Slow the Game Down
The quote card in the picture for this blog post is from softball coach and former player Stacey Nuveman-Deniz. The concept is nearly-universal in the world of athletics, and if you search on Google or YouTube for "Slow the Game Down", you'll find countless stories and videos touting the virtues of this concept.
Each sport has techniques that allow athletes to master their craft and achieve success more often.
Trade out courts and fields for offices and conference rooms, and it's really no different. In the business world, the ability to slow the game down is something that I've found vital in running a well-managed organization. Like most things in life, a grasp of the importance of a concept, and the discipline to intentionally work on mastering that concept, are what make things look easier.
Once we're ready to prioritize slowing the game down, there are four areas of focus that I've found are important to spend time on. I call them "The Four P's."
Preparation - Doing the work before the work so you can act and lead with mindfulness and clarity instead of scrambling and reacting.
Athletes in many sports prepare by watching video of themselves or their opponents, doing mental exercises or other drills so that they are better prepared and can more easily react. In business, preparing means reading materials in advance, asking others for their advice and thinking through potential scenarios before they happen so that you're ready when they do.
Prioritization - Purposefully focusing and spending your time on what matters most, so your energy goes to your reason for being instead of noise.
Having the discipline to spend more of your time on what will help you with your goal is important in both athletics and in business. Having the discipline to say "no" to things that don't fit is equally important. It's amazing how prioritizing the right things in one area of your life bleeds over into others and makes all aspects of your life more fulfilling.
Planning - Turning strategy into a known sequence, aligning actions, resources, and expectations before the moment demands them.
Having a plan breaks your goals down into logical steps that not only reduce surprises, but also increases the chances that you'll act in ways that are congruent with your overall goals and purpose. This isn't to say that you can't ever stray from your plan; in fact, if you plan appropriately, you'll anticipate decision points in the future that will dictate a shift, further slowing the game down.
Practice - Reps with intention, creating growth through self-awareness and betterment. The more you do the right things the right way, the more second nature they become.
The best coaches and players - from John Wooden to Kobe Bryant - have consistently and repeatedly spoke to the importance of practice. The value of getting hundreds of reps in before the game is immeasurable. And it's amazing to see how "natural" players look and realize that ability came from God-given talents of course, but also from thousands of hours of practice.
As someone who has been around the block a few times, I am now more fully aware than ever that there is no substitute for having done something before - from handling conflict to giving feedback to influencing others. For professionals, the more they've done the job, the more proficient they are. The more proficient they are, the more easily they can look peripherally or diagnose opportunities for improvement.
"Slowing the game down" is a concept that resonates very much with me, so much so that I devoted a chapter to it in my new book Built on Purpose: Lessons in Leadership and Culture. If you haven’t gotten a copy of the book, but you're interested in learning more, please check out my homepage — or send me a note - I'd love to carry on the conversation!
