For crying out loud, call a timeout!

I continue to learn a lot from sports. Last Thursday I had the pleasure to attend the Minnesota v. Penn State basketball game with a remarkable friend, Marcus Robinson, in Happy Valley. This event taught me many lessons... especially a powerful lesson of strategy.

The Penn State head coach, Ed DeChellis, has four major tasks:

1. recruit top and willing talent (i.e. athletes who are coachable),
2. build and implement a winning strategy,
3. teach his players his strategy, and
4. inspire his athletes to execute and minimize their mistakes.

Frankly, your responsibilities, as a leader, aren't any different... you should do the same thing with your team.

During the game his players implemented his gameplan while, along the way, he corrected their execution and made adjustments to their gameplan. Yes, he made changes based on his competition (for this case - Tubby Smith Minnesota's head coach). This teaches us you have to be adaptive to win and can't be stuck in your ways.

Also, and this is powerful, examine this picture before reading further (I took this from my seat at the game). Really take a look. What are they doing?

Yes, that's right, he called a timeout to regroup his athletes and reinforce his strategy. Actually, he did this often... especially down the wire. Now tell me, how often do you bring your players together and do they depart your huddle with clarity to win?

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