October 28th, 1995 - Game 6 of the World Series

Game 6 of the '95 World Series was the night that the Braves finally cashed in on all the promise that had been out there since 1991. Way back in '91, both of my brothers had been paying attention to the Braves early in the season as they were working to over take the Dodgers for the National League pennant. I still remember my brother Mark being very excited about their chances and Dad telling us, "Wait and see where they are at the All-Star break. It's a long season."

Dad's pessimism was justified - the Braves had finished last in 1990 and were about 9 and a half games back at the break. But after the break.... the Braves started winning and the Dodgers started losing. We did not have cable yet so we could only listen to the games on the radio. I have think this had to be fun for Dad. This was a throw back to his youth. He was getting to gather around the radio with his boys and listen to baseball just like he had done as a kid.

Now, we were not shy people. Dad found a friend who had cable and so, on Sunday's after church and Sunday dinner, we would invite ourselves over to watch the game at his house. Did that for several Sunday's. We were over there on the last day of the season when the last out was recorded on the last game and the Braves were one game better than the Dodgers. The memory stands out mainly because Greg Olson, the Braves catcher, ran out to the mound and jumped into the arms of the starting pitcher, John Smoltz. I wish I could say my memory was locked in by the sheer emotional power of the scene. But no. I had noticed when Olson leaped up that there was a large brown stain on the bottom of his pants from a recent slide that looked exactly like he had poo'd his pants. Yeah. I am just that mature.

The Braves went on to win a thrilling National League championship series from a really, really good Barry Bonds led Pirates team. From there they went on to the World Series to face the Minnesota Twins. Many baseball historians will tell you that the 1991 World Series was the best one ever. One run games, extra innings, seven games, clutch hitting, great pitching, and a Kent Hrbek wrestling move that ticks me off to this day (look up hrbek and gant on youtube or somewhere and you might be able to see what I mean).

The next year we had cable and the Braves beat the Pirates again and lost to the Blue Jays in the World Series. The following year the Braves lost in the National League Championship series to the Phillies. That led to 1994. I was doing pretty good for a single guy and bought tickets to about 8 different games that year for my family. My brothers and I went to several games together in Atlanta that year even though we lived over four hours away. Our plan was to wait until late in September and take Dad to a game.

Dad's health was really poor at this time. He was suffering from heart failure following several heart attacks over the previous few years. We knew he would never have been able to stand the heat of any of the other games we had gone to and that even a late September game might still be too warm. But we were optimistic that we could get him there and keep him seated in the shade to see a Braves game with us.

Two days before the game that I had tickets, baseball went on strike. And it was not a short strike. The rest of that season was lost. And the playoffs. And the World Series.

The strike actually carried into the 1995 season a little as well. When they finally started the season again, I was still a fan. My brothers and my dad and my mom were all still fans. We made a point of watching every game we could. Dad was in and out of the hospital at this point, so some of those games were watched on televisions featuring something less than High Definition. Much less. We might have come out better huddled around a radio some times.

There was an added round of playoffs that year with the advent of the wild card berth. And the Braves had to face the Colorado Rockies. Not much pitching on the Rockies, but those guys could hit. And the Braves beat them 3-1 in the best of five series.

The next in line were the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds were another team that could hit. These guys had speed, hit for average, and hit for power. And the Braves went through them like a buzz saw. The Braves swept them in four games and only allowed them to score five runs TOTAL. And the broken bats - they don't keep this as a stat that you can look up, but I just remember broken bat after broken bat as the Braves pitchers over powered the Reds hitters.

Back to the World Series at last. And it does not get any easier. It came down to the best pitching in baseball (Braves) versus the best hitting in baseball (Indians). The Indians were amazing. They had eight guys in their starting line up with a batting average over .300.

The Indians had Albert Belle who could hit like a madman and you wondered if he was exactly that. There was an incident where he tried to run down some trick or treaters in his neighborhood - with his CAR. This was the team that had a young Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome. They had a blazing fast Kenny Lofton and future Hall of Fame switch-hitter Eddie Murray. This team was loaded.

And the Braves held them to a .179 batting average in the World Series. It was amazing to watch. It finally came down to game six. Tom Glavine was on the mound. Glavine had been with the Braves from the bad old days through the worst to first year of 1991 and had been a leader in the Union during the strike. He also had ice in his veins and you could never tell by looking at him if he was down by 6 runs or throwing a no-hitter.

My family and I were all crowded in my dad's hospital room watching the game in the dark on a myopic 19 inch screen while Dad dozed fitfully in his bed. The bed was set in a sitting position. Dad had not been able to lay down completely for well over a year without the fluid in his lungs causing a coughing fit. He was too weak to walk without one of us providing support. Lately, he had gotten to the point that he did not have enough energy to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time. There were even times that he would nod off while in the middle of a discussion. On this night, while our hopes were raised and crashed pitch by pitch, inning by inning, Dad would snore, start, wake, ask the score or the count on the batter and then start the whole circuit again - snore, start, wake, ask...

After six agonizingly scoreless innings, Dave Justice, another veteran of the 1991 team, tattooed a pitch from Jim Poole for a home run. We went absolutely nuts with a capital "N"! Way too loud for a hospital. Woke Dad up too. It was great. And now, Glavine just had to make sure that one run stood up against the best offense in baseball in 1995.

He only gave up one hit in eight innings. He was masterful. The one hit he gave up was a bloop from the catcher. But my guts stayed tight the whole game. Every new batter was the potential for disaster. Each pitch held the possibility of being a hanger and the Indians just murdered hangers. The stress was oppressive.

In the ninth inning, Braves manager Bobby Cox chose to replace Glavine with the team's closer, Mark Wohlers. Wolhers, yet another hold over from 1991, had spent the past few years trying to be the team's closer and not quite able to pull it off. He would show so much promise with a fast ball that could be just unhittable and then it would all crumble again and he would not be able to throw strikes at all or the ones he did throw were hit a very long, long way.

Not this time. Wohlers pitched like the closer all of us Braves fans wanted him to be. The final fly ball was caught by Marquis Grissom in left center field and we went nuts again. With the victory ours, there really was no holding us back. We yelled, screamed, high fived, and hugged. I woke Dad up and used my right hand on his cheek to turn his face to look into mine and told him that the Braves had won. He smiled and went back to sleep.

We never did get a chance to take Dad to a Braves game. His health continued to get worse. He was not out of the hospital much after that. On one of THOSE occasions, he got to hold the one grandchild of his that had been born. That November Dad died. I did not get to the hospital until he had been dead a couple of hours. Same sort of room as when we had watched the World Series. Much more subdued this time.

Strange the comfort we find in things as meaningless as baseball. My father has been gone for years now and there have been movies I have wanted to show him, thoughts I would like to have shared and jokes I would like to have told him. My brothers have had more grand children who have never been held by him and I have married the love of my life without him ever getting a chance to charm her. And I miss those things. I miss those things that I have never had.

But I find joy in other things. I remember the day my brother Jason placed his daughter Raelyn in her grandfather's arms. I remember Dad making a slightly off color joke at my brother Mark's expense and Mark turning the joke on its ear and Dad laughing until all of us were red faced and coughing. I remember looking my dad in the eyes and telling him, "The Braves won. The Braves won."

Leadership - What About the Good Stuff

My brother and I once took a college course together with a professor who knew our father. After a couple of weeks of class, he tracked us down after class and told us to tell our dad that he had raised thoughtful, intelligent, and honorable young men. We of course looked at him like he was nuts. He said that he had made a commitment to himself that when he saw something good in a person, he would tell them. That happened roughly 18 years ago. And it still stands very clearly in my memory.

How much better would things be for leaders if we all did the same thing? Went to a dolphin show the other day and the trainers made two points about training dolphins. Number one: all behaviors in the show are natural behaviors that the dolphins are prone to do anyway, the trainers just tie them to hand signals. The second thing: they focus exclusively on rewarding the behavior they like and give nothing for the behavior they don't like. And I have to tell you, the dolphins put on a heck of a show.

I am not suggesting that we are trained animals. Not at all. But I still vividly remember that college professor's compliment. And there are a few other times in my working life where people who I respect have commented in a positive way about me, my performance, or my team. Those comments stick with you. Those comments inspire you. Those comments can change you.

One General Manager once told me I was the best operator with whom he had ever worked. That was a huge compliment AND a huge challenge. I now had to live up to that expectation. And I worked my butt off to do just that. I pushed harder, learned more, and listened more following that conversation. I was also open to critism from that leader more so than I had ever been before. This guy was not critizing me because he thought I couldn't cut it or because he needed an ego boost by being cruel to a subordinate. This person was trying to help the BEST OPERATOR HE HAD EVER WORKED WITH get better. Everything he says or does to help me get better has been filtered through that moment ever since.

In a previous post I pointed out that when individuals on a team are doing something wrong, the leader has to address the issue one on one with the person doing the wrong thing. A leader can't just hit the group with it, the message gets lost in the crowd. And the funny thing about every team on which I have been a part - the leader(s) always find things that are being done wrong. The exceptions jump out at us very easily.

You ever listen to someone playing the piano and they hit the wrong key? It actually causes a bit of discomfort, doesn't it? Same thing happens if you are leading a team and one or two members are not on the same page as the rest of the team. Its natural to notice the out of place.

But what of everyone else that is doing it right? What about the rare few that are doing it better than everyone else? What do they get? A lot of people will say "paycheck" at this point. But so do the folks who are doing the wrong thing. The time and effort we spend in training folks to do the things that we need done, causes us to be reluctant to just fire people for being average. But how do we get the average to be above average? And it is hugely important that we get them to be above. Because they won't stay average. They will either move up to above or down to below.

I have seen leaders generate tremendous results in a team with very few changes of the team members. They focus on accountability and then on recognition to get more and more team members out of the below average camp to just the average camp. The leaders who excel, continue that team movement to get more and more of the team into the above average camp. How do you get that to happen?

Well, moving folks from below average to average is primarily a function of accountability. There needs to be an escalating series of feedback if negative behavior continues. Most of the time, folks will change their behaviors after the process is consistently applied. Most of the time this process doesn't even require ending anyone's employment - sometimes it does. But a good leader understands that good cannot be if BAD is never defined. You can say something is bad all you want, but until there are consequences for it, how bad could it be?

To get people to go the extra mile to above average, you have to offer some form of recognition for behavior that goes above and beyond. Some may ask, why don't you just set the series of consequences at the above average level and let accountability take care of it all? Would you want to work at such a place? My wife and I recently left jobs that were great paying jobs with great opportunities for advancement. But we were working 65 hour weeks to measure up. We did that for over 2 years waiting for the time when the demands of the job would ease off - and they never did. We left. And we were valued contributors at those jobs - we have the performance evaluations and the added compensation to prove it. But in the end, what was being demanded of us was more than we were willing to give, mainly because it felt like everything we were giving was just making the team average. Our reward for fixing problem areas was to be placed in charge of another problem area.

Heard about a study done at a college one time. The Psych department put an ad in the student newspaper for workers who would be paid minimum wage. Folks showed up and were taken to a field, issued shovels, and told to dig a ditch. At the half way point of the day, they were stopped for lunch. When they came back from lunch they were asked to fill the ditch back in for the rest of the day. At the end of the day, nothing had been accomplished. The workers asked why they were doing this and were told it was not their place to ask, they were paid, they were told that their wage would be doubled the next day, and told to report at the same field at the same time the next morning.

The next day 40% of the workers did not show up. The day followed the same pattern as yesterday. Half day digging a ditch, half day filling in a ditch, told to not ask questions about the purpose of the work, pay would double the next day, and report to the same field at the same time the next day. On the third day, another 40% of the remaining workers did not show up. Money is not everything. Purpose and accomplishment are major driving forces.

Part of a sense of accomplishment can be provided to your team by making sure they know why we do the things we do. We have to be able to explain what the goal is and some leaders feel that they are being challenged when people are asking why we are doing the things we do.

People generally want to be successful and more importantly want to be seen to be successful. Even folks who like to say they don't care what other people think betray themselves by taking the time to make sure that we know that they don't care what we think of them. People who truly don't care what you think, don't take enough of an interest in you to waste their breathe telling you anything. If you will invest the time to identify specific things that your team members do to help the team, you can gain credibility and loyalty from the team with a few well chosen, honest comments about their value to you and to the team as a whole. At least that is my thought on the issue.

My Mom's Favorite Dog

My wife recently posted about her dog that became our dog who passed away awhile back. Snickers was a sweet dog who adopted me when Priscilla and I started dating. She and I would go on early morning walks when we moved to Florida and we would chase rabbits in the afternoon. You have not had fun until you have chased rabbits with a dog that is on a leash - you better know where the palm trees are is all I'll say about that.

That first picture is of Snickers while we were in Florida. The picture does not do her justice.

After reading Priscilla's post about Snickers, I was sitting here and thinking of all the pets my family had when I was a kid. We never bought a pet or even picked one out. We lived on the edge of town and we wound up with every animal that no one else in the county wanted any more. Big dogs, little dogs, furry cats, short hair cats, and all of them at various stages of neglect. And my mom would take them all in and take them to a vet and get them all fixed up. My dad would complain about the cost and yet he would wind up being the favorite human of most of the strays once it was all said and done - funny how that happens right?

My favorite story is about this little furry dog that came to the house and it was in sad shape. Dad was convinced that the pooch was just too far gone and would have to be put down. This thing had the mange and what fur it did have had every kind of detritus caught up in it. There was this really disgusting goop (technical term) in its eyes. It was skin and bones and had no energy at all.

Mom went to work. She fed it really soft dog food (used a fork to mush it up to even smaller, softer bits), kept the goop wiped out of its eyes, took scissors to the fur that was left and got medication for the exposed skin. It took months but the hair grew back, the eyes cleared, and the dog got to a healthy weight. And it turned out to be a really cute dog. We have no pictures of the pooch, but I found this picture online and it looks close to Mom's finished project.

Here is the part of the story that I love telling the most. My mom would carry that dog around with her. We lived in a small south GA town and even if the sign said "No Dogs" they knew my mom and it really wasn't a big deal. One day while in one of the local convenience stores, a lady came up to my Mom and said, "Oh, you found my dog!"

My mom looked the woman up and down then replied," Your dog was half starved and had the mange and was abandoned on the edge of town. YOUR dog DIED. This is not your dog." and then my Mom did not walk away. She stood there looking the other woman in the eye for a few very uncomfortable heartbeats until the woman wordlessly turned around and walked away.

My mom spent the rest of the day mumbling about that incident angrily. You know what I am talking about. Just loud enough to be barely heard she would be cleaning the house and mumbling, "Have the gall to come up to me and say 'you found my dog' like I was gonna just hand her back to the person who did her so bad. 'My dog' my butt. Where was she when the poor thing was starving to death? Wait for somebody to care for the poor thing and all of a sudden its 'her dog' again? Of all the gall!"

With Mother's Day approaching, that is one of my favorite stories about my Mom.

Leadership - Getting Lost in the Crowd

This topic is huge and there is no way a single post will be an exhaustive discussion about it. I suppose I can always come back to the topic and treat it like sequels - "Leadership II - This time its personal". But the fact that leadership is exactly that, personal, is too integral to the subject to wait for the sequel.

I have read a number of leadership books and been blessed to have worked with some incredible leaders in the past. I have also made enough mistakes working with various teams to have learned a few things the hard way. So here are a few lessons I have picked up along the way.

Unless the whole team is doing it wrong, don't correct the whole team. If you have a team of 20 people and 3 people are not doing something right (intentionally or not - we will talk about motives later), you have to talk one on one with the 3 or you will not correct them and you will eventually lose the other seventeen.

When you address a large group several possible things happen. The guilty assume you are not talking to them. After all, they only did the wrong thing a couple of times and only because they had just cause. You must, they think, be talking to the other two because THEY do it wrong all the time and don't have the same good reason.

Some of the twenty will think that you don't know who the guilty are. They will think that it is possible to do the wrong thing and get away with it. Most of the twenty will have enough integrity to still do the right thing but some won't and now you have more than three doing the wrong thing. Some of the 17 who have been doing the right thing will also think that you don't realize THEY have been doing it right the whole time. How would you like to work for someone who is not observant enough to know who is doing a good job and who is not?

Failing to have one on one conversations with folks that are doing wrong gives your team the impression that you don't have a clue about what is going on. I once worked for a guy who knew everything that happened in his area of responsibility - at least he gave that impression. He would ask us questions and when he finally got to one that we could not answer, he would answer it. I remember having complete confidence that he knew how hard I was working each and every day. He came up and thanked me for my performance more than once and I watched him pull other people to one side for private conversations that I imagine were very direct.

Why do people address the group instead of the individual? Earlier I said you should not address the group because the message gets lost in the crowd. And that's why some leaders do it. Looking someone in the eyes and addressing something that they did wrong is tough to do. Most of us don't like conflict and/or don't handle it well. When you are talking one on one, no one thinks you are talking about the other guy. Now the other person knows you mean him/her and s/he may react poorly and that scares some of us.

How do we combat that fear? How do we guard against the poor reaction? One of the things that helps me is that I try (don't always succeed) to not ascribe motives to behaviour. To be overly blunt, I don't care WHY something was done, only that it was done. Bad behavior does not necessarily come from bad people. Focus the conversation on the behavior and not on motives. If you think the person is doing the wrong thing because they are lazy, dishonest, or spiteful, then that colors how you deal with the person.

If you only want the person to stop doing the wrong thing or to start doing the right thing, then you just have to say that. "John, I have been observing you and you are doing a great job of staying busy and I appreciate how you are plowing through the workload. I need you to help me with something though. We are supposed to check every third one for accuracy and I have not seen you check one in the past 10 minutes. Please make sure we follow procedure and check every third one, thanks."

Now in that example, I did find the positives that John did as well. And that is another lesson, even the worst performer is doing something right. But I talked about the thing that John did wrong as well. I did not accuse John of any motives or blame him for anything else. How much different would the conversation have been if I had pointed out to John that his behavior is exactly why we are not making our accuracy bonus? Or if I had pointed out that John keeps rushing to get done early so he can go home and play war games on-line? Or if I had pointed out that John just doesn't care about the accuracy bonus since he is only working here while he is going to college?

All of those things might be true. Might be. Might not be. Might be what I am thinking even if they are not true. Nobody knows why John is not following the process except John. But it is really easy to have hurt feelings and generate a conflict when you focus on why. If you focus on the what, it gets much simpler. John can argue about his reasons but he can't argue with the fact that he was not checking every third box.

It won't be sunshine and roses, but it will a direct conversation about the behavior that needs to change. Once you start doing this and doing it consistently, you will have fewer and fewer times where you need to do it. Eventually it will leave you with just the one on one conversations about the things that your team does right.

When you have team members doing things right, you must address them one on one too. I also suggest that you do that to the whole group as well. Praise never gets lost in the crowd. This type of leadership requires you to be involved. You have to know who is doing well and who is not. And you also can't have a doghouse. IF John corrects his behavior and starts checking every third one even when he doesn't think you are looking, then you better notice and you better say something.

Like I said before, we will talk about this topic more and more over the next few months. Writing this out helps clear my own thoughts and functions as a reminder to me to do the RIGHT thing.

Happiness

My wife and I have recently changed jobs and moved across the country. We like our new jobs and we like where we live. We are close enough to Indianapolis that we can find great restaurants and entertainment. But the major difference is that with the change in jobs, we have found each other again.
I never thought we had lost each other and never would have said so without us coming here. But the closeness that we have now stands out like the times we shared when we were first married. It is scary to realize that we had moved so far from those times without even realizing it. But the joy we have now must have meant that we were at the very least moving away from happiness.
The lesson, if there is one to be had, is trite and practically cliche'. Don't take your loved ones for granted. Don't count on always being happy and content just because you once were. Don't ignore those signs in your life that show you that you are miserable.
We left jobs that were good paying jobs and that offered advancement. But the time that those jobs required from us, the efforts and stress that they placed upon us, kept US from being US. My wife is a blessing from God. She thinks the same about me. We have finally returned to honoring that gift above any other concern. And hopefully, this time, we will keep that gift at the forefront of our lives.

Obvious and Yet Difficult

There are so many things in life that are obvious. If you want to not have money problems, always spend less than you make. If you want more vitality, then exercise regularly. If you want to lose weight, eat appropriately. All of these things are easy to see and understand.

But we are a nation of broke, lazy, fat people all the same. My family will be out of debt soon because we have begun to manage our finances. We read books on it and go to a weekly seminar about it (we are following the Dave Ramsey method). And as soon as this November, we will have no more debt and start an intensive retirement plan. But we strangely needed something beyond the obvious (spend less).

The obvious in the above example is an intellectual argument. But humans are not driven by intellect. If we were, we would all be wealthy, active, thin people. There is an emotional angle that comes from meeting with others who are attempting to do the same things that you are attempting to do.

I am still 80 pounds over weight and I don't exercise at all, but my finances are starting to change. And my family is also starting an eating plan that might help with the weight. Still have not found the motivation to work out, but maybe it will come.

That is another thing about emotional motivation. You start winning at your finances and you get optimistic about other things. None of this is easy. But nothing worth doing is ever easy. Although they may be very, very obvious.