Committed to outcomes – Amazing Video

May 10th, 2010

Outcomes vs. activities; where the rubber meets the road.

Somewhere along the road of life it dawns on most of us that we have a choice; be committed to the activity or to the outcome.  I believe that most of us are actually very committed to outcomes vs. mindless activity. I suspect the trouble comes when, assuming we are both committed to the same outcome,  my version of how best to get to an outcome differs substantially from your version. It’s often at that point that otherwise nice and well meaning folks suggest that the other person is just “checking the box” aka doing the activity and not committed to achieving the result.

Trouble can also show up when we are committed to different results than those around us but assumed that we all had the same goal in mind i.e. the first grade soccer dad who wants to win vs. the dad who just wants his child to have fun. Both are perfectly fine outcomes but yet very different.

The trouble comes when we assume we know what outcomes those around us are committed to. Often, in my experience, I’ve found that when I asked “how would you describe a perfect season”, that I suddenly get my first real glimpse of what the other person wanted. Sometimes what I find is that the other person only has a vague notion of what they think a great season would look like. I’ts pretty hard to get aligned with vague goals, values and wins.

Just imagine a team with kids and parent who have a wide variety of ideas of what a “great season” looks like; seems to me that it could be a recipe for conflict that didn’t have to take place.

At Bonzi sports software (www.bonzicentral.com) we work everyday to be as fully aligned as possible with our customers idea of “great sports software” looks like. While our foundation brand promise is:

Bonzi sports software hasn’t lost a customer in over ten years because of…

  1. Friendly, free and unlimited support, even one-on-one training
  2. Lowest overall cost but with the most features
  3. Easiest to use but still the most powerful (according to our customers) sports software on the market
  4. No hidden costs and no surprises
  5. Your money put into your bank account every day.

While this is a good starting point and we are fairly certain it is aligned with the values of our customers and target market… it isn’t nearly enough. We really have to be lined up with what our customers want in great detail today and listening so we know what they’ll want and need in the future. Our customers will only stay our customers if we deliver the outcomes that they have come to count on us for.

Once on the field the desired outcome is of course to score or to help our team mates score. Again, we are often better off if everyone is clear on what each person involved is seeking in terms of outcomes i.e. my 11 year old son is mostly interested in skill improvement while his best friend on the team could care less about skill and just want to score. Even this little mis-alignment produces the occasional hard feelings.

So the lesson is simple; get clear on what everybody wants and see if you can put together a plan for everyone to get what they want. Without this everyone is liable to assume and when the inevitable disappointment arrives hard feelings can’t be too far behind.

Who can drive this outcome alignment effort? While a coach is perfectly positioned almost anyone can step up to the job just by asking the question: “What does a successful season look like to each of you”?

Some outcomes, let’s face it, are just a bit more spectacular than others. In the following link you’ll see a college lacrosse player who is an advocate of Bonzi sports software named Conner Martin make a goal with just 2 seconds left in a situation that seems hopeless. Hopeless, evidently, to everyone but Conner and his team at Chapman University. Conner makes that goal and does it so fast that if you are at all like me you’ll have to rewind just to see it happen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o9jxyoqbvQ

Sadly Chapman lost in overtime but there is no doubt that Chapman and Conner came to play that day.

I’d love to hear your observations on clarity and alignment on outcomes in youth or adult sports.

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Posted in Coaching, Communication, Developing Kids, Motivation, Parents Win | No Comments »

Coach; Do You Know How The Kids See You?

April 26th, 2010

Most of us are fairly blind to how others see us. I’ve always thought that, to a degree, that was a good thing. I’d probably go crazy if I really knew at all times how others saw me and felt about me.

There is some value, in my experience, to seeing how I appear or am regarded by others; it helps me to have a choice about how I behave.

I have never met a coach or a player… or anyone else for that matter who got out of bed in the morning and said anything but “I’m going to do the best I can given everything that is happening for me today”. My take is that the vast majority of the world really has good intent and in particular the saints we call coaches in youth sports or even adult sports.

Here is the rub; from my observation, like it or not, most people get their ideas about us not so much based upon their direct personal experience with us but by what others say about us. Almost seems unfair. But how could it be otherwise? We count on reports from others to know as much as possible in advance about those we encounter in life.

The implication then is that first it might be helpful to know how we are seen and second to see how we might choose to change our actions and behavior if we don’t like how others see us.

Our ability to coach and the success of that coaching often pivots to a significant degree on how our players and their parents regard us. Maybe the most important conversation that impacts the performance of our players and the team is a conversation that we’ll never get to hear. I say that because, in my experience, that conversation occurs far away from the field of play at home when the kids and parents talk about the game or the training.

The keys then to improvement are to find a way to understand more clearly how you are regarded and if you don’t like what you discover try changing behavior or actions including how you say things until how you see yourself and how others see you get a bit more aligned. My take is that when that happens you team will move closer to performing up to their potential.

Love to know your thoughts on this and if you see this play out in your world.

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Upgrading Skills Is The Fast Path To Winning

April 21st, 2010

Winning teams do lots of things right in my experience. Some of the critical things are:

  1. Year-round conditioning
  2. Deep mastery of the fundamentals
  3. A shared sense of team and commitment to team over the individual
  4. Lots of practice
  5. An intelligent strategy and game plan
  6. Constant skill mastery and skill upgrades

If you leave any one of those elements out or allow them to lag you can be beaten no matter how naturally “gifted” your players may be.

It seems logical that the list above pertains to organizations beyond just sports. At Bonzi we see all as being key to our ability to serve our customers and to help maintain our ten year winning streak; we haven’t lost a sports software client since we opened our doors over ten year ago.

For software one of the keys is a rapid upgrade cycle. Believe it or not there are sports software companies, far more than you might suspect, who haven’t upgraded there software in two or more years. We suspect that there are a few who haven’t upgraded in over five years or since before www.youtube.com hit the market in 2005.

One way to look at upgrades is that the more and better the upgrades the better and easier you sports software works for you, your club, team or league. Every time sports software registration, websites, scheduling, emailing and so on gets used by your volunteers your ability to get and hold volunteers either gets better or gets worse. People – our users tell us that every time they think Bonzi has gotten as good as it can get it just gets even better.

We have an announcement coming up very soon that will, we believe, delight our users and new customers more than anything else we could have done. It will allow our customers to do things that are either just not possible for most users to do or are just too expensive. We can hardly wait to tell you.

So what do you find to be true about upgrading skills on teams or in your business; is it key or doesn’t it matter?

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Which Kid Needs A Coach?

April 20th, 2010

I’ll admit right up front that it’s a pet peeve; coaches that spend most of their time trying to bring along the bottom 50% of the team.

While I personally excelled at a sport or two in high school my kids only participate because the rule at our house is that everybody participates in a sport in every season of the year. It doesn’t matter what the sport is they just have to participate. Given this ho-hum approach my two sons are at best average performers and both they and I am OK with that.

On each team there is usually one or two standout kids who live, eat, and breath the sport in question. They practice, they drill and they look for every opportunity to get better. These are the kids you love to watch and that give sports the juice they need to stay front and center in so many of our lives.

Here is the rub; so often I see much and sometimes most of the coaching effort go to the kids like my sons who are at best just there for fun. Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong about that. It just seems that there should be enough coaching to help these kids continue to improve but not at the expense of the few who are truly committed.

I am sure that some coaches over do the top kids to the detriment of the more average players.

My real point here is that all kids need coaching and all kids need to be treated as individuals. I doubt I’ll get any argument on any of this. My request then is to step back and ask yourself if that is really what’s happening on your watch; is everybody getting coaching and have you found a way to treat each kid as an individual?  Yes, coaching is crazy and time is short but my observation is that it only takes a bit of effort to step back and make sure you’ve got the bases covered.

Please share your experience in the comments section.

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A Coaching Technique; "Do You Think You Can?"

April 19th, 2010

Looking back over the season I was stunned; upon review I had progressed far beyond anything I could imagine at the beginning of the season. Had you asked me at the beginning of the season if I could do 400 push-ups without stopping, run 10 miles, do 150 chin-ups, do endless curls I would have said no, no, no, and so on. Had you asked me to make a huge leap I would not have even tried and your asking would have catalyzed my resistance to my own best interests.

My coach knew better than to ask me to climb mountains; he asked me to take single steps at a time every day. Before I knew it I had done all of the above and more. My self esteem was sky high.

Each day my coach just asked (he didn’t tell) me if I thought I could “do twenty more push-ups than the week before. Could I just do this or that; all small things but definite steps on the way to achievement. It is with frustration that I see well intended coaches “demand” the best from their players in ways that just shut kids down with only the kids who are already highly self-motivated surviving. The thought here is that if you are coaching younger kids where the main idea is to have fun and imbue a love of sports asking “do you think you can” may be one of the tools to consider.

As coaches of sports and coaches of people trying to adopt sports software we are confronted with the reality of how people can accomplish great things in gradual steps and can fail if you ask them to climb Mt. Everest in one leap. At Bonzi we are fairly certain that we have created the easiest to use and most powerful sports software available in the market today. Having said that any software can be intimidating to a new user. That is why Bonzi takes the unique approach of offering friendly, free and unlimited personal support to get our customers up and running fast. We’ll even go so far as one-on-one training to help someone get and keep their club going.

While we do all the normal sports software support things such as great videos, great web content, and chat… we also want any of our clients to feel free to call us anytime that they need help to get over a hurdle. Every day people tell us that they can’t believe how far they’ve come in their ability to be power users of their Bonzi sports software; when they started they felt like there was no way they would succeed.

What’s your experience with customer support in your sports software; are you getting what you need?

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Posted in Coaching, Communication, Developing Kids, Support | No Comments »

All News Is Local – Why Team Websites Matter

April 16th, 2010

Ask any small newspaper that is alive and profitable in 2010 what their secret is and I’ll bet they’ll say “Keep it Local and Use People’s Names”.

In my opinion no matter what happens with the internet, Twitter, Facebook and so on people will always be interested in seeing news that is about their immediate and daily life where their names an more importantly their kids names are mentioned. As someone once said the sweetest sound on earth is the mention of our name.

If I go into a crowded noisy room and yell any word that is not a person’s name nothing is likely to happen. By contrast if I yell BOB at the top of my lungs every Bob in the place will likely turn their head and look. The mention of their name cut through the noise and was heard by them when nothing else short of “Fire” could reach them.

Great sports software always has in addition to easy registration and powerful scheduling a link with a full function and easy to use team or club website. Bonzi’s sports software is different from most of your alternatives because there is no advertising there unless you put it there and there are no limits on the number of photographs or videos you can place on the site. Bonzi also makes it easy for you to place a kids name on their picture or video.

Maybe the most important thing is that Bonzi sports software is so easy to use that administrators and volunteers don’t mind keeping the website up to date and sharing the latest news about the team and its players. This is the key to each kid getting their day in the sunshine, their name in print and their mug on the screen.

The final thing and the thing we are most excited about will be announced on this blog very shortly; it is a real breakthrough in team websites and will leave the competition even further back in the dust.

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Let me in coach, please!!!

March 22nd, 2010

I’ll admit it, my kids don’t have a competitive bone in their respective bodies. The only reason they are out each season for a sport is that it is simply not an option in our house to do otherwise.

Given this lack of interest has often yielded the expected lack-luster performance. For my older son this lasted until he discovered crew in high school. A little success in a shell and he was off. His diet improved, he worked out longer and better than the coach required and he dramatically improved his performance. This success led to a similar success with cross-country. We are really on a roll. The only bad thing is it took until he was in high school. Better late than never right.

My fifth grader got a break this year. On  some teams a lack of interest is answered by lots lots of time on the sidelines with only the bare minimum given to the kids who have yet to see the light. This year was different. The coach rotated each kid onto the basketball court for the exact same amount of time. Each kid was greeted with encouragement and acknowledgement to support exactly where they were in their development in the sport.

Half way through the season magic happened. With all the appropriate encouragement and time on the court it all started to come together; we had a player on our hands. Now instead of dreading the call onto the court he is waiting on the sidelines excited to get in and contribute. His enthusiasm for all things in life seems to have jumped to a new level even though basketball season is now over by a few weeks.

Put me in coach. It’s a common plea. The trick I’ve seen is to take a deep breath and put those kids in who aren’t yet competent. I’ll be eternally grateful to our basketball coach for his balance and for reading our son so well. Now instead of waiting until high school or later I have a kid who is now passionate and confident for basketball and, it seems, all other sports.

Do you have a story of similar success? Please share it here.

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Be – Do – Have in Youth Sports and Youth Sports Software

March 18th, 2010

Giving a kid involved in any sport a clear understanding of Be-Do-Have is, to many, a life altering gift; why you ask?

All to often our society suggest that if you “have” then you can “do” then you can “be” something special or desired. The irony is that the exact opposition, by my observation, is how things really work.

Let’s take track and my 11 year old son. We are encouraging him to run every day and do other exercises outside of his regular track practice. My wife and I have observed that track practice all too often is lots of standing around in a line waiting for a painfully brief performance event; very little conditioning is occurring and we expect that very little improvement will occur as a result.

We are encouraging our son to “be” in shape so that when the time comes at track practice to “do” the event that he can “have” success. We also know that when he see’s and maybe even is acknowledged for making progress for setting new PR’s (personal records) that his enthusiasm will likely increase for track or any other youth sports activity he is involved in.

At Bonzi we are convinced that we too need to comply with be-do-have when it comes to youth sports software. Over the last ten years we have never lost a customer, we believe, because of this commitment.  Here is how it works from our standpoint; our intention is for Bonzi youth sports software to “be” the very best software which be believe will allow our customers to most easily “do” their jobs using Bonzi youth sports software… and if that happens both our clients and Bonzi will “have” the success and fun we all are in this to achieve. Does that make sense?

If you don’t use Bonzi youth sports software today; what do you wish your current youth sports software provider did that thwarts your experience with the be-do-have continuum?

If you do use Bonzi youth sports software, is there anything possibly missing that we could do better to help your experience with our youth sports software get closer to your desires for the be-do-have continuum?

Please let us know; what you think counts with Bonzi!

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