SAME CAN BE SAID FOR WINNERS!!! LUCK HAS LITTLE IMPACT IN DETERMINING WINNERS LONG-TERM.
I read a couple of articles that highlight some of the difficulties teams have come draft time. The reason that the draft sometimes seems like such a crap shoot, especially if you focus exclusively on the more highly decorated success / failure stories.
Some of the commenters, after the jump of this story, try to spin it into a racial argument but really they miss the entire point of the article IMO. Can anyone really control your effort level? Isn't that what coaches preach, take care of the things you can control? And isn't hustle or effort at or near the top of the list.
ST. PETE TIMES ARTICLE ON THE SUCCESS QUALITIES OF VALEDICTORIANS
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/only-one-african-american-in-pinellas-elite-class/1101710
In last Sunday's Neighborhood Times feature, "They rose to the occasion," the valedictorians and salutatorians were asked to give their "parting thoughts" by answering five questions.
Two of the questions caught my attention because the answers reveal the major sources of the students' achievement. The students were asked to discuss the "secret" to their success so far, and they were asked to identify the one person who has influenced their lives.
To the first question, the majority said that hard work, motivation and determination were their secrets.
My favorite two four letter words, HARD WORK.
The SPT Article cites:
- Hard Work, motivation and determination cited as qualities that led them to success and the top of the list of valedictorians and salutatorians in their schools. PERSEVERANCE.
- Becoming a valedictorian is similar to a HS player getting drafted in terms of percentile % of kids that participate versus those that rise to this the desired level of success. About 1 in 500-1,000 per class?
- These same qualities--observable but not easily measurable--are unfortuantely what tends to be the difference-maker, what will ultimately separate the high-draft pick that blossoms into a super-star versus the one who turns into a bust.
- It is the same qualities that will give us the free-agent who turns into a quality players at the major league level, in spite of having none of the more easily observable, readily measurable qualities.
It's easy to look at the Peyton Manning / Ryan Leaf draft and say that all this player evaluation / NFL combine stuff is so much wasteful exercise. By the same token, you can look at some of the more successful teams that use the centralized information better than their peers and succeed, and say the process works.
At the team level, we can point to the examples like the University of Michigan continuing to turn to Drew Henson over Tom Brady to show that the intangible qualities that many times you can see and feel but can't quite put a number on will sometimes conspire to throw objective analysis and reliance on measurable standards for a loop.
The player evaluation system works better in the NFL than in the pre-combine days. It is not a perfect system, but is continually evolving and getting better and while the goal is perfection-- a goal that theoretically can never be achieved -- the victory is in continually improving the product and the results. Especially in this day and age of ever-escalating bonuses. Teams simply must be able to justify their investment dollar decisions more objectively than in the past.
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Financial expert Dave Ramsey uses the analogy of having a Gazelle-like Intensity in order to modify behavior and get out of debt when the culture does everything possible to encourage you to be in debt.
SOME MORE FINANCIAL WISDOM FROM DAVE RAMSEY:
http://www.creditwithdrawal.com/wordpress/2008/02/05/dave-ramsey-and-the-great-debt-payoff-debate/
http://daveramseyguru.com/
http://www.daveramseyguru.com/baby-steps/
- 19 of 20 gazelles under attack eventually evade the cheetah, even though the cheetah is faster than the gazelle.
- The main reason is that while the cheetah is faster in a straight line than the gazelle, if the gazelle manages to zig-zag his way long enough to prolong the pursuit, the cheetah eventually tires and goes on to a weaker prey. The ones that fail are the weaker ones who quit and die.
We do not have the tools to measure this type of quality objectively in humans, so we are left to subjective analysis in our grading. "The kid is a gamer", "A bulldog", "The intensity of a junkyard dog".
HARD WORK, PERSEVERANCE, INTENSITY, FOCUS - DETERMINE SUCCESS OR FAILURE IN SPORTS,
BUT THEY ARE OF LIFE AND DEATH IMPORTANCE TO THE GAZELLE.
They are all factors that allow the "chosen few" to rise to the top and to do so often against peers who appear on the surface to be equally well-endowed as far as the physical gifts that are required for success. Could any of us identify the gazelle that is most likely to give up in its pursuit by the cheetah?
DEFINITION OF RAMSEY'S GAZELLE-LIKE INTENSITY:
http://www.paidtwice.com/2008/01/31/im-a-cheetah-not-a-gazelle/
According to Ramsey, gazelle intensity is a role play exercise. The gazelle has to be smarter, not faster, than the cheetah to escape it. In Ramsey’s world, you are the gazelle, and the credit card company is the cheetah. To escape the cheetah, you must be smarter than it. Just as the gazelle has to bob and weave to avoid the cheetah’s single minded straight line attack (apparently, a cheetah is only super-fast when running in a straight line), we must bob and weave and stay on our toes like a gazelle with never-ending intensity to avoid the credit card’s evil single-minded attack via numerous offers and specials and rewards.
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There are 10-15 kids in each graduating class every year that have the inherent academic skills necessary to be the class valedictorian. But only one makes it each year. I suspect it is often the one that has that gazelle-like, almost life-or-death devotion to success.
There are 10-15 baseball players drafted each year that have the requisite ability to succeed at the major league level. Certainly every first-round pick should be capable enough to succeed from the standpoint of physical gifts. But five years after each draft, you can review the selections and wonder what happened to well over more than half of them.
Only 1-2 attack the mission of gettig from draft-day to major league debut with "gazelle-like" intensity needed for success.
THIS STORY ILLUSTRATES THE ISSUE PERFECTLY:
One day a hound dog went hunting by himself in the woods. He spotted a rabbit in the underbrush and chased him out into the open. The rabbit darted this way and that. The dog followed. The rabbit ran, with the dog at his heels, around trees and through an open field.
When the dog began to tire of the chase, the rabbit, with one last burst of energy, dashed into the thicket and escaped to safety.
As the dog turned back for home, a goat herder who had seen the chase jeered at him, saying, "Some hunter you are! You let that rabbit get the best of you!"
"You forget," replied the tired dog, "about the rabbit's strife! I was only running for my supper. He was running for his life!"
In summary, Ramsey is illustrating that in order to get out of debt ( a financial goal ), you have to want it as if your life depends on it!
He uses the following bible verse as an example:
“Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of the fowler.” - Proverbs 6:5-5
Many times, elite coaches in sports or events that are geared even more towards standardization are surprised by the success of athletes who did not measure up well in the so-called "measurables".
This casts doubt on whether we really know what we are looking for come draft day. What qualities correlate best to future success? Perseverance, confidence in oneself, the patience to tolerate the deliberate practice required to make small gradual improvements at ones craft. These are the qualities one must have to tolerate the 10,000 hours some experts say are required to become an elite master at almost every craft.
Perhaps in the future we will be able to develop a better test to determine who has this "gazelle-like" intensity and perseverance or, better yet, how to develop it in every athlete.
Maybe more of an emphasis on these positive qualities over winning and losing as part of the sports culture.
Oh Slav, there you go dreaming of a better day.....
ADDITIONAL READING:
from the article:
Identifying Talent: What Really Matters by Daniel Coyle author of The Talent Code (highly recommended book)
http://thetalentcode.com/2010/05/05/identifying-talent-what-really-matters/
within the article Coyle recommends the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
from the Amazon.com reviews you will find the following synopisis:
From Publishers Weekly
Mindset is "an established set of attitudes held by someone," says the Oxford American Dictionary. It turns out, however, that a set of attitudes needn't be so set, according to Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford. Dweck proposes that everyone has either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. A fixed mindset is one in which you view your talents and abilities as... well, fixed. In other words, you are who you are, your intelligence and talents are fixed, and your fate is to go through life avoiding challenge and failure. A growth mindset, on the other hand, is one in which you see yourself as fluid, a work in progress. Your fate is one of growth and opportunity. Which mindset do you possess? Dweck provides a checklist to assess yourself and shows how a particular mindset can affect all areas of your life, from business to sports and love. The good news, says Dweck, is that mindsets are not set: at any time, you can learn to use a growth mindset to achieve success and happiness. This is a serious, practical book. Dweck's overall assertion that rigid thinking benefits no one, least of all yourself, and that a change of mind is always possible, is welcome. (On sale Feb. 28)
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