Give Me the Ball

I’m about to break a rule that I made when I start writing these blogs. The rule was that I would not write about business or, in other words, the things that consume my life from Monday through Friday.

One of the purposes for writing these articles was to give me margins in life. I spend most of my waking hours dealing with my job responsibilities. I purposed to take a break a few minutes of each day (or most days) to reflect and write about whatever else (besides work related things) is in my mind or heart.

But there is a lesson or two or three in what I am about to tell you.

I have just finished a week long kick-off meeting to set direction and expectations for the coming year. About 100 people attended this meeting from all over the United States. These people are the leaders of our company which has about 25,000 employees. The people in attendance manage managers and multiple locations. Each person represented has a huge responsibility as it relates to the success of our company. They are the very brightest people of our company and our industry. They would not be in their roles unless they earned the right to be there.

Some of the corporate officers attended this meeting including the President and CEO, the COO and the Senior Vice President of Operations. There were also other corporate leaders at this meeting including financial directors, corporate lawyers, corporate development leaders, market support center leaders and human resource leaders.

My point is, this meeting and the people who were there is a very long way from what I used to do when I ran a couple of funeral homes in middle Georgia.

I attended a meeting before the meeting on Monday of this week. During that meeting we received the final financial results for the year end 2006 which were very good. That good news certainly helped set the stage for the meeting but everybody there thought and stated that 2006 was gone and now we had 2007 staring us in the face and it was now our job to put a comprehensive plan in place to meet our objectives for this year as we did the previous year.

Part of my responsibility during the final couple of hours of the meeting was to present my team’s growth plan for 2007 to the big group. A lot of hard, detailed work from my team was put into that document during our break out sessions. There were four of us who made these presentations. This is a huge deal for the company because the forecast we make will eventually be a guide to what will be presented to Wall Street. And my company is the caretaker for a lot of people’s retirement money, if you know what I mean.

My boss made some closing comments late yesterday afternoon. The comments were passionate and emotional. He was emotionally congratulating the people in the room for the success in 2006 and passionately summarizing our marching orders. It was a great speech and I thought the meeting was done when he received a standing ovation. Then to my surprise, he called me to the stage again and asked me to make some closing comments.

On the first day of the meeting I told him if he needed some “fill” time during the meeting I would be glad to take some minutes and speak to the group. For those of you that do not know me, I speak to many groups throughout the US every year. So, I was just trying to be helpful. But I had no idea he was going to call on me at that moment.

So I came to the stage and began to tell the story of Eulan Brown. There are several lessons I have gleaned from that disabled “Grits” newspaper delivery man I knew growing up in Reynolds, GA that just fit perfectly with what we had been doing that week and where we are going in 2007.

One of those lessons I learned from Eulan I also learned from playing basketball years ago. And that is to be a winner you have to be willing to lose. I remember when the game was on the line and there was only one shot left in the game, most people didn’t want the ball. They wanted to be on a winning team but they didn’t want to risk being the goat.

The point being if you are going to be a winner you have to be willing to lose. Most people never become winners because they never put themselves in a position to win.

Something dawned on me as I was on that stage during the last few minutes of our conference. I didn’t mention it but I was overcome by the truth of it.

This southern talking redneck from the little town of 1200 people in rural Georgia had the ball on the last play of that conference standing in front of people who are so much brighter that he even realizes. A guy who grew up afraid to talk in front of a class of 20 because he stuttered so bad he couldn’t get the words out. A guy who was taught by his parents to never be afraid to ask for the ball on the last play of the game when the game was on the line. A guy who was taught that mediocrity was a word that should be deleted from my dictionary. A guy who knew absolutely nothing about corporate America or the acronyms that go with it 9 years ago. A guy, who is now 52 years old, who knows what it is like to be the goat by taking the ball on the last play of the game. But more inportantly a guy who is determined to keep on asking for the ball anyway and to keep learning from the misses.

They didn’t know it but the life lessons I was speaking about from Eulan Brown was being lived out on the stage in front of them.

I had the ball on the last play of the game. Their reaction when I finished makes me think I made this one.

And that’s okay.

But I still have sense enough to know that next time I may miss the shot.

And that’s okay too.

But I never want to miss being a winner because I am afraid to lose.