What Obama can learn from Ross Perot, Cecil Underwood and Coalition Marketing

Two weeks ago while on vacation in Washington, DC, Patty and I found D’Acqua, a great seafood restaurant on yelp and left two happy kids with room service and movies at our hotel.  We were seated a few tables away from David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior political advisor.  I was about to ask our waiter for a piece of paper to write him a note with some ideas on how they could more effectively promote healthcare reform legislation, when Patty let me know that wasn’t her idea of a romantic dinner together. 

I just finished reading The Battle for America 2008, a great book about the 2008 election, on my Kindle.  It is clear from the book that Barack Obama learned a lot about the need to prioritize healthcare reform from the late Senator Kennedy.  Here are a few thoughts on lessons he could learn and apply from others leaders:

From Ross Perot and Cecil Underwood - Use the data and a few high impact charts. 

Every time President Obama speaks on health care, I expect to see a few high impact charts that layout the major problems that need to be addressed.  And every time I am disappointed. The data is clear and easy to access.  A few examples:  Medicare’s administrative costs are about  1% of total costs, while private insurance administrative costs are around 15%; the average American family’s health care insurance premiums paid have doubled since 2001  from $6000 per year to $12,000 a year; US health care cost per capita is over $4000 higher than the next highest country.  Obama could make this data extremely relevant to the average American by showing the impact of higher health care costs on the price of a car or other goods made in the US vs Canada or Japan.

 

 In 1992, Ross Perot effectively used simple charts to get some of his major points across.  Years early, in my father’s 1956 successful bid to become the youngest governor of West Virginia, he used simple posters to point out that the state was paying much more than surrounding states for road building equipment.

During my six years as a consultant, manager and partner at Bain & Company, we used simple bar charts to show clients their uncompetitive cost positions.  During my tenure, I showed CEO’s, factory workers, and cardiac surgeons these charts, and in every instance, they got it.  Obama needs to do the same. 

From Coalition Marketing - Use the logo’s of your diverse group of supporters and use their voices to support reform.

In 1992, after launching the AIR MILES shopping reward program in Canada, I coined the term Coalition Loyalty Program to describe reward programs where consumers could collect points from multiple retailers who were given exclusivity or co-exclusivity in their consumer spending category (e.g. grocery stores, gas stations, credit cards).  In addition to AIR MILES in Canada, other successful coalition loyalty programs include Nectar in the UK, Fly Buys in Australia and Upromise in the US.  One of the benefits of a coalition program versus a single company or stand-alone program is the power of coalition marketing.  When programs are launched with the full marketing support of leading companies like Safeway, Shell and Bank of Montreal, they achieve breakthrough awareness in record time. 

The support of these market leaders also gives the new program instant gravitas, which helps the company running the program to receive favorable PR coverage and in-turn, sign up more leading companies.  In all of our business development, PR and marketing materials we prominently featured the logos of our major sponsors.  Our coalition partners went even further to support the program and grow the coalition - they helped us sell new sponsors.  On one occasion, Derrick Fry, then SVP of Electronic Marketing for Bank of Montreal (which at the time was the 6^th largest bank in North America) flew with us to Calgary to meet with a potential sponsor for dinner and then flew back to Toronto on the red eye.  On another occasion, Bill Turner, then CMO of Sears Canada, helped us pitch a leading Ontario grocer on the program.

The other thing missing when I watch Obama’s press conferences and rallies are the logos and names of the broad base of businesses, organizations and other leaders that support healthcare reform.  Among others, Wal-Mart, the AARP, PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association), and the AMA all support healthcare reform.  Why not use these organizations’ support as proof that reform is needed and why not use their leaders to promote the need for reform? 

One of the best examples of creating and leveraging a stellar list of supporters also comes from the coalition loyalty world.  In 2001, Michael Bronner and Jeff Bussgang, the founders of Upromise, with the help of their VC General Catalyst, created one of the most impressive lists of supporters ever assembled.  Their Advisory Board included: former Senator Bill Bradley; Kim Clark, then Dean of Harvard Business School, John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins, David Rockefeller; and John C Whitehead, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  Talk about gravitas, with this lineup of supporters, Upromise could get a meeting with any CEO or CMO in the country and they used the group to help them recruit the largest coalition of sponsors ever assembled in the US.

A few months ago, former Senate Leaders Democrat Tom Daschle and Republicans Howard Baker and Bob Dole published Crossing Our Lines - Working Together to Reform the US Health System, their proposal for healthcare reform.  Why not use these three leaders along with the CEO’s of Wal-Mart, the AMA, PhRMA, and the AARP as a base to build a broad coalition of supporters and engage them in the active promotion of the need to pass healthcare reform?

I agree with the experts and pundants  that if Obama wants to pass healthcare legislation this year, he needs to take a more aggressive leadership role and also be more specific about the plan he wants, but I also believe he will be much more successful if he builds and leverages a coalition of supporters to help him.  That’s how he became president in the first place.

What business can learn about leadership and collaboration from Little League Baseball

Although you wouldn’t know it from the 50 degree weather we have had the last three days, it is spring in Boston, which means my 9 year old son is playing baseball again.  Helping coach his little league team reminded me of the leadership model we developed at the Loyalty Group that others have found helpful and I thought I would share it with you.

During the time I was CEO of The Loyalty Group, we grew from three entrepreneurs in a Toronto hotel room to over 600 employees when we sold the business to Alliance Data System (NYSE: ADS).  Throughout this period, I thought a lot about both leadership and how to help executives develop the requisite skills to advance as far as they wanted to in their careers, as this was one of my most important roles. Few things give me greater satisfaction than seeing several of the people I hired continue to grow and be successful in their careers. Indeed, many of those I hired and mentored have taken Loyalty to levels of success we didn’t even dream of during my tenure, and we were pretty big dreamers back then.

One of the things I came to understand about leadership and developing executive talent became what we called the “Three I’s of Leadership.”  I realized to build a successful high growth company while delivering on our cultural goal of “creating business success that others consider impossible, while treating people with respect and having fun along the way” we needed leaders with the following skills:

• Intellectual Leadership - Leaders who had both the raw brain power to identify opportunities and solve challenges and very deep skills in their specific areas of expertise.

• Implementational Leadership - Leaders who were not just “consulting smart” but who could get things done to move the business forward.  Executives who could actually stop thinking, developing models and drawing matrices and “land the helicopter, get the troops in the field and make things happen.”

• Inspirational Leadership - Leaders who could get things done through others without making everyone quit.

Over time, I found out two things about this model:

Three I Leadership can be, and usually is, a shared set of skills.

Although no senior executive can have below threshold skills in any of the three areas, many highly successful companies are led by “Three I Leadership Teams.”  I first realized this through being involved in YPO (the Young Presidents Organization) where I spent a lot of time with other Presidents of successful companies. My original belief was that successful CEO’s had to be “A” players in all three leadership skill sets, but I realized that this often wasn’t the case.  I observed several very successful CEO’s who clearly were not what anyone would consider “motivate the troops inspirational” and others who although incredibly smart “idea machines,” needed someone to figure out what ideas should actually be implemented and then take the idea from the white board (or the back of the napkin) to the business and the bottom line.  All I observed were very smart, but not all would qualify for Mensa.

I soon realized that almost everyone had built a “Three I Team” around themselves by hiring direct reports that balanced and complimented their skill sets. There was the collaboration principle at work again.  Once I realized the importance of Three I Teams - and the stupidity of expecting every senior executive to be naturally gifted at all three - I started using the model to help my direct reports work on their weakest areas and made sure we had Three I Teams leading all of our major groups and strategic initiatives.

I later began using the Three I model in recruiting and would ask candidates to distribute 100 points across the Three I’s to indicate their leadership strengths and weaknesses. One of the funniest reactions I received to this question came from an executive who had worked at American Express during the 90’s when Harvey Golub was CEO.  He responded something like: “That’s a great model.  Harvey is 60 intellectual, 40 implementational and 0 inspirational.” Then he became even more excited and said, “No, that’s not correct, he is 60 intellectual, 60 implementational and negative 20 inspirational.”  Although the candidate was clearly exaggerating in jest, he was making my point exactly as Ken Chenault was Gulob’s number two at the time. Then and now, there may not be a better example of a “High I Inspirational” leader than Ken.

The model can apply to the leadership teams of organizations large and small.

Back to my baseball analogy.  Last year, I thought about this regarding little league baseball coaches.  A coach needs to know the game of baseball, the complex rules, how to catch, hit, run and steal bases, etc.  But knowing how to play baseball is necessary, but insufficient. Someone on the coaching staff needs to know how to teach young kids how to play baseball - how to learn the game and improve their skills. What drills are most effective in practice; how to spot a batting stance off balance or a throwing motion without follow-through and how to make the subtle changes to correct these errors.  Finally, as all sports are partly mind games, and baseball can be incredibly stressful for young athletes, at least one of the coaches has to be able to keep the kids fired up and have a vast vocabulary of positive things to say no matter what happens at on the field - a swinging strike becomes a “good cut, “bases loaded means “we now have an easy out at every base,” etc.

If this model makes sense to you, try it inside your own organization.  If it applies, consider building it into your professional development systems and recruiting strategies.  If you use it, collaborate with us by letting me know how it worked and what you have done to improve the model.

I lost my Kindle and missed a flight, but still had a good experience as Air Canada and USAir collaborated to provide extraordinary customer service

Net:  On a recent day trip to Toronto which could have been “travel hell,” several USAir and Air Canada employees worked together to get me there and back painlessly.  Air Canada’s Connie Hughes went the extra mile to help me look for a lost Kindle.  These businesses should make it easy to tell their CEO’s about extraordinary service.

Over years of business travel it seems that missed flights, mechanical delays and other problems that create “travel hell” cluster on one or more days during the month.  I was saved from just such a day recently by great customer service.   I started the fun on a recent day trip to Toronto by misreading my itinerary and showing up for a flight through Philly after the plane had departed.  As I was traveling to Toronto for only two meetings, including one with a very interesting company that has an opportunity to create a coalition loyalty program in China, I was suitably upset with myself for this screw-up.  I went to the USAir Club and Sonia Perez, the club’s customer service agent was very helpful and put me on the next flight, despite the fact that it was 100% my fault that I missed the earlier plane.  Great service experience number 1.

After a long day of meetings, I checked into Air Canada’s Maple Leaf Lounge at Pearson Airport only to find that my return trip through Philly was delayed.  [Although I am not a member of the Air Canada club, through the Star Alliance, USAir and AC collaborate and allow me to use the club with my USAir Club card]  I remarked to the customer service agent at the Maple Leaf Lounge - whose name I would soon learn is Connie Hughes - that my flight was delayed and I was worried about missing my connection.  She immediately looked at the Air Canada flights and suggested I ask USAir if they would put me Air Canada’s direct flight to Boston. She informed me that if the delay was for mechanical problems, USAir should make the transfer and then found the only gate at the airport where I could talk to a USAir representative.  Great service experience number 2. I went to the gate and the gate agent happily put me on the direct flight, which by the way, would get me home two hours earlier than my connection. Great service experience number 3.

So far so good as what could have easily been a travel hell day was actually turning out to be better than expected.  But the best was yet to come.  I went back to the Air Canada club to wait for my direct flight to Boston and realized I had left my Amazon Kindle somewhere.  As I struggle with ADD, this was a frustrating but not unusual occurrence, so I began to retrace my steps.  I returned to the gate and everywhere else I had been but found no sign of the Kindle.  When I came back to the lounge, Connie was again at the front desk and I asked her if there was a lost and found.  This is when customer service went from great to amazing.  Here’s what she did:

• She found the two numbers for lost and found and called them both for me.
• She helped me search the club for the Kindle.
• She told me that she was from Boston and was flying there for the weekend and offered to check both the lost and found and the Wolfgang Puck restaurant where I could have left the Kindle for it and if found, would bring it with her on Friday.
• She emailed me that evening and the following day to say she had not found the Kindle.

Great customer service experiences 4 - 7.

One of my fist posts on customer service was about how two Massachusetts state employees turned a flat tire into a great experience with their extraordinary acts of service. And although I am still upset about losing the Kindle, I feel a lot better about the whole experience because of all Connie did to help me.

Fortunately, I was able to get the email address for Calin Rovinescu, the President and CEO of Air Canada and will send this to him along with a special thanks to Connie for her excellent service.  The only recommendation I have for Calin is to find a way to make it easy for customers who experience extraordinary service to let him know about it.  USAir does something like this, as they send their frequent flyers “Above & Beyond” cards to fill out and send in when they receive great service.  Perhaps AC can start this practice as well.

Questions:

1.       If Connie Hughes can turn a lost Kindle and an almost travel hell day into a good experience, what are your employees doing to help your customers today?

2.       If your employees are providing extraordinary service today, have you made it easy for your customers to say thank you and let you know about the experience.

3.       If you hear about extraordinary acts of service, how will you reward the employees who delivered it?

A tribute to the orignial Collaboration Evangelist

On the Monday before Thanksgiving my father, Cecil H. Underwood,  passed away.  The date was November 24^th, nineteen days after his 86^th birthday and twenty days after Barrack Obama was elected President.   My father was born two days before Election Day in 1922, elected the youngest Governor of West Virginia two days after he turned 34 and elected the state’s oldest Governor on his 74^th birthday.  In my post, Why a Collaboration Evangelist, I wrote:

Perhaps it’s a “nature and nurture” thing, as I have always been a strong believer that teams of smart people with diverse backgrounds and points of view will always have a better chance of solving challenging problems and finding new opportunities to add value to any enterprise than the model where “one smart guy solves all the problems and makes all the decisions.”

From the nature side, I was born the day after my father was inaugurated as the 25^th governor of the State of West Virginia at the age of 34.  One of the things he told me about that campaign was although they had only one paid staffer - his driver - the campaign was supported by 3000 volunteers. The campaign put all of their efforts into organizing and energizing their volunteer network to register and get supporters to the polls.  They spent the money they raised on the new technology of the day called TV advertising.  This strategy enabled him to become the first Republican governor in 25 years in a state where Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans   by 2.5 to 1.

The many papers around the world that carried the news of my father’s death described him as “a high school teacher who became a governor.”  While it is true that he started his career as a high school biology teacher and his last formal employment was as a Drinko Scholar at Marshall University, my father was always quietly teaching through his actions to those of us who had the good fortune to know and work with him. At his memorial service, I remembered my father by sharing some of the lessons he taught us by the way he lived and the way he led.  These included:

1. No obstacle is too high to overcome if you believe in yourself and are willing to work very hard to achieve your goals.

My father took on monumental challenges from the beginning of his career.  At the age of 22, he challenged a long standing incumbent to win the first of six terms to the State Legislature.  Twelve years later he was elected Governor.  But at the end of his first term he lost a race for the US Senate (at that time, Governors could not run for re-election) and over the next 36 years he ran unsuccessfully for Governor three times.

During this period, I remember thinking that maybe my father had “peaked too soon” at the age of 34, like an NBA team playing their best ball before the playoffs.   He showed me otherwise in 1996 when he was elected the State’s 32^nd Governor.  During his second administration, more jobs were created, more roads were built and more school children and seniors were connected to the internet than during any other four year period in the history of West Virginia.

As I admired his work ethic and the successes of his second term, I thought he was the greatest role model for working hard and beating the odds that anyone could ever have.  But again I was wrong. Not wrong in the role model, but wrong in the act.

The most amazing thing I saw my father do was to come back from a paralyzing stroke he suffered in 2006 at the age of 83.  The entire left side of his body was paralyzed with the exception of his fingers, which he could move slightly if he wasn’t too tired.  At his discharge planning meeting a few months later, my sisters and I told Dad he needed to move to an assisted living facility to continue his rehabilitation.  He was none too happy with our proclamation and wanted to know what he had to do to live at home again. We told him he needed to be able to walk.

So, for the next three months, he did 5 hours of physical therapy a day - riding the stationary bike, lifting weights and doing anything else the PT staff at Charleston Gardens told him to do.  His efforts were rewarded as he indeed did walk again and was selected “Stroke Recovery Patient of the Year.” More importantly, he was able to return home for several years.

2. Always help others in need.

During the Christmas Holidays of 1995, as he was contemplating running for governor, my father mentioned his desire to use the Governor’s office to encourage all of the religions and faiths of West Virginia to work together to promote job training and healthy living.  Although I knew this was very important to him, I never heard him mentioned it during the campaign.

Then, during the first event of his inaugural weekend, a Multi-denominational Prayer Service, he called for the creation of Mission West Virginia, a non-profit that recently celebrated its 10^th anniversary and has helped thousands of low income residents find jobs and improve their quality of life. I remember sitting next to Bill Phillips, his longtime friend and campaign manager and whispering, “Did you know he was going to do this?” “No,” Bill replied, “Did you?”

Inherent in all of these lessons is an overarching one our father taught us by example - “Actions speak louder than words.”  A few years later, we realized that my father had already put into action the true meaning of being a “compassionate conservative” by launching one of the first “faith based” initiatives.

3. Don’t judge others.  See the value in all people.  People who disagree with you do not always need to be your enemies.

To my father, there were no people better or more important than others. He was as comfortable with Presidents, Governors and CEO’s as he was with farmers and construction workers.  He abhorred racism, sexism, classism and all of the other “ism’s.”  He was proud of the birth heritage of West Virginia as the only state formed by succeeding from another state in opposition to slavery.

Before the term was popularized, my father understood the meaning of “multiple kinds of intelligence” and he saw the goodness and value in all human beings, regardless of their titles, the money in their bank accounts or their years of formal education.  He didn’t judge others.

He taught us that political opponents do not have to be personal enemies.

I remember having a conversation with a Democratic member of the Legislature years ago who told me, “I really enjoyed being in the House with your father, because we could argue about policy and call each other SOB’s all day long, but remain friends and still have a drink together at the end of the day.  We could do this because we knew we shared a common desire to help the people of West Virginia, even if we disagreed about the best way to do so.”

His ability to rise above partisan politics in service to his beloved state was evident in the many commissions he served on and causes he championed when out of office.  Whenever asked to help the state in any way by any governor, regardless of party or previous races, my father always stepped up to help promote a bond issue, or raise money for a special project or lend a hand in some other way.

4. Don’t try to do everything yourself.  Ask for help and work together with others to get things done.

My father’s chosen professions of politics, government, business and educational leadership all share one thing in common.  These are professions where you cannot do everything by yourself.  Indeed, 100% of your success comes from working with and through others.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, my father loved to tell people that in his first campaign, he had “one paid staffer and 3,000 volunteers.”

And before the ability to “reach across the aisle” became a political slogan, my father worked with members of the Democratic Legislature in both terms to develop and implement programs and initiatives to help those in need and move the state forward.

5. Never stop learning, innovating and looking to the technology of the future for answers.

When students ask me what’s the most important key to entrepreneurial success, I tell them “creative perseverance.” I learned this not from reading the biographies of successful for-profit entrepreneurs,

but from watching my father.  He taught me this through his hard work and determination and by never giving up, but also by always trying again with something new.  He taught us to “try, try again” but he also taught us to not try the same way over and over again.

During those Christmas Holidays in 1995, my father and I were reading Bill Gates book, The Road Ahead.  It dawned on me that if he decided to run, my father could be the Governor that brought the interstate highway system to West Virginia during his first term and the Governor who brought the information superhighway to West Virginia. I knew my father had a vision of using technology to bring employment, educational and health care opportunities to the people of the rural state.  We bought the web site address governor.com, built one of the first political web sites ever used and his advertising agency, Charles Ryan & Associates came up with the slogan, “A Leader for New Times.”

What I didn’t realize at the time was that embracing technology and looking to the future for answers was nothing new for Cecil Underwood.  Only years later, reading John Morgan’s book, West Virginia Governors, did I learn that my father proposed a plan for the gasification of coal through the use of nuclear energy in October of 1960.  My father was an innovator and - although he would not have used this word - a futurist. One of the programs he proposed in the 2000 campaign was to bridge the digital divide by giving low income families free access to the internet and re-built computers donated from government and business.  This proposal mirrors exactly the work of the innovative nonprofit Computers for Youth and the 2008 presidential proposals of the group the Personal Democracy Forum.

My father grew up in a home with lots of love, but without the modern conveniences of central heating, running water or electricity. His first job off the farm was as the janitor of his one room school house at the age of 12.  But by the time he left this earth, he was using a laptop with a high speed internet connection and championing the investment in and use of technology to help those born in similar circumstances.  And he never stopped collaborating with others to make things happen.

So, the next time you are faced with a major challenge, remember the lessons Cecil Underwood taught us over 86 years of living and leading.

Three I Leadership

During the time I was CEO of The Loyalty Group, we grew from three entrepreneurs in a Toronto hotel room to over 600 employees when we sold the business to Alliance Data System (NYSE: ADS) in 1998.  Throughout this period, I thought a lot about both leadership and how to help our people develop the requisite skills to advance as far as they wanted to in their careers.

Nothing gives me greater pleasure that seeing those who worked with me do extremely well.  Two great examples are John Scullion and Brian Sinclair.  In 1993, I had to use all of my selling skills to convince John to leave the high profile corporate travel business Ryder Travel and join a company whose balance sheet looked similar to some now defunct Wall Street firms.  John is now President and COO of Alliance Data Systems, with a market cap of several billion dollars.  Brian Sinclair, whose first job out of college was an AIR MILES analyst, is now the Managing Director of Nectar, the wildly successful coalition loyalty program in the UK that recently sold to Aeroplan for $700MM.

After we visited Brian at his London offices last summer, my 12 year old daughter Jordan remarked, “You gave him his first job and now he has a better job than you!”  Although I thought about reminding her that the flexibility of my firm enabled our father-daughter trip to London, my wiser side prevailed and I responded, “That’s right, and nothing could make me happier than seeing people I hired doing really well.  That means I hired great people and hopefully they learned a few things from working with me.”

One of the things I came to understand about leadership and developing executive talent became what I call the “Three I’s of Leadership.”  I realized to build a successful high growth company while delivering on our cultural goal of “doing what others consider the impossible, while treating people with respect and having fun along the way,” we needed leaders with the following skills:

• Intellectual Leadership - Leaders who had both the raw brain power to identify opportunities and solve challenges and very deep skills in their specific areas of expertise.

• Implementational Leadership - Leaders who were not just “consulting smart.” Executives who could actually stop thinking, developing models and drawing 2 x 2 matricies and “land the helicopter, get the troops in the field and make things happen”, to quote a former client.
  

• Inspirational Leadership - Leaders who could get things done without making everyone who worked for them want to quit.

Over time, I found out two things about this model:

Three I Leadership can be, and usually is, a shared set of skills. Although no senior executive can have below threshold skills in any of the areas, many highly successful companies are lead by “Three I Leadership Teams.”  I first realized this through being involved in YPO (the Young President’s Organization) where I spent a lot of time with other Presidents of successful companies. My original belief was that successful CEO’s had to be “A” players in all three leadership skill sets, but I observed several who clearly were not what anyone would consider “motivate the troops inspirational” and others who were brilliant “idea machines,”  but needed someone to keep them from trying to implement every idea as soon as it burst into their heads.  All I observed were very smart, but not all would qualify for Mensa.

I soon realized that almost everyone had built a “Three I Team” around themselves by hiring direct reports that balanced and complimented their skill sets. There was the collaboration principle at work again.  Once I realized the importance of Three I Teams (and the stupidity of expecting every senior executive to be naturally gifted at all three), I started using the model to help my direct reports work on their weakest areas and to make sure we had Three I Teams leading all of our major groups and strategic initiatives.

I later began using the Three I model in recruiting and would ask candidates to distribute 100 points across the Three I’s to indicate their leadership strengths and weaknesses. One of the funniest reactions I received to this question came from an executive who had worked at American Express during the 90’s when Harvey Golub was CEO.  He responded something like, “That’s a great model.  Harvey is 60 intellectual, 40 implementational and 0 inspirational.” Then he became even more excited and said, “No, that’s not correct.  He is 60 intellectual, 60 implementational and negative 20 inspirational.”  Although the candidate was clearly exaggerating in jest, he was making my point exactly as Ken Chenault was Gulob’s number two at the time. I had the good fortune to spend time with Ken in the late 90’s as he had to personally approve American Express’s deal to  become an AIR MILES Sponsor.  Then and now, there may not be a better example of a “High I Inspirational” leader than Ken.

The model can apply to the leadership teams of organizations large and small. I recently thought about this model and how it applies to little league baseball coaches.  A coach needs to know the game of baseball, the complex rules, how to catch, hit, run and steal bases, etc.  Knowing how to play baseball is necessary, but insufficient. Someone on the coaching staff needs to know how to teach young kids to play baseball - how to learn the game and improve their skills. What drills are most effective in practice; how to spot a batting stance off balance or throwing motion without follow-through and how to make the subtle changes to correct these errors.  Finally, as all sports are partly mind games and baseball can be incredibly stressful for young athletes, at least one of the coaches has to be able to keep the kids fired up and have a vast vocabulary of positive things to say no matter what happens at the plate!

If this model makes sense to you, try it inside your own organization.  If it applies, consider building it into your professional development systems and recruiting strategies.  Collaborate by letting me know if it worked and what you have done to build upon it.

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