Elwood: “It’s 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes. It’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
Jake: “Hit it!”
– Dialogue in this scene from the movie, “The Blues Brothers”
Yesterday, we referenced playing offense as one of four intentional behaviors for difference makers. What does that mean, really?
There are at least four keys to consider in playing offense.
First, we need a game plan. That plan should be based upon our strengths, both as individuals and as a team, and aimed at specific outcomes that serve as mileposts to a greater outcome. Wyatt, (the Middle of The Three Heston Kids) has become enamored with Aaron Rodgers’ unique ability to pull off “Hail Mary” passes. It is cool, but Hail Mary’s are last-gasp, desperation-based plays designed to overcome either a flawed game plan or a poorly executed one. Great game plans in our businesses give us instant feedback so we can assess how we’re doing measured against the greater goal and ideally, they make the Hail Mary plays unnecessary.
And that brings us to measurable. Einstein said “not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.” In other words, we have to choose our measures carefully, and some might be at least a little subjective. Employee engagement, client loyalty and cash flow are critical measures that both count, and can be counted. Momentum, energy, market response and others should be watched and measured, with the understanding that the metrics might be softer, and that the filters through which we see them might change as the business unfolds.
A third element is being flexible. I like the metaphor of off-ramps on the interstate and alternate routes in our map app. Maybe it’s actually going to be 113 miles to Chicago. Maybe there’s an accident on the Kennedy and we have to take The Ike, and maybe that affects our arrival time / delivery date. That’s why cars have signals and break lights, and why drivers have free will to decide. The only thing worse than a bad game plan is one that is so rigid it leaves no room for instinct, experience and common-sense to help us feel our way along.
Finally, we need an action orientation. Jake and Elwood could have debated the wisdom of the sunglasses. They could have done a calculation on whether they had enough gas or smokes. That would have wrecked one of the best scenes / lines from my favorite movie and besides, paralysis by analysis kills more teams and companies that multiple errors of aggression. It is impossible to design a perfect game plan. We will never have all the information we’d like to have prior to stepping on the accelerator. We will be tempted to wait, consider, plot, noodle and contingency-plan ourselves into a mind-numbing state of inaction. No! Based on what they knew they had and where they knew they needed to be, Jake and Elwood decided to “Hit it!” and so must we. (After all, they were (and we are) “on a mission from God!” They couldn’t wait, they had to trust and go!)
How far is it to your destination? How much fuel is in the tank? How clear is your vision? If our intent is to play offense, and we’ve got a game plan, it’s likely that all that is left is for us to “Hit it!”
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