Nearly everyone thinks that Tiger Woods is an exceptional golfer. If you look at the statistics you will be surprised to see that Tiger Woods is an absolutely terrible player when you look at his performance in bunkers. It appears like a contradiction to have one of the best golfers in history to practically fail in certain aspects of the sport. How can one resolve this?
When looking at the performance of athletes or business professionals one oftentimes focuses on a dualistic view, i.e. one is good or bad at something. If you are bad at something then it follows that you should improve and become good at it. A lot of resources are put into place to advance and over time eventually one moves towards becoming "good at it". And so it goes.
The real question, however is, if the property is also "important". Maybe it is just "unimportant". What does that mean? In the example with Tiger Woods one can see by looking at the PGA statistics board that the "Tiger" is bad at bunker shots. However, if you add the second dimension of "Important/Unimportant" one can grasp to understand that this is a rather unimportant skills for Tiger. Why? Quite frankly, Tiger Woods can afford to be bad at bunker shots because he doesn't need to be good at bunker shots. Tiger Woods avoids hitting bunkers altogether therefore he doesn't need to waste his time improving his bad score but rather invests his scares resource, i.e. time, in further improving his performance on the green. The following 2x2 matrix illustrates this finding:
When looking at the performance of athletes or business professionals one oftentimes focuses on a dualistic view, i.e. one is good or bad at something. If you are bad at something then it follows that you should improve and become good at it. A lot of resources are put into place to advance and over time eventually one moves towards becoming "good at it". And so it goes.
The real question, however is, if the property is also "important". Maybe it is just "unimportant". What does that mean? In the example with Tiger Woods one can see by looking at the PGA statistics board that the "Tiger" is bad at bunker shots. However, if you add the second dimension of "Important/Unimportant" one can grasp to understand that this is a rather unimportant skills for Tiger. Why? Quite frankly, Tiger Woods can afford to be bad at bunker shots because he doesn't need to be good at bunker shots. Tiger Woods avoids hitting bunkers altogether therefore he doesn't need to waste his time improving his bad score but rather invests his scares resource, i.e. time, in further improving his performance on the green. The following 2x2 matrix illustrates this finding:
It is obvious to avoid activities on the left side and redirect resources and efforts from points "A" and "B" towards "T". The not so obvious point is "how" to do this. Depending on the type of the "game" played or the business situation you are in, a solution will be different. In a "looser-game" (see details in my other blog postings) one will likely have to improve the position in "B" and move towards point "T". In a "Winner-game" you have the opportunity to abandon points "A" and "B" and concentrate on improving "T". This is what Tiger Woods does! Professional Golf (unlike amateur golf!) is a Winner-Game and the statistics prove that TW is improving on "T" while abondoning the bunker quadrant. A corporate citizen is often confronted with a Looser-Game unlike Entrepreneurs that are more likely to be participants in a Winner-Game. This might be the reason why large corporatins accumulate many mediocre players over time while top-performers will be playing in a different game.
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