Amateurs Teach Amateurs to Be Amateurs

In early 1980, while vacationing in Palm Beach, FL, I stopped in at PGA National Golf Club one day in search of someone who could help me with my golf game. At the time, I was a decent golfer, but I had plateaued; I had been shooting in the mid to low 80's and high 70's since my early 20's and no matter how much I worked to get better, it just wasn't happening.

The first place I stopped was the driving range. I figured I'd hit a bucket of balls to warm up before I headed to the clubhouse to schedule a lesson with someone ... anyone. When I went inside the shack to purchase the bucket, I was greeted by a friendly gent who was manning the cash register. I figured he was an early retiree who had moved to Florida to get out of the cold, and was working to make a extra few bucks a week so he and his wife could take advantage of the early dinner specials for seniors put on by every other restaurant in town.

After smiles, a handshake, and the exchange of first names - his was Mike - he started asking questions. He wanted to know where I was from and what had brought me out to PGA National that morning. He asked me about my golf game. He was curious as to why I had come to the range to practice that day, instead of teeing it up and playing 18 holes.

I had answers. I told him I was from Minneapolis, MN. He said he loved Minneapolis. He played in the 1959 PGA Championship at Minneapolis Golf Club. He shot 67 in the first round and was tied for the lead at that point. He didn't do so well in the second round and failed to make the cut. I was just a pup in 1959, but attended that tournament. I didn't remember seeing him there, but I started to wonder just who this Mike guy was.

Next topic. I said I'd come to PGA National to take a lesson from a pro. He asked me why I thought I needed one. I explained my predicament. I hadn't improved in 15 years. I'd read all the instruction books. I'd tried all their suggestions. I'd asked my friends for advice. I'd hit hit thousands of range balls. I'd prayed. Nothing.

At this point, a young lady came in to take over behind the cash register and Mike suggested we head up to the main golf shop to continue our conversation.

When we walked in, he pointed the way to his office. Office? Yup. And, his name was on the door: Mike Krak. PGA Professional. Director of Golf. Hmmmm.
I sat and we talked. Or, rather, I talked and Mike listened. He was trying to understand my golf swing problem from my point of view. He later explained that knowing how my mind worked would help him communicate with me in a way I could understand. Toward the end of our conversation, I glanced up at the wall behind his desk and saw a quote etched on a plaque. The words struck me:

"Amateurs Teach Amateurs to Be Amateurs."

I asked him about it. He told me a story. He had been giving golf lessons for over 30 years. He had given 10-15-20 thousand lessons. He had worked with pros - including some who were on the PGA and LPGA tours - and amateurs ranging in handicap from scratch or better to the sky's the limit. He saw a huge difference in how the pros sought to improve their game and how the amateurs did it: the pros sought advice and took lessons from highly qualified golf professionals - folks who make a career teaching the whys and wherefores of the game; almost all the amateurs got their advice from well-meaning friends and family members - folks who claimed to know the game, but didn't. And, when they finally decided to get some real help, they had developed so many bad habits that it was too late to hope for much of anything in the way of real improvement.

This was the first lesson I learned from Mike. If you're a golfer looking to improve your game, take lessons from a pro. I am always reminded of this when I see a man - it's almost always a man - out on the practice tee trying to give lessons to his wife, or kids, or girlfriend, or whatever. I watch and listen. He hits a shot to demonstrate the proper technique. Wrong. He hits another. Wrong again. It's obvious now that this guy has never broken 120, and he's acting like he's Tiger Woods - or maybe Tiger's teacher. He drones on. He gives one piece of bad advice after another. The person he's trying to teach is hitting one bad shot after another ... things are quickly getting worse instead of better. There are many times I have been tempted to walk over to one of these wannabe golf gurus and say, "You idiot. You hack. You have no idea what you're talking about. You are going to ruin this person for life. Just stop, already." I never have, though. I figure it's better to keep my mouth shut than to have a golf club wrapped around my neck.

This advice is good in other areas of life, too. If you have personal or family problems that need solving, don't go running to your mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, or your good friend who took Psychology 101 a hundred years ago and rushes home to watch Dr. Phil every day, find a good therapist. If you are in business and are looking for your very own executive coach to help you develop your strength in a certain area, don't just hire the first person who comes along with a piece of paper that says Certified Coach; find someone who's an expert in the area you want to develop and let that person help you chart your course.

Following our conversation in Mike's office, we headed back down to the range. The first thing he had me do was hit a few balls to warm up. I remember being nervous the whole time. Why? Because as I was whacking away at the first few balls, I remembered a story I heard about Joe Sodd, a teaching professional I knew from Minneapolis. I was hoping that what happened to one of Joe's students at his first lesson with Joe wouldn't happen to me during my first lesson with Mike. Here's the story.

The scene is the driving range at Interlachen Country Club in Edina, MN. A high-handicap - and rather wealthy - amateur is waiting for Joe, Interlachen's teaching pro at the time, to arrive to give him a lesson. Joe arrives at the appointed time. He asks the amateur to hit a few balls so he can figure out what he needs to work on. The amateur obliges. He puts his head down. He keeps his eye on the ball. He keeps his left arm straight. He whiffs the first ball. He tops the second. He slices the third. He does more of the same. In time, he looks up to ask Joe a question. Joe is not there. He looks around and spots Joe heading up the hill toward the clubhouse. He yells at Joe and asks him where he is going. Joe looks back at him and says, "Give it up. You should have come to me 30 years ago." He keeps on walking. Joe Sodd does not suffer fools gladly.

When I finished warming up, Mike was still there. Whew! He wanted me to hit some balls for real. Here's our conversation:

Me: "I'll start with my 8 iron."
Mike: "What are you aiming at?"
Me: "The big tree at the end of the range."
Mike: "No you're not."
Me: "Huh?"
Mike: "You're aiming 40 yards to the right of it."
Me: "Huh?"
Mike: "Let me show you."

At that point, he moved me aside and placed his feet exactly where mine had been.

Mike: "Stand behind me."
Me: "Okay."
Mike: "Where am I aiming?"
Me: "You're aiming 40 yards to the right of the big tree."
Mike: "And ...."
Me: "Hmmm."He went on to explain that proper alignment is the key to good golf; that if you can consistently line your body up with your intended target, you can create a foundation from which you can craft a sound, consistent golf swing. He finished with these words:

"If you can't, you'll never be a player."

Ouch! I built my game around alignment after that, and became a pretty good player. Instead of shooting in the high 70s or low 80's, I got to the point where my average score was in the low to mid 70's.

There's an old saying:

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there."

It means that unless you have a clearly defined target - like the tree at the end of the range - you're journey will take you somewhere, but exactly where is up for grabs.

But, while knowing where you want to end up is necessary, it is also insufficient. You must know how to square yourself with your target before you take the first step of any journey you plan to take. Why? Because in business or golf or life for that matter, a small misalignment at the beginning ends up as a huge miss at the end. There is a quote I like that summarizes this idea quite well. It's from chess grandmaster Alexander Kotov:

"It often happens that a player carries out a deep and complicated calculation, but fails to spot something elementary right at the first move."

I took a few lessons from Mike every year after that for at least a dozen years. And, every year we started the same way; he'd ask me where I was aimed. There's more to golf than aiming, of course, and he taught me all the ins and outs in due time.

One final point. Teachers are in great supply, but great teachers are rare. Advice is in great supply, but great advice is not. It's important to understand the difference.

Conversation:

• Who are the gurus - the teachers or advisers - in your life? How did you come to pick them? Are they great? Are you sure?
• Have you ever taken advice from someone you thought was able and honest only to be disappointed or defrauded? How did it happen? What faulty assumptions did you make? What steps have you taken to make sure it doesn't happen again?

Afterwords:

"Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." - Buckminster Fuller

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson, A Generation of Swine

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion." - Jack Kerouac

"The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second is listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others." - Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Call Me Trim Tab

R. Buckminster Fuller - inventor, futurist, and humanitarian - is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston. His tombstone reads simply:

CALL ME TRIMTAB - BUCKY

A trim tab is a small device on a ship’s main rudder that must be turned before turning the large rudder to change course. Fuller saw trim tabs as a symbol for the small but strategic acts that change the course of world events, and he devoted his life trying to determine what a single individual like him - or a small group of like-minded people - could do to better the human condition that large organizations, governments, or private enterprises could not.

There are many individuals who've changed the course of history. A case in point is Rosa Parks, whom the U.S. Congress named "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement." On December 1, 1955, she was seated on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. When the driver ordered her to give up her seat so a white passenger could take it, she refused. Her action ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was among the first dominoes to fall on the path that led to the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Most of us are not in a position to change the world, but we are all capable of improving things in our world. Sadly, many of us forget to do the small things that can make a big difference in the lives of those closest to us. Mother Teresa laments:

"It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start."

Several years ago Rabbi Joseph Telushkin closed his Masters Forum presentation by sharing five short phrases - trim tabs - we can use to heal broken relationships with those close to us, or deepen ones currently in fine repair. It's a great place to start if you want to go there.

• Thank you. Gratitude is more than a virtue in Telushkin's view: it is the cornerstone virtue, the one on which all goodness is based. Say thank you often and sincerely.
• I love you. Don't be like the man at his wife's funeral, who was overcome by the love he felt for her but never expressed to her. It's not enough to keep love in your heart - it must be continually handed over to the one you love, in words and in deeds.
• How are you? This question shows that you care, that you are concerned. Say something to communicate that it matters to you whether the other person lives or dies.
• What do you need? Ascertaining what a person needs allows you to give him or her what is most meaningful - and thus, the highest expression of your love. But if you don't ask, you won't know.
• I'm sorry. Once a man came to Telushkin and confessed an inability to come out and say he was sorry for things he had done. Telushkin said, "Can you then say I'm sorry I am unable to say I'm sorry?"

Conversation:

• What contributions do you dream of making to others?
• Dag Hammarskjold, former United Nations Secretary General once said, "It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses." Does his statement ring true with you? How does it intersect with your life today?
• Of those closest to you, is there one in particular who needs more of your time, attention, and support than you are currently giving? Do you see how applying one or more of Rabbi Telushkin's trim tabs can help repair your relationship with that person? Will you do it?
• Has anyone every done a small thing for you that ultimately had a profound impact on your life? What did this person do? What impact did it have?
• What makes someone unforgettable?
  

Afterwords:

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." - Mother Teresa

"To live in love is to accept the other and the conditions of his existence as a source of richness and not as an opposition, restriction or limitation." - Maturana

"Beware how you take away hope from another human being." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Falling leaves that lie scattered on the ground,
The birds and flowers that were here cannot be found.
All the friends that he once knew are not around.
They're all scattered like the leaves upon the ground.
Some folks drift along through life and never thrill,
To the feeling that a good deed brings until,
It's too late and they are ready to lie down,
There beneath the leaves that's scattered on the ground.
Lord, let my eyes see every need of every man,
Make me stop and always lend a helping hand,
Then when I'm laid beneath that little grassy mound,
There'll be more friends around than leaves upon the ground.
To your grave there's no use taking any gold,
You cannot use it when it's time for hands to fold,
When you leave this earth for a better home someday,
The only thing you'll take is what you gave away."
- Grandpa Jones, Falling Leaves

The Sorcerer's Way to Innovation

The Naskapi Indians live in small, nomadic bands on the Quebec-Labrador peninsula. The mainstay of their life is caribou hunting. In warm weather months, large numbers of caribou migrate through Naskapi lands. The animals travel at a very fast pace - covering up to forty miles a day - over terrain that humans can hardly traverse. The key to successful hunting during this time is the anticipation of the migration route, because the hunters have no hope of getting close enough to even see the caribou herds otherwise.

The bitter cold of winter changes everything, and calls for a very different approach to the hunt. First, there are fewer caribou. Second, they are dispersed more widely. Third, they go from sprinting across the tundra to settling in the woods. As a result, the Naskapi have to figure out where the herd might be each day instead of trying to head them off at the pass.

To do this, they use a shamanistic practice - scapulamancy - that has been passed down from one generation of Naskapi to the next. Here's how it works. Each night during the hunting season, a Naskapi shaman holds the shoulder bone of a long-dead caribou over a fire until burnt spots and cracks appear. When they do, the shaman reads the results and tells the hunting party where to go to find caribou the next day.

The idea you can find caribou by following cracks in a charred shoulder blade seems silly to those living in the developed world. Yet, the Naskapi have survived in their inhospitable surroundings by following this ritual. Why does their magic work? For possible answers, we turn to a recent book on strategy - Competing on the Edge - by Shona L. Brown and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt:

"The rituals provide novelty. First, they introduce an element of randomness into the inevitably patterned actions by which the hunters’ tactics become too predictable to the hunted and too locked into a set pattern. They help the Naskapi avoid over hunting, what we would call success-induced failure. Second, by following these random patterns, the Naskapi are much more likely to explore new hunting grounds that can yield new ways to hunt caribou and perhaps even new game."

They go on to point out that Naskapi magic holds a lesson for business:

"Novelty and even randomness (technically termed mutation) are critical to success, especially in times of rapid and unpredictable change. Without novelty and randomness, hunters will be slow to spot change and will uncover few opportunities to find new game or to hunt the old game in new ways. Novelty breaks the frame of the past. The same is true of managers who become stuck in routines and trapped by tightly configured business models. Whereas the Naskapi create this freshness by following random cracks in charred caribou bones, contemporary managers can do so by pursuing new opportunities in unexpected and possibly even random ways."

There are many ways to intentionally use random selection to generate novelty. One to try comes from Bob Sutton, Stanford University professor and author of Weird Ideas That Work. In a recent visit to The Masters Forum, he said:

"Reactivity, a software company I advise, holds regular brainstorming sessions where employees talk about ideas for new technologies, products, and companies. After holding a few of these sessions, a couple of the software designers were becoming concerned that the ideas discussed were getting too narrow. So they invented a random selection process. Attendees at the sessions were given index cards and told to jot down on each a technology (one color of cards) or an industry (a second color). Random pairings were then created by picking a card from each deck, and the group brainstormed for five minutes on the possibilities of each pair. The ideas deemed most promising became homework for several small sub-groups, which reported what they'd learned at the next meeting. For example, the pairing of shipbuilding and risk management inspired some promising ideas about doing dynamic risk management in real time, a method that could be quite valuable for helping companies price insurance of all kinds, not just for ships. As for the efficacy of the process, one of the designers said 'It helped get us out of the rut we were in.'"

Conversation:

• Are you superstitious? How so?
  
• Do you believe it is possible to divine the future? Explain.
• Are you familiar with the beliefs of spiritual traditions other than your own? Is there one in particular that interests you?
  
• If you learn about something that does not mesh with your belief system, what do you do?
• What are the ways in which your company is predictable to its competitors?
• How can you use novelty and randomness to break out of your traditions or set ways of operating?
  

Afterwords:

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"It seems safe to assume that human beings require a functional equivalent to a table of random numbers if they are to avoid unwitting regularities in their behavior, which can be utilized by adversaries." - O.K. Moore, Divination: A New Perspective, American Anthropologist 59, 1957

"I am enthusiastic over humanity's extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuities. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat may come along and make a fortuitous life preserver. This is not to say, though, that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday's fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem." - R. Buckminster Fuller

"In bullfighting there is a term called ‘querencia.’ The querencia is the spot in the ring to which the bull returns. Each bull has a different querencia, but as the bullfight continues, and the animal becomes more threatened, it returns more and more often to his spot. As he returns to his querencia, he becomes more predictable. And so, in the end, the matador is able to kill the bull because instead of trying something new, the bull returns to what is familiar. His comfort zone." - Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO