WED: Environment Affects Outcome

In sports, there are parts that end up creating an inexplicable sum.

Two examples. The first, our college baseball back in 2002. Consisting of largely unrecruited, overlooked high school players, we were more or less a band of cast offs and underdogs thrown together. In our first season, we finished one game above five hundred. Yet, in 2002 something happened to our chemistry and our confidence. After that vanilla season, the next year we set the school record for wins (53), national ranking (#9), and furthest postseason advancement (Super Regionals final game, the college baseball version of the Sweet 16). Our ace was recruited by hardly anybody and he went on to be drafted in the first round for the San Diego Padres and multi year career in the big leagues.

The second, take a wide variety of major league players from Matt Kemp to Jake Arrieta. Kemp enjoyed major success with the Dodgers early in his career, including a runner up league MVP and a missing a 40/40 season by one home run, only to find himself traded away to average, intermittent success with other teams. Now, back with the Dodgers at age 33, he is putting up numbers he enjoyed at age 27.

Jake Arrieta was so bad for the Baltimore Orioles, that he was statistically among the worst starting pitchers in baseball so they gave him to to the Cubs for almost nothing. When he got to Chicago, he won the Cy Young Award (best pitcher in the league), become an All-Star, and win a World Series.

What gives? How could a pitcher go from the worst to the best between two organizations? How can an aging veteran rediscover his youth once he rejoins his former team? How can a group of unrecruited misfits from a school of three thousand people almost make it to the College World Series?

Environment.

Specifically, our ability to be understood and supported. I am not going to try and define (yet) what makes an environment nearly universally successful for the people in it, only that it matters. A lot. When we are comfortable, tension and fear of judgement fades. When we are understood, we don’t have to try and talk over people to be heard. When we are supported, we don’t have to try and prove ourselves every single day.

Our college team outperformed the projected sum of our parts because of solidarity. Jake Arrieta went from worst to best because he landed with an organization that saw something in him and allowed him to be him.

The most successful, highest performing environments on Earth are successful for a reason. They know how they can best serve people in those ways, and they find people who will fit in with the way in which they are best at serving.

Get with a team that serves you.

-Dave

Wednesday, 4.25.18

First, for Structure.
10 UH Grip BB Rows
5/s Pistol Progressions
Complete 4 Sets in 15 Minutes.
—
Then, for PPB.
Aerobic Power 1:
30/15 Pull-Ups
100m Run
30 Goblet Squat Cleans (44#/26#)
100m Run
30 H2H Swings (44#/26#)
100m Run
30 Goblet Reverse Lunge (44#/26#)
100m Run
(x1)
—
1 Mile Run/KOTH