Lessons Learned from the LA Angels

Hi All, and Good Saturday Morning!

Actually, it's late Friday night, and I had just watched the Boston Red Sox come back from a 7-0 deficit to defeat the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALCS. For those of you who don't watch baseball, if Tampa had won that game, they'd be on their way to the World Series. If Tampa does eventually go to the World Series, it would be shocking given that they had never had a winning record in their franchise history, and had just come off a miserable 2007 season with basically the same players.

Now, onto the other, more painful side. I'm an Angels fan; have been for 11 years, and what I have seen in three of the past five years is not only painful, but is a microcosm of how a business fails. This past year the Angels had the best record in the Major Leagues and lost to Boston in the first round of the playoffs, just like they had lost to that same team last year and two years before that. The Angels are a perfect example of the old 'penny-wise, dollar-foolish' adage. Throughout the year, their mantra was 'one game at a time'. The manager refused to let them think about the next game. While this made for a loose team, 'Hey, there's always tomorrow', what it did was to suck all the emotion out of the team. When it came time in the playoffs to ratchet it up, they had no emotion to go on. They were robots. They lost a game and said, 'oh well, there's always tomorrow's game'. Well, after losing the series, there was no tomorrow's game, and the Angels were left feeling numb. They had no emotion, no passion, and no focus that comes with those attributes. Good teams rise to the occasion. Poor teams melt. In business it's the same way; when the heat gets turned-up, the good teams play better, more focused, and see the goal at the end of the project, not just the end of the day.

The Angels would do well to learn from some of the high performing teams in industry; it's not what you did today that defines you, it's what you do over time that does.

Let's hope the Ducks get that message.........

Cheers,

Kurt C Schneider
Lead Product Accelerator
Tech Bridge West

Kind of Like a Diary for One

I come to you today a little frazzled. I've been writing to this Blog for nearly two months and have yet to get a comment. That must mean I'm either doing something wrong technically, or people are simply not interested in what I'm saying. Let's take those two points separately.

If it's a technical issue, then I will spend some time with friends who have blogs to see how to get readership going. Hopefully I'll learn something in the process.

If it's the latter, then I'm hoping you can direct me a bit. I wanted to use this blog to help career professionals communicate better within the walls of their company. To help them get their ideas heard, and more to the point, acted on. I firmly believe in small and start-up companies needing a little push to get them past the hump of idea to market. That's why I started Tech Bridge West, to provide that push. So far we've helped companies get their products to the market faster, better and more economical than they would have otherwise done.

Let me know if there is anyone out there. I'm all for linking to other's blogs for the betterment of both, so bring it on!

Cheers,

Kurt