“Coco” on success

I finally recently saw the blockbuster movie Coco.

Spoiler alert…I give away some things about the movie in this post, so stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t like spoilers.

The movie provides a good example of another overlooked dimension of success: the less savory things people sometimes do to achieve success.

In Coco, a famous singer Ernesto de la Cruz had a famous saying, “Seize the moment.”

At the beginning of the movie, we think it’s an inspirational reminder to not be afraid to take a chance on success when you have it, in an Eminem Lose Yourself sort of way.

Later in the movie, we come to learn he also means to do unsavory things, if needed, for your success. It turns out de la Cruz murdered his best friend and became famous using the songs he stole from him.

The movie The Founder is about how Ray Kroc built the McDonald’s hamburger chain and slowly stole the famous restaurant’s concept from the McDonald brothers for a pittance.

The McDonald brothers built a successful and innovative single location restaurant in California. Their attempts at expanding their concept had failed. They were better at running a single location than building a muli-unit franchise.

Enter Ray Kroc who discovered successful ways to expand. Some of the changes Kroc made to the concept to make it scalable didn’t sit well with brothers.

So, Kroc found a clever way around their original agreement that allowed him make the changes without the brothers’ approval and cut them out.

In a defining moment in the movie, one of the brothers asks Kroc how he can be such a snake.

Kroc says that what makes him different from the McDonald’s brothers is that if they saw a rival drowning, they’d help him out because they’re good guys.

If Kroc saw a rival drowning, he’d put a garden hose in his mouth because he wants to win that bad.

Similar to Coco’s Ernesto de la Cruz, Kroc provides a real world example of someone willing to “seize the moment.”

Not all success stories are built on such bad behavior, but I think it might be helpful in society to be more clear-eyed about some of those unpleasant choices made to get ahead.

That includes success in business, entertainment, sports and politics.

When we’re not clear-eyed, it makes it easier for tragedies like Lance Armstrong and USA Gymnastics to persist for too long.

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Michael Buble on success

I saw Michael Buble on CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks ago.

His vision of how success works fits with mine and Nassim Taleb’s.

He said that he counts himself lucky everyday and that success was 10% talent, 40% hard work and 50% luck.

The interviewer responded, “Luck, really? But, you do have some good pipes.”

Buble responded, “So do the folks on American Idol.”

The interviewer, missed the point, and responded, “But, they don’t have several multi-platinum albums.”

Well, no, they don’t. That’s Buble’s point. Why don’t they? What makes him different from those very talented folks?

I think it is common for people to assume the equation to success is something more like 80% talent, 15% hard work and 5% luck.

I did, too, at one point. I just assumed talent would prevail.

But, I’ve been close enough to some semi-success stories to see that what often takes folks to the next level, isn’t just their talent and hard work prevailing. It takes a little luck.

I also have been close enough to see that success stories often have some unsavory trade-offs and some folks just decide it’s not worth it.

More on that in the next post.

 

 

The 5 And’s

Young goalkeepers often lose confidence when they let a goal in. It doesn’t help that their teammates often blame the goal on them.

To help them regain confidence and teach their teammates that goals against are rarely the sole fault of the keeper, I would explain the 5 And’s.

They would respond, confused, “Five what?”

“Five And’s. Let’s replay what led up to that goal.

Johnny lost the ball because nobody was open for a pass…

AND…

Johnny then dove in to try to win the ball back (poor tackling technique), getting beat easily giving up 20 yards of space…

AND…

The next two defenders, Mike and Jack, didn’t call the attacker, so both stepped in leaving another player on the other team open for a pass (lack of communication)…

AND…

Do you see where I’m going?  The next defender, Billy, took away the middle, instead of the line (basic defensive tactic to force the other team’s ball movement into traffic), allowing an easy pass down the line to an open winger…

AND…

the outside back, Seth, gave that winger too much time and space to serve a good ball in (not following basic defensive tactic to pressure the winger)…

AND…

The center back, Blaine, left a guy wide open to receive (ball watching) and go 1v1 with the goalie.

There were 5 And’s leading up to that goal. Each AND represents a mistake made by one or more field players.

Great if the keeper makes the save, but don’t expect it to happen every time. 1v1 against the goalie is a high percentage shot. It’s a big goal. The keeper won’t save all those.

So, as we’re learning this game, when the other team gets a scoring chance, ask yourself what you and your teammates could have done differently to prevent that chance.

Good and bad teams make lots of mistakes. The difference is that good teams don’t often make 4-5 mistakes in a row. They usually get it back under control after 1 or 2.

Getting better in soccer as a team means getting better at not letting those 5 AND’s happen.

The 5 And’s also apply to real life. Many bad things (and sometimes good things) result from cascading mistakes.

The sump pump in my neighbor’s house has a battery backup. One night, my neighbor happened to be on vacation AND we had an uncommonly high 5-6 inches of rain AND late on a Saturday night a car hit a power pole taking out power to our subdivision AND our subdivision does not yet have a backup feed for the power company to switch over to while they make repairs AND it took the power company over 13 hours to restore power AND that was long enough to drain the battery on the backup and let the sump well overflow into their basement.

My neighbor came home to soggy carpet and flood damage. Take away any of those AND’s and they probably would have avoided a flooded basement.

 

“No Kicking”: my informal title to Tom Byer’s “Soccer Starts at Home”

Keeping with Tom Byer’s advice, I gave small soccer balls to family members with small children for Christmas with the following instructions:

• These are for inside use, so you can work with the ball year round no matter what the weather is like outside.
• No Kicking.

When I said, “No Kicking,” the response from adults and kids was the same, “What? Isn’t that was soccer is?”

Then, as Tom recommends, I showed the kids what that meant. I showed them pullbacks, turns, moving the ball in all directions and playing nutmeg 1v1 to learn how to protect the ball.

The kids started trying to do that stuff.

Time will tell if they keep it up.

I thought I’d report on the response I got from saying “No Kicking.” It got their attention and made them think.

Don Garber on solidarity payments and training comp in soccer

From this State of the MLS address:

“We are not as a country participants in solidarity and training compensation. I think that probably has to change. We have to find a way where if that’s going to happen, how do we at least get compensated for it? I don’t know how we can justify making the kind of investments we’ve been making.”

“I will say our view of this whole area is very different than it was two, three, four or five years ago. I think the product that we’re developing has become some of our most important assets. We need to start figuring out ways to protect it or find ways to get compensated when we can’t sign them.”

That would be great. I think it would be pretty easy to start participating.

But, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d like the MLS to receive those payments, but not have pay non-MLS clubs in the U.S. That’s probably the current hangup.

He also said:

“We need to become more of a selling league,” he said Friday. “As a person who has been selling this league for nearly 20 years, I’ve always believed you needed to have the players that resonated in your market to be those that could be aspirations for young kids peeking through the fence when they see them training. And we all need to get used to the fact that in the world of global soccer, players get sold.”

That sounds remarkably similar to what Darren Eales, of Atlanta United FC, said over a year ago to the Men in Blazers (emphasis added)

One of the issues it [MLS] has had is its been almost like a little island of its own. It’s almost isolated itself from the rest of the world football.

The point I made to Arthur [Atlanta United FC’s owner], the first time I met him was that every club is a selling club… You got to get used to that. You shouldn’t be frightened of it. This is how it works.

So my vision is that we could take players that were younger, invest in a transfer fee, rather than dead wages on player that was going to be retiring at the end of their contract and use that as a way to bring better talent in.

My view is, if MLS establishes that, you then are going to be able to attract better players, because more players are going to want to come, if they feel it can be a stepping stone.

It’s a virtuous circle. Yes, you’re going to have to be prepared to lose some players. But you’re going to bring better players in and be able to take the transfer fees and reinvest them.

It was easier for me to have that view because I came from outside of it [MLS].

Example of simple brilliance in soccer coaching

I highly recommend that soccer coaches listen to this short 3Four3 podcast for a good example of how to coach an important, and mostly overlooked, skill in soccer: receiving across the body.

As you learn this activity, there’s at least 10 things it can help you coach. Maintain open stance to maximize next option. Receive across the body. Call for pass. Check to/get open for the pass. Play simple. Play fast. Receive. Pass. Defending, how to apply pressure to force direction of play and mistakes.

As a side note, I’ve used the 3Four3’s versions of the 4v0 and 4v1’s in my practices because they work on more fundamental game concepts than the standard versions.

Here’s an example:

A standard 4v1 has four kids stand on the corner cones of a square and pass to keep the ball away from the defender in the middle. This trains players to stand like statues in games waiting for the ball to come to them.

In 3Four3’s 4v1, players stand between cones, on the side of the square (instead of on the corner), and move side to side between the cones, to check toward the person with the ball to get open.

This provides training on three game skills in addition to passing and receiving across the body — moving to support passes, anticipating the next pass and communicating.

All these things improve the team’s speed of play.

My additional 4v0 and 4v1 recommendations

Use 4v0 is for when kids can’t receive and pass under pressure, yet. That’s when they can’t string more than 3-5 passes together consistently.

But, without a defender, however, intensity and focus drop quickly.

One way I’ve found to keep the intensity up and teach more stuff in the 4v0 is to have the player with the ball pass to the first person who calls for it.

This creates a competition between the two passing options, to see who can call for it first, and they quickly learn the sooner they call for it the better — even before the ball gets to the receiver.

So, this automatically teaches anticipation and communication. It also helps the passer start evaluating options before receiving the ball, instead of waiting to decide after getting it.

Giving the player with the ball a simple decision to make helps things, too. Without that, he or she too often overthinks their next pass, which slows ball movement, and reduces intensity.

By overthinking, I mean that they consider way too much. I can see the wheels turning when they’re deciding who to pass to. It can range from ‘what fancy trick am I going to do to show off’, ‘who’s my best friend right now’ or ‘she dissed me in the last drill, so I’m not passing the ball to her.’

Giving them the simple decision framework cuts out this nonsense.

“Just one thing”

In a scene in the movie, Central Intelligence, Kevin Hart’s character is reconnecting with a high school classmate, “Fat Robby,” played by Dwayne Johnson.

Hart asks how he got in such great shape. Robby responds:

I didn’t do much really. All right.

I just did one thing.

I worked out 6 hours a day, every day, for the last 20 years. Anybody could do it, right?

That reminded of something I see in the telling of a lot of success, and failure, stories.

People try to boil it down to just one thing.

But, the real story is more like what Johnson says after that. It really wasn’t just one thing.

Hart’s face is the typical response you get when you try to explain it’s really more than just one thing.

Walmart’s success is a good example.

The first thing people think about Walmart is low prices.

Many people think that’s the ‘just one thing’ for Walmart.

They missed that Walmart invested heavily in its supply chain management, long before other retailers. They did this to help save costs and keep prices low, but it also had an unexpected benefit. It meant that stores were stocked and shoppers more often found what they wanted.

Even the second generation Walmart management lost sight of this, and other, important value dimensions as they focused on the ‘just one thing’ of low price in the 90s and 00s.

They kept costs low by doing things like servicing shelves less and cutting cashier labor to the bone.

This led to messy, disorganized stores and long lines at the checkout.

Walmart may have what you want on the shelf, but they made it less appealing and less convenient to get it.

For a lot of customers, cleaner, more organized stores with shorter checkout lines became more appealing, even if the prices weren’t rock bottom.

Losing customers to competition made Walmart management realize they had neglected the importance of these other value dimensions. So, they put more effort into keeping stores clean and organized and making it easier to check out.

Business improved.

It’s good to remember that success and failures usually come down to more than just one thing.

Many times those other contributors are not obvious.

“Rethinking Economics”

I enjoyed this EconTalk podcast with guest Maeve Cohen, about rethinking economics.

I also think there is much room to improve economics education.

Maybe there could a little less emphasis on how to calculate GDP and more discussion on the implications of a ‘incentives matter,’ for example.

Improve the bottom to improve the top

In his book, Soccer Starts at Home, Tom Byer challenges conventional wisdom/intuition about sports development.

His biggest challenge is to the belief that soccer skills are too advanced for young children to work on. Conventional wisdom holds that these skills come later, after age 8.

Tom thinks (and has shown with his own kids and pointing out kids from soccer cultures) they can and do start to develop as early as the child can walk, with the right activities.

I’ve seen soccer folks agree with Byer on that point, but disagree with him on another key point he makes:

To improve the top level of talent we have to improve the bottom level.

They believe the U.S. has plenty of top talent, so they think the key to moving forward is a matter of devoting more resources to that top tier to make them even better.

It’s easy to make this mistake. The top-talent seems to be there. They are really good.

But, still something seems to be missing in that top talent compared to talent from richer soccer playing cultures.

What’s missing? Tom Byer gives us the answer to that one, too. This is from his book:

“The best way to make the ‘elite’ player better is by raising the level of the lower-level players. They in turn will push the elite players to become better. Imagine you have a team of 20 8-year-old players. Three of the 20 are very skillful and the other 17 are not. Those three good players know they will most likely play every minute of every game and in their preferred position, even if they goof off or miss practice. So there is often a complacency with the best players who invariably are not pushed into making themselves better. But imagine if all 20 of those players have a similar technical ability. The competition then becomes much more fierce; they will fight to retain their position on the team and work harder to become better players.”

I’ve written about this before here, about an agent who places American players into European clubs. He says a key difference he sees between U.S. and European youth soccer players is the sense of where they are headed.

He said the American youth are happy to be best on their current team and there isn’t a competitive atmosphere to inspire improvement. The comes through as relative laziness in practice and games.

The European youth are working toward making their club’s first team someday and there’s a much more spirited competitive atmosphere to demonstrate they are heading that way. They’re competing for spots against other players who are just as good as they are, which motivates them to work harder on their own, in practice and games.

I’ll vouch for what he sees on the American side of things. I’ve seen it first hand and from interactions with other coaches, it’s common.

So, what does this mean?

Take Byer’s advice. We currently introduce kids to soccer through organized activities and expect clubs to teach them the skills they need to succeed.

He thinks that’s backwards. The kids should have those skills first, before joining organized soccer.

I think this is more like how we know other sports work. Kids typically know how to throw, catch and hit before joining a competitive baseball team.