Category: Good Guys

Competitive. Yet Sportive.

120.4  Pattinson to Pujara, OUT, superb catch by Doherty. Good to see a fielding side awake after such punishment. This is a good bouncer, aimed at the head. Pujara hooks, but the ball gets big on him and he can’t keep it down despite trying to roll his wrists on it. It is dying on long leg, but Doherty dives in front and takes the catch. In two Tests, Pattinson has dismissed double-centurions with bouncers. Pujara gets a standing ovation on the way back

CA Pujara c Doherty b Pattinson 204 (341b 30×4 1×6) SR: 59.82

Pattinson comes over and shakes Pujara’s hand as the batsman walks off.

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These are the acts that Good Guys are made of.

High School Basketball Sportsmanship

Steve Hartman has found this wonderful story of sportsmanship for CBS Evening News. It is always great to start the day by reading one of these stories – its heartening, inspires you to do the right thing (no matter what others think) & gives hope for a better tomorrow. These are the kind of acts Good Guys are made up of.

Mitchell MarcusTeam Manager Mitchell Marcus

Coach Peter Morales of the Coronado High School Thunderbirds in El Paso, Texas, makes no qualms about it: he has a favorite on this team – Mitchell Marcus. Team manager Mitchell Marcus has a developmental disability, but he far surpasses everyone here when it comes to love of the game. And because basketball is that important to him, on the last game of the regular season, the coach told Mitchell to suit up. Just wearing a jersey was enough for Mitchell, but the coach had other plans – to play him at the end, no matter what the score.

Coach Peter MoralesCoach Peter Morales

With a minute-and-a-half left — Coronado leading, but only by 10 — Coach Morales put in his Mitchell. Although his teammates did everything they could to get Mitchell a basket, each time they passed him the ball, he either missed the shot, or, like on their last possession, booted it out of bounds, turning the ball over to the other team with just seconds left.

Jonathon MontanezJonathon Montanez

But no one imagined what was to happen next. It happened on the inbound. The guy with the ball was a senior at Franklin High School, Jonathon Montanez. Jonathon yelled out Mitchell’s name, then threw the ball right to him — one of the most memorable turnovers of all time. It wasn’t a game-winning shot, Coronado had 15 more points than Franklin. But Jonathon’s assist and Mitchell’s basket did change the outcome decidedly.

Jonathan explains – “I was raised to treat others how you want to be treated. I just thought Mitchell deserved his chance, deserved his opportunity.”

Play any game with this much sportsmanship and both teams win.

Watch the full video from CBS ..

Philosophy Behind A Great Work Place

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Reading an article about Google’s people practices yesterday, I was amazed by the amount of analytical vigor that goes into it’s people decisions. Impressive as it might be, the decision making process did sound cold. Colder yet when you read about SAS & their philosophy of managing people.

Mark Crowley lists the four unique leadership values that have helped SAS deliver amazing results consistently over a long time. 37 consecutive years of increased earnings. You can’t argue if they have withstood the test of time. 

  • Value People Above All Else
  • To Give Is To Get: pamper your employees, so that they will treat your business & your customers in the same way; “people want a life with money, not money without a life.”
  • Trust Above All Things: trust is demonstrated via open communication, respect from fellow employees, transparency into career-paths, and being treated as a human being; manager’s primary responsibility is to ensure the success of others.
  • Ensure Employees Understand The Significance Of Their Work: help your employees find fulfillment & meaning from their work.

There are few people, let alone the hardened souls of the stock analyst kinds, who believe in such warm & fuzzy good guy values. And this is precisely what makes such successes even more precious.

Good Guys Do Win.

Chip Conley: Count what really matters?

Below are some interesting quotes from this talk:

    • And one of the simplest facts in business is something that we often neglect. And that is that we’re all human. And each of us, no matter what our role is in business, actually has some hierarchy of needs in the workplace.
    • And what we can measure is that tangible stuff at the bottom of the pyramid. They didn’t even see the intangible stuff higher up the pyramid. So I started asking myself the question: How can we get leaders to start valuing the intangible? If we’re taught as leaders to just manage what we can measure, and all we can measure is the tangible in life, we’re missing a whole lot of things at the top of the pyramid.
    • “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
    • I asked him (Bhutan Prime Minister), “How can you create and measure something which evaporates, in other words, happiness?” And he’s a very wise man, and he said, “Listen, Bhutan’s goal is not to create happiness. We create the conditions for happiness to occur. In other words, we create a habitat of happiness.”
    • GDP counts everything from air pollution to the destruction of our redwoods. But it actually doesn’t count the health of our children or the integrity of our public officials. As you look at these two columns here, doesn’t it make you feel like it’s time for us to start figuring out a new way to count, a new way to actually imagine what’s important to us in life?