Onion Peeling

Layer 1:

Getting results further inspires results orientation.  The more a team accomplishes and achieves, the more likely that team is to fixate on those accomplishments and set similar results as their goals.  I believe results, winning and losing, are a distraction.  They are a force that takes a team’s attention away from what really matters.

When a team sets its goals and includes, “qualify for Nationals”, what does that goal even mean?  In October how do I use “qualify for Nationals” as something to focus on and motivate myself?  If I am on a team that’s never been to Nationals, do I even know what it would require to make Nationals?  “Qualify for Nationals” is a very weak goal.  It is an outcome, or a result, of a long process.  If your team meeting ends with writing NATIONALS!!! on a chalkboard and circling it ten times then your team is setting off on the wrong foot.

What does it take to qualify for Nationals?  You probably have to be a good Frisbee team.  How do you become better?  There need to be process goals that give you something to focus on throughout the year.  Something you can measure improvement of.  For example:

A team that makes college Nationals is:

·         Good at throwing

·         Athletic

Can I make this more concrete?

·         Good at throwing

o   Throw arounds off of the trapside

o   Complete uplines

·         Athletic

o   Defend deep balls well

o   Conditioned enough to run hard for a whole tournament

To me these are clear.  This is what we’re going to try to accomplish in 9 months.  At practice we’re going to drill these four things a lot.  We are going to get to a critical mass of reps so that when it does come time to cash in for a result, we can do it.  If as a team you can keep your focus on the process goals I think you will find yourselves achieving the results you’re looking for.

It exhausts me when a team gets hung up on individual tournaments results.  Did you improve and grow as a team?  Then what more could you possibly need?  Going into a weekend thinking we want to win this tournament can distract you from trying to grow in the long run. 

When NUT went to warm-up with 15 people no one was thinking “man we better win some games.”  All we had to do was try and we knew we’d get better.  That tournament was brutal.  Every other team we played was good.  We went 1-7.  Bodies were failing us left and right, but we just kept going.  If we had cared about the results at all, we might have started pouting, quitting, blaming, or fraying from the inside out, but everyone understood that the wins and losses didn’t matter.  The goal was to cut our teeth against the best and see what we could learn.  We could have been upset that we got destroyed, or we could have been happy that we learned the importance of getting the disc off the sideline or defending deep shots as a team.

Today NUT has a record of 15-13.  We didn’t break .500 until Sunday of Conferences.  Ask any of the players on NUT if they think going to Warm-Up was a good idea, ask them if they think it helped them as a team, and ask them if they think it played a role in making them who they are now. Then ask them if they had any idea that they were a .530 team.  Then ask them if they care what their overall record is.

Layer 2:

While what’s above is all fine and dandy, it is still derived from a desire to reach results.  I still feel like we are missing something.  Say today is Monday and you have a test next Monday.  When do you start studying?  Sunday morning?  Saturday afternoon maybe?  Aren’t we leaving a lot on the table?  A test is a result, nothing more, and as a result it is capable of motivating us only as the zero hour approaches.  What about Monday through Friday?  What about the 70-85% of the week we left on the table?  Every team is highly motivated from about March 20-April 20, but what about September 20 – March 20?  How often are we not getting the most out of 87.5% of our seasons?

What about reading a book for pleasure?  Why did you do that?  Why did you read 50 pages a day for 10 straight days?  There was no test at the end, no book club to talk about it with, not even a movie that you were trying to finish it before.  So why did you read that book?  Why did you go 10 straight days?  Why did you stay up late, or read on a crowded train, or sneak a few pages during passing period?  Because you liked it?  Because it was fun?

When I was in college, I often wondered why was it so easy for me to go to the gym and so difficult for my teammates.  How come no one else had a lifting plan or could find time to go?  How come league of legends was more important that getting some squats in?  The answer was literally next to me every time I went to the gym.  The reason I wanted to work out was the same reason they wanted to play league, we wanted to be with our friends.

I went to the gym with my best friend, Rabuck.  I never went to the gym and thought to myself, this rep is for sectionals and this one is for regionals and this one is for NATIONALS!!!  I always went to the gym and thought to myself, I get to hang out with Rabuck.  Squatting was just what the two of us did as friends, and it was something I wanted to be better than him at.  We’d wake each other up at 6am and drag ourselves to the gym, but we did it together.  Would we have done it alone?  Ray was in Australia for one semester, and every time I thought about ditching the gym, I thought about Ray pushing it in Australia.  I thought about how I couldn’t let him come home from study abroad and be pushing more weight than me, and so I hopped over to the gym and slammed some reps.

Every time I threw on the quad with snackman I never once thought to myself, this throw is for the game-to-go.  The only thoughts I had were, this is awesome I am hanging out with snackman.  Every time I did sprints with Papi, Sidrys, and Rabuck I was just pumped about hanging out with my friends.  Every handler and marking drill I did with Walden just because I wanted hang out time with Walden.  Nationals never motivated me to put in extra time, hanging out with my friends motivated me.

I was highly motivated, never by results, but because it was fun to do things with my friends.  To me this suggests an entirely different avenue for goal setting.  What if we set goals like:

·         Everyone wants to come to practice

·         Everyone is friends

Again, these are outcome goals.  Can I dig deeper and make this more tangible?

·         Everyone wants to come to practice

o   Practices are well organized and have a goal in mind: making people feel like their time is well spent

o   No one is afraid to make mistakes: practice is a time to do something stupid and learn from it, not have your friends whine and moan at you for making mistakes

o   Practice is not a chore

§  No one feels like they have to be at practice, it is a choice not a requirement

§  If you show up to practice, we’re going to practice with you

§  If attendance is low we aren’t going to waste your time complaining about low attendance we’re just going to start putting reps in

·         Everyone is friends

o   Everyone in the program believes and wants you to improve

o   Having 24 good kids is more valuable than 5 great kids

o   The team cares about who you are outside of ultimate

o   No one values you as a human based on your ability as an ultimate player

o   The entire team believes in each other

As I tried to write process goals for “Everyone is Friends” I kept spinning my wheels thinking about how these are outcome goals of some deeper process.  “The entire team believes in each other” is nothing more than the result of a positive culture.  What breeds a positive culture?  How do we get to relentless positivity?

Layer 3:

I.H.D.

For me the past three years have always come back to I.H.D.  The idea is so concise and easy, that it fits everything I look at.

I.H.D. is different every time you define it, which is one of the reasons I love it so much.  Just the act of defining I.H.D. can be an excellent exercise in where your head is at and what matters to you in this moment.

Intensity:

As the ancient Sumerian proverb goes, “no man should perish without knowing the full extent of his body.”  Intensity is the drive to find that extent, to see how far you can go, to know the difference between “hurts” and “pain”.  It is going hard so that your teammates are conditioned to go against someone who is going hard.

Humility:

Humility is caring about the team more than the team cares about you.  This should inevitably create a positive feedback system.  If everyone cares about the team X, and since each individual is, in a sense, the team then the team will care about you 24X.

Discipline:

Discipline knows that when the pressure mounts, you will naturally fall into whatever is habit.  Discipline is making habits pressure ready.