Ch 15 Application and Action “Law of Victory”
The first step in practicing the Law of Victory is taking responsibility for the success of the team, department, or organization you lead. It must become personal. Your commitment must be higher than that of your team members. Your passion should be high. Your dedication must be unquiestioned.
1. For this section, research someone who exemplifies the Law of Victory. Make sure you bring in evidence. For example, how do they show “Unity of Vision” and incorporate “Diversity of Skills” in their organization? Dave Van Horn is the winningest active coach in D1 college baseball. In 2013 alone he had 11 of his players drafted in MLB’s first year players draft. He is known for his ability to recruit fundamentally sound players and mold them into stars. Last year he had Heston Kjerstadt, the best statistical player in college baseball. Van Horn’s record speaks for itself. He has an incredibly diversity of skills on his rosters, noted in how position players and pitchers get drafted from his teams every year. His seven college world series appearances would be impossible for him to achieve without unity of vision. It’s very clear that he is capable of raising players to their potential considering the 7 active major league players that he’s coached.
Ch 16 Application and Action “Law of the Big Mo”
Motivation is a key factor in developing momentum. The first step toward building motivation is removing demotivating elements within the organization.
1. What in your area of responsibility is causing people to lose their passion and enthusiasm? Or, what is causing you to lose your passion and enthusiasm? Being obsessed with results and statistics will hurt you as a ball player. I have teammates who know exactly what their batting average will be based upon how they preform that day. (meaning they’ve done the math for going 0for4 1for4 2for4 etc). Being so incredibly results oriented can be truly demotivating for baseball players. No sport has such incredible flows of hot and cold. Momentum can be so easily gained, and simultaneously so easily squandered. Players being too focused on their stats, takes their focus away from attainable goals that can actually bring them success.
2. How can you go about removing or at least minimizing these factors? We try to emphasize a more forgiving statistic known as QABs, or quality at bats. There are a variety of way you can have a positive effect on the game and have success in baseball without recording a hit. Focusing on QAB’s is supposed to get players outside of the result oriented mindset, and set their focus on competing for the team. QAB’s encourage unselfishness, focus on batting average encourages selfishness.
To encourage momentum, you need to help your people celebrate their accomplishments. Make it a regular practice to hone people who “move the ball forward.” You want to continually praise effort, but reward accomplishments. The more you reward success, the more people wills thrive for it.
1. In your experience, what are some ways (at least 5) organizations encourage momentum by rewarding accomplishments? You may have to research this if you have not experienced this personally. On the baseball team we have a few ways to recognize accomplishments: The free base champion, the QAB champion, the QAB studs, SKANSKA Player of the Game, and if you really out preform, player of the week honors recognized by the conference. The free base champion gets the golden helmet to wear during practice, and get their photo featured on twitter. This person worked the count, got hit by pitches, and was constantly on base giving us opportunities to score. The QAB Champ gets our custom UFC style QAB belt hung up in their locker. They also receive a twitter feature. The QAB Studs are anyone with a quality at bat percentage higher than 50%, the list of these players gets sent out to the team every week. The SKANSKA outperformer of the game is awarded by our official scorer, who posts on the twitter page a little stat line and photo of the player. The Big South Weekly player recognition is also featured on instagram and twitter. I was fortunate enough two win two freshman of the week honors so far this season, and the social media buzz and congratulations I received was an incredible reward for my accomplishments.
2. What are some suggestions/ideas (at least 3) to celebrate accomplishments so that you can build morale? I believe starting our post game recap meeting with the positives first to set a tone for the rest of the meeting could be beneficial. Rewarding players who succeed with opportunities to move up in the lineup is in many ways an award. And perhaps we should have some kind of board or display in the locker room that puts the pitchers and hitters of the week within our team on display. Something to motivate guys and try to maintain the momentum of the players who are succeeding.