What Do I Need to Practice?

Here is our monthly column from our guest book reporter, Don Kardux, owner of Business Navigators.  If you'd like to send Don a comment, please send an email to Don@busnav.com.

Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin

I wish I had the innate talent “the natural ability to do something better than most people can do” like Tiger Woods, Warren Buffet, Mozart or Itzhak Perlman.

If I had ‘talent’ like that I could be a ‘world class performer.'

“Wrong,” says Geoff Colvin, formally a senior editor at large for Fortune magazine.
 

There are other elements that Colvin believes are the real definers of ‘World Class Performance.”

•          Well designed practice activities

•        Coaching

• ·        Repetition

• ·        Feedback

• ·        Self-regulation

• ·        Building knowledge

• ·        Mental Models

In the first six chapters he defines and illustrates these elements. Scientific research coupled with delightful stories help to clarify and validate his point of view. 

Chapter seven and eight focus on applying these principles in our lives and organizations.

He finishes the book looking at Innovation, Age and Passion.

In the afterword he mentions some of the effects the book has had on those who read it.

“After I presented this material in a seminar for managers, one of them experiencing a sudden epiphany, raised his hand and exclaimed, ‘I’ve got chess players, but I’m training them like musicians’ “.  (You’d have to read the book to get it)

A medical products firm applied his principles to a product roll out with their sales training approach and increased from average sales of 1.5% to a 10.5% and from an average prospect conversion rate of 25% to 95%.

This is a steak dinner and a four course read.

In short, what separate World-Class Performers from everybody else? Practice in using the elements. Practice does not make perfect. Well designed practice does!

Give a Tithe to Yourself

A thousand years ago (OK, so maybe it was only 500 years) I went to a sales seminar put on by Tom Hopkins.  It was a full day event and while some of his stuff is a little old

-fashioned now, he had lots of good information.  But from the full day, there is one item he mentioned that has stayed with me forever.

Of course, Tom was selling product from the stage.  He had both video and audio cassettes available and was making the deal sound irresistible. He stopped his sales process, (although now that I look at it, it was probably a step in the process!) walked to the other side of the stage and said, "You know, if you're not spending 10% of your net income on becoming better at what you do, you're just fooling yourself."


I remember sitting there thinking about what I had earned the previous year and realizing what that number would be.  It made me easily decide to purchase his audio set, which I listened to over and over again in my car.  My W-2 the next year showed immense progress in my selling career.


Today, I still go by that rule.  While I may not spend 10%, I probably get close to it.  I like to learn so it is not a chore, but investing in myself also makes very good sense.

What are you doing this year to get better at what you do?

It Makes Me Think

Several years ago I was talking with my friend, Matt Lohr, who works for mechanical contractor, Campbell Inc.  He shared with me a pithy comment that the owner, Keith Campbell, once was heard to make.

Keith was asked why he poured so much money into training his employees, when they might leave him for a better opportunity.  Keith's answer was priceless as far as I'm concerned.

He said, "I'd rather train them and have them leave than not and have them stay."

Of course that hits my button because I'm the owner of a training company, but it can really be a comment about just about anything.  Basically it says, I'm going the extra mile because I know it is good for me AND for everyone involved.

What do you do that might seem crazy to the next person, but in your heart and mind you know it is the best path to follow?

For me it is to continue to meet with young people and new business owners to help them to learn how to network even though as a rule neither has the money to take my course.