You Better Be Scoring Points…

Growing up in Indiana made it an unwritten requirement to love basketball. And love basketball I did, especially as an elementary student. I’ll never forget making the school team my very first year choosing to play. Fortunately, I was a fast and somewhat coordinated kid with a natural talent for wielding the leather Spalding ball. The days practicing at home payed off now in the spectator filled gym. I was the top scorer for my team that season while providing the comic relief for the fans as well. I was so focused on scoring that every time I made a basket I would jump up as high as I could shouting “Yeah!” while throwing my fist in the air with the intensity of throwing a punch to the face of the enemy as though it was the last-second basket winning the championship game. The funny thing was I did this every time I scored from the beginning of the game till the end, from the beginning of the season till the end. This was my signature move. I was the overly zealous kid with more enthusiasm for scoring than anyone…probably ever!

All those years taught me how important scoring really is and to this day still reminds me.

Though it matters how you play the game, it all comes down to the scoreboard. You can’t truly win with a deficit. A loss is a loss, no matter how you spin it. Intentions are great…moral is important…hard work is required…but you only win when the scoreboard displays it. Economist Milton Friedman once said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

The scoreboard is the final result…period. Your record of wins and losses determines if you get a shot at the championships. The more you can learn to win, the more opportunity you’ll have. Coach Vince Lombardi said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” He also said, “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while… you don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.” Successful people know that all is not over if you don’t win, but you’ll have to do it over and over until you do win.

If you want to raise your influence, you have to raise the scoreboard of your organization. Now, make sure you got that last statement…it’s not your personal scoreboard…it’s the organization’s scoreboard. There is a big difference. You can do great things, but it has to translate into the organization doing great too. It’s not about you becoming an MVP (most valuable player), it’s about the organization becoming the MVP (most valuable profit).

Every organization, regardless of industry, is seeking profit. And I don’t just mean financially. This profit can be to change more lives than it did the year before. It can be to help deliver better services than it did the year before. Or it can be to to reach global impact further than the year before. Whatever the profit goal is you must be aiding to its accomplishment. Author Mark Sanborn said, “The test of leadership is, is anything or anyone better because of you?” When your contribution assist the overall success of everyone around you it raises your value.

If you want to be all you can be then you’ll have to run up the score by putting points on the board.