? Or are you dodging your accountability by looking too much at the big picture and too little at the measurements of your performance? Most people only look at the annual report to see if the corporation won or lost that year.  People ask, "Did we win or lose as a corporation?" You learn the results of your group effort, but how do you break it down for the guards and tackles? How does the line worker on the second shift at the Rouge plant in Detroit know whether he has won or lost, whether he has had any impact on General Motors' annual profits?

But this raises the question of how we get the data.  Football is a unique profession in having an undeniable record in the form of films to study after every game. And the film never lies! But how do you get a "film" of your business?

This is where hands-on management and data-gathering become all-important. And this is where .American business is still in the dark ages, running a single wing while the rest of society has already passed through the T Formation and the I formation into the modern "shotgun" lineup. Many managers only get loose, outdated and excessive data about their operations. For all intents and purposes, they don't know what is going on in their companies. It's hard to be a good Monday-morning quarterback it you don't have a reliable film.

There are two ways to change this. One is to set up detailed and continuous measures of performance (the P.R.I. C.E.). The other is through your own intimate contact with the people and machinery and products of your business. Talk, ask, look and listen - be in touch with your entire organization. When there's trouble, you'll know it on the day it happens, or only one day later; not when a bad quarterly report shows up.

But even after you have created swift and digestible data input - your Monday morning "film" - it is important to remember as a quarterback not to over critique yourself. Over-analyzing and second-guessing yourself like Knute Rockne's barber can become dangerous and counterproductive if carried to extremes. Once you've seen the films and absorbed the lessons, it is time to indulge in some creative forgetting and get back onto the playing field as if you had never really lost. Scuff your knuckles and bang your shins. The film is just a film; the game is the real thing. Monday lasts for one day only.

FACT: You don't know whether a play works until you run it - get into the arena and play your game. No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair.

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