“It was a tough game. We got out-recruited, out-planned, out-coached, out-funded, out-smarted, out-hustled and out-played.”
– Said no coach, ever
I just wish there was more candor in the world.
My favorite college football team had another mediocre football season, and as I read the coach’s comments after Friday’s final loss of the regular season, I couldn’t help but wonder if things might be different if he’d work as hard at saying something as he does at saying nothing.
It happens in business, too. There are winners and losers, and the reasons they win or lose are usually pretty apparent to an educated observer — which makes the excuses and cliches even harder to swallow. In short, it’s hard not to struggle with folks that always want credit for the wins, but that revert to cliches and excuses when the outcomes goes the other way.
Sometimes, we win when we’re not as good, and sometimes we lose when we’re better. Sometimes, buyers make irrational choices and sometimes, those irrational choices land in our favor.
Sometimes we get out-planned. Sometimes we get out-executed, and regardless of the sometimes’s and the outcomes’s (yes, I know outcomes’s is not a word…) we ought to just look at the “why’s?” and learn. Then move on.
But enough with the cliches! In sports. In business. In life.
The time savings alone will make a difference!
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