It takes many people to pull off a season of sports successfully.
It is ironic that, often in my observation, the better the contribution to that successful sports season the less recognition that contribution gets.
For example; the first four years my son was in soccer all of the soccer fields he played on were mud pits by the last half of the season because we live in the rainy pacific northwest. At some point the fields mostly seems to stay relatively mud free through most or all of each season. The value of this to all concerned was huge. Despite this value the contribution was not noticed at a conscious level and it certainly got no recognition or thanks.
The point is that while we may “get away” with not giving recognition for contributions, both the team spirit and the likelihood that the contribution will continue are much less without recognition in my experience.
At Bonzi we know our role and our contribution in most of the sports organizations we serve and only need one kind of recognition; that our teams continue to use our software every year. Sure, we like and want other forms of recognition but we really only need and hope for continued use of the software. Continued use really says it all to us.
Consider taking a look around at all that it takes to run a successful sports season and making that extra effort if you don’t already to acknowledge and recognize the wide variety of contributions that made the season possible. I have been impressed by some of the coaches and parents at the season end pizza parties that lightly but thoroughly cover many and maybe even most of the contributions, large and small, that made a season possible. I’ve also notices the smiles and glow coming from people who thought that their minor contribution had not been seen when to their delight they got a bit of recognition.
Then again, sometimes it does or at least seems like it “kills” you.
So what does this have to do with sports software, soccer software, football sports software, volleyball software and so on? At Bonzi sports software we’ve been tested over the last decade by clients who run some of the largest and most complex sports organizations in the country. We’ve been tested by volunteers and parents who are software experts. We’ve even been tested by very small clients. The win is that with each sport, each part of the country and each new test we feel like we get better and our sports registration, website and scheduling software gets better.
When you have it easy in your life you often have no real reason to grow, improve and test your limits. We like to say that our most demanding customers – some would say the biggest pain-in-the-neck customers – are our very best clients in terms of making us better. Why? Because they are brave enough to stand up for what they want and to communicate it to us.
Sports software that serves tens of thousands of people every hour of every day is complex stuff. Add to that this software must be constantly updated to stay aligned with new browsers, new operating systems, new requirements and innovations and you could go crazy just trying to figure out what to do next. That’s where our customers help us out.
In our observation when people share their concerns, desires, wants and needs with us they are doing a number of good things:
We’ve learned that behind every concern, desire, want and need is a value of some sort. By expressing those concerns, desires, wants and needs we can get a better idea of what our customers values are. We are confident that if we the people of Bonzi and our sports software are aligned and stay aligned with our customers that we will be one of the fastest growing sports software companies in the world.
We get a chance to find out if those concerns, desires, wants and needs are for action or if they are just blowing off a little steam and don’t actually want us to do anything or if they do want action. Nobody has enough money, not even Microsoft, to blindly respond to every request. Just simply listening to our clients view of sports software goes a very long way. What’s even better is when we just ask “what action would you like us to take”?
We learned that customers who are willing to share their concerns, desires, wants and needs are usually not the kind of customer who abandons you every time a new shiny toy comes out from a competitor.
No, all this listening is not always fun… but it sure is productive. We love it when people say things like “Wow, you took care of that request fast – my old sports software provider basically charged us more, barely listened and never took any action to address our concerns.”
So what doesn’t kill us does seem to make us stronger. Got a concern, complaint or a suggestion; please let us know. After all, if it doesn’t kill us it will make us better.
Should be cry or cheer for Ghana in their extra-time shoot out with Uruguay?
On one hand no African team has made it this far before. On the other hand making the finals was so close I’m sure all of Africa could taste it. My thought is that both tears and cheers are in order for the amazing Ghana team.
My take is that all of Africa will never be the same again in World Cup competition because Ghana made it to the quarter finals. Sure it would have been wonderful had the progressed but the fact remains that they took the game farther than any before them. I suspect that the next four years will see a significantly higher level of average play from all teams in Africa simply because the curse has been broken at the quarter final level.
In track it was gospel that no person could break the four minute mile. Roger Bannister had been making steady progress toward the four minute barrier when finally on May 6th, 1954 he finally broke through by a fraction of a second. Since that time some have reported that over 1,000 have broken the four minute barrier. I suspect the same will now be true for Africa in World Cup play and that we very well may see Africa at the top of the heap some time in the next 12 years.
The key always seems to be steady progress and tending to the basics. Anyone involved in any endeavor can “go beyond” if they keep their focus on the goal and pay the price of tending to the basics. As always leadership plays a big role in setting the vision and taking the actions that make steady progress from today’s reality to tomorrows dream. Ghana is simply on one road while kids the world over are on another on the field of play. As long as anyone with a dream doesn’t give up and stays in innovative action towards their goal dreams are possible.
Bonzi sports software dreams of being the best sports software in the world. Some of our customers tell us they think we’re already there. While our growth is rapid we won’t rest until we feel we achieve that goal and we have customers in every state in the USA who agree. With every new state we bring on and every new customer we feel a bit like we suspect Ghana must feel… that tomorrow we can only go higher.
Parents are the key enabler to kids regular participation in any sport such as soccer, football, baseball, lacrosse, etc.
Kids can’t pay the fee’s, arrange the transportation, juggle the competing demands of a family’s schedule and all the other things that have to come together for a kid to participate in a sport.
Anymore it seems more and more unusual that only one parent in a two parent household can stay home and stay on top of all the logistics to make it happen. in many and maybe most families both parents work and depending on the size of the city or the nature of the work both parents are lucky to get home by dinner time let alone time to get a child a snack, make sure they have everything they need and get them off to practice or a game.
Today it seems that there are more than a few single parent households where the work must come first because it is the only source of income and there is no easy safety net if traffic is bad one day or the boss insists on work into the evening on the day of the big game or the crucial practice (aren’t they all?).
Despite all these challenges parents do their level best, in my observation, to do what it takes to get and keep their kids in sports simply because it is so central to a happy, healthy and well adjusted upbringing in this world. Ask many adults what their fondest memories of growing up were and I’ll bet a role in sports is one of the top three of the fondest memories.
So what’s the point? The point is that we all benefit from happy, healthy and well adjusted kids no matter our age or circumstances. These kids are our nations and the worlds future. This blog post is simply a plea for us all to look around and pitch in when we can to help each other get as many kids into sports as possible. I can’t do anything significant about the national debt, terrorists, or the price of beans in Beirut… but I can keep my eyes open and be sensitive enough to volunteer to provide a ride, give a word of encouragement, or volunteer my logistical support to help out a coach so that the most kids possible get to participate.
Bonzi sports software’s role is simple; we make it easy, fun and very, very affordable. We know that the harder it gets for parents and all the other caring folks who selflessly give to support kids participation the fewer kids get to play. Bonzi sports software can only make the sports registration, scheduling, coach background checking, rostering, and websites easy, fun and affordable… but we think that’s a lot. Beyond that it’s the coaches, volunteers and those dedicated parents who put their plans in second place in favor of the future of their kids.
One of the most startling things my father ever said to me as I was growing up was “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach”. Being very visual this statement hit me with both the “Yuck” factor of the image and the conviction that the metaphor was spot on in the situation at hand in my life.
24 – 7 – 365; All any of us has is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days in a year. Exactly how many years each of us might be lucky enough to get persists as one of the primary questions in any life. Given all this we can only accomplish so much with our precious time. If this is so then why are we so loath to write down and commit to goals… that are somewhat realistic AND that we reasonably might have the resources to accomplish?
The power of “and”. Last summer I sent my then 16 year old son on a three week Outward Bound adventure. We were warned that the adventure would entail carrying a heavy pack for 10 + miles each day over rugged terrain. To get him ready I thought of all sorts of complicated exercise routines but in the end decided to opt for something simple that had a high likelihood of actually happening often enough that the end result would be a level of conditioning that would allow my moderately sedentary son to have a good time and not hate me the rest of his long life. At first I was just going to have him walk home from school each day; nice, simple and likely to happen. The magic was the power of the “and”. Each day he took a pack with him to school and each week we added 5 pounds to the pack so by the last week prior to his Outward Bound departure he was carrying 60 lbs for 2.5 miles each day.
So why am I telling you this? Because for once in my life I got real about the: 1) goal, 2) resources and 3) time that we had to accomplish something. Had I made this complex my son would not have been prepared for what turned out to often be 10+ hours of walking each day and often more than 10 miles over steep terrain including snow. As it turned out my son was by far the most physically fit kid on the trip and as a result he had a truly life changing experience.
The key was two-fold; first we got real and clear about what our goal, resources and time was for the mission at hand, second we kept it simple enough to get done but not so simple that it didn’t meet the need; we included the powerful “and” of both the walking and the gradually increasing weight in the pack.
Too often I fail and see others fail when we don’t get real with people in sports and recognize the reality of our goals, resources and time… and as a result we don’t accomplish anything other than creating chaos and frustration. Workout routines that are simple and have limited objectives can often achieve most of our goals for a sport while staying within our resource limits and the little time most modern schedules can allocate.
At Bonzi sports software we too are faced with being real about our goals, resources and time. As one of the fastest growing sports software companies in the world (according to our consultant) our growth consumes resources and time along with our commitment to world-class support, providing the best sports registration software, sports scheduling software, team website software enabled with an easy-to-use content manager all in a no contract customer relationship. All this comes back to our goal; a great and frustration free experience for our dedicated volunteers, administrators and parents associated with sports such as soccer, football, basketball, baseball, softball, lacrosse, hockey , little league and volley ball.
We have found that if we keep it simple and real we can leverage the power of the “and” thereby both delivering a great experience every day for our clients and growing faster than any of our competitors without losing clients.
So what do you think? Are we achieving our objective?
My 17 year old son is cleaning out his bedroom to prepare for a busy summer and to be ready to hit the ground running for his senior year in high school. This whole process reminded me of the new movie Toy Story 3 where the boy is getting ready to move away from home and go to college. My son and the Toy Story 3 boy were both at the beginning of transitions and both were packing up the remnants of the past in preparation for the future.
Having seen the Toy Story 3 movie tuned my awareness up for boxes marked “Store in Attic” and “Give Away”. I noticed my son too had a box marked “Store in Attic”… I just had to peak to see what prize had escaped the trip to Goodwill and was getting stored for a shot at another day. To my surprise a significant portion of those things being saved for the future was his collection of “participation” trophy’s from kindergarten on. Alas, my son has never been nor really wanted to be a competitor; he was just out to have fun and be part of the team. Still the recognition represented by the trophy must have meant something to him.
In the science of motivation we know that recognition is a powerful motivator for people to try harder, work harder and to have vastly more persistence than is likely without recognition. For many a kid the recognition that comes from a coach, other parents and a $2 trophy is all the recognition that they are likely to get in life. To my way of thinking this is one of the foundational values that make youth sports so very, very important in our culture regardless which game is played.
At Bonzi sports software we support the concept of recognition a couple of important ways. First we know that having your picture on a sports website or a video on your sports website is a powerful motivator. To support that Bonzi sports software allows for unlimited space so that coaches and volunteers can post all the pictures they want without being asked to pay more. We also make sure that we keep the cost of registration down without asking the sports club or league to compromise on what they get from the software. Finally, Bonzi sports software is unique in all sports software in that we have a content management system that makes it easy and fast for a volunteer or administrator to quickly post and title new photos or videos.
We know that appropriate recognition drives both effort and self-esteem in kids. When kids know how to go beyond their initial limits and the develop great self-esteem we know that our world will be a better place for everybody.
For many who have worked around the quest to improve performance in baseball, football, lacrosse, basketball… or any other endeavor in life we know that often the foundation of performance amounts to the combination of willing and able.
Simply put is the person performing both willing to perform and able?
The Heath brothers, Chip and Dan, in their amazing book “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard” suggest that change, in this example changing from good performance to great performance, may require two critical things; clarity of what is required to make the change i.e. more exercise or better nutrition… and a specific and simple action that can be taken to get there.
In our experiences with performance it also helps to have both clarity of an inspiring win in personal terms and an internally or externally imposed “what by when” or “butt on the line” to take a specific action by a specific date.
Also from our experience we’ve learned that often the first step towards performance is a “what by when” for execution of an activity or more specifically an outcome i.e. run five miles. The next step and a step often regarded as an order of magnitude more difficult is to sign-up for an outcome instead of just an activity i.e. run five miles in under 30 minutes. I like to say that the professionals sign-up for outcomes while the amateurs sign-up for activities.
In the sports software or sports registration and scheduling software market Bonzi is well known as the company and I do mean the company that signs-up to lead and perform on all fronts; Bonzi signs-up for outcomes for our clients vs. just going through the activities. So what do I mean? In the following categories:
league scheduling software
league management software
sports tournament software
sports website software
sports registration software
online league software
with versions for every sport played on this earth (or at least so it seems)… Bonzi sports software has signed-up to meet or exceed our users expectations on the following fronts just to name a few:
Free, ultra high quality, friendly and available support – even one-on-one training.
Super easy to use yet easily the most powerful application on the market… and the only sports software that has a fully functioning content manager for website creation and management.
Lowest overall cost and no forced advertising on your site and in your emails.
Your money in your bank account every day.
No contracts, no surprises and no games to have to explain to your board of directors after they’ve made the initial authorization – you’ll never feel like a dummy with Bonzi
And about a million other goodies we know you’ll love like iPhone access and broader browser support than any other.
So we started this post speaking about “willing and able”. At Bonzi our performance rests on our being willing and able to give you the best sports software money can buy at the lowest cost… all so we can support your willing and able to perform in the sport you love.
In keeping with the spirit of World Cup Soccer I want to pass on this little tidbit recently reported on the Freakonomics Podcast… it turns out that game theory almost explains penalty kicks.
As I’m sure you know a right footed kicker tends to kick a penalty kick to the left and left footed kickers to the right. Clearly the goalie would know the difference in advance. Also, as you may recall, in World Cup Soccer the penalty kicks are so powerful that the goalie literally has to make their choice of which direction they are going to jump before the ball has left the foot of the kicker.
Generally a goalie is better off trying to jump to the right for a left footed kicker and to the left for a right footed kicker… generally. Overall, however, the kicker would, mathematically speaking, score more often if they just kicked the ball straight ahead… but that rarely happens? Why?
It turns out that looking good is more important than scoring. See, in the calculus of a World Cup Soccer players life kicking the ball straight ahead on a penalty kick and having the ball easily caught or defended is viewed as a major sin. In fact they say it is such a sin that a World Cup level player actually could lose a sponsor over it. So even though they would score more often if they just kicked straight ahead it rarely happens because it just pays to worry first about how you look in World Cup soccer than if you score.
For the rest of us who don’t stand to lose a sponsorship you might want to try to just kick straight at the goal with your penalty kicks knowing that the math is on your side.
Blame just feels right in so many cases. The big question is does it get us anywhere in reality? I suggest it doesn’t usually move anyone towards the things they want on or off the field in sports.
Let’s take little league from the perspective of the coach for example. If the team loses more often than the coach thinks they should given what he or she knows of the teams average skill level who or what is to blame? Blame the kids for (fill in the blank) until the cows come home and what will really change; nothing in my experience. By contrast if the coach looks in the mirror and realizes that the practice sessions have not done enough to condition the kids and balls keep getting dropped then conditioning and drills may be in order.
So you say Duh… everyone knows that in little league sports! So if thats true… why so much noisy complaint and yelling at the kids?
The experts out there tell us that we complain anytime there is a gap between what we want and what we are getting. More specifically when we complain we usually do so in one or more of the following three ways:
Complaints for recreation – it’s a social lubricant and a way of aligning on values
Expressive complaints – we just have to get it off our chest but don’t want or expect that anything will be done about it
Complaints for action – we want and expect that something will happen and happen soon
Discerning which complaint you are making is tough and figuring out what other people are doing seems almost impossible much of the time.
In my experience the key is to simply ask; what are the possibilities that you think we should consider looking at to address this concern? That statement usually pulls out which of the three types of complaints are occurring and what you might need to do about it. I go so far as to ask myself the question so I can get clarity… if I really think these kids can do better in their little league baseball game then what action(s) would most likely yield the needed results in the relevant time-frame?
Once I know that then I know it is up to me to take the action or shut up and put up…unless I am just complaining for recreation or to blow off steam… and even then I need to make sure that my complaining isn’t doing harm to those around me who can’t figure out what my intent is with all my noise.
Major league vs. minor league; they do all the same things they just do them a bit differently.
A friend is an amazing golfer. Some of his well healed friends not only encouraged him to turn pro but offered to give him the money so he could attend the PGA “school” to qualify for the PGA Tour. Despite routinely playing par or better golf 98% of the time he said, he didn’t feel that he was good enough for the PGA. I asked him why and his answer surprised me. He said it came down to one word: consistency. From his point of view the worst guy on the PGA tour who was making a good living was much more consistent over time than my friend thought he could be. During his off hours he had worked at improving his consistency but had hit a ceiling that he could not get beyond in his opinion.
If you look closely at the elite vs. the average in any endeavor there are many differences and most of them come from consistent dedication to doing the work necessary to achieve the goal in my observation. Now you probably think I’m going to talk about Bonzi sports software or how kids can go from rec to traveling or some other high minded encouragement to go beyond. I could do that and I’d love to do that but it won’t be so today.
Today I’m going to just talk about the dedication to the magic of having fun with sports. The wrinkle here is that it does take dedication and focus to get the most fun out of sports in my experience. So what do I mean?
First, relax. If any of this were that serious you would have been notified by official correspondence. Second focus on the bright sports; what’s working well? Do more of that and magically it seems so many of the other things get better on their own. Third, just have the goal of having the most fun possible – a key to this is simply asking out loud and asking often… what could we do better next time to make this more fun. If you listen and ask often enough I suspect you’ll be pleased with the answers your brain gives you. Consider going above and beyond in the area of basic fitness. And finally whatever you decide to do and however you decide to do it consider taking a bit of extra effort to be consistent i.e. set a productive and effective pattern in how you approach the sport and stay with it for the whole season.
For some reason being consistent adds remarkable value for all sports in my experience.
To say more would just complicate things; try being a pro at having fun with sports no matter your level… and see what magic being consistent can do for your fun when it comes to sport and life.
OK… I did have to mention that when it comes to sports software that Bonzi is amazingly consistent at many things but probably nothing more than the fact that our support is consistently rated as wonderful and that we put your money directly into your bank account every day. Those are points of consistency that our customers say they LOVE.
