This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Life Lesson from Soccer
Sep
19
2013
I don’t watch much soccer, but I have seen enough youth games to know the stereotypical kindergarten-level soccer involves one clump of kids following/surrounding the ball. It makes for a bad soccer game – each player attacking the ball from his own angle, but all at the same time so it never goes anywhere.
Much better are the soccer games where each player has an assigned role and stays in that zone. Here’s a diagram in case you can’t picture it.
Since I’m not a soccer fan, why am I writing about this? Because it applies to work.
Bad coaches let the players clump around the ball.
Bad managers assign workers to clump around the critical issue.
“Ted, what are you working on?”
“The Barnum project”
“We have an urgent issue with the Bailey project and I need you to help Fred with that for the next month.”
“Who will do the Barnum work?”
“Don’t worry about that – it’s not as critical as Bailey.”
One month later, the Barnum project is behind schedule and the boss scrambles to find people who can make up for lost time on that one. Of course, he pulls people off their currently on-time projects, which will soon become problems. It doesn’t take long until all their customers are unhappy about the rushed work and poor planning going into their products.
In my office, workers are engineers. Our critical tasks don’t usually scale up well (i.e. more people does not mean quicker resolution). But some managers don’t realize that.
If your manager wonders why it’s bad to send everyone from fire to fire, ask him how he would coach a soccer team.
They do not crowd each other, They march everyone in his path; When they burst through the defenses, They do not break ranks.
Joel 2:8
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:55 am and has been carefully placed in the Life category.
September 19th, 2013 at 8:18 am
+1 for the kid that has wandered off.
+5 for the kid that has fallen down.
September 19th, 2013 at 9:20 am
And it’s hard to tell, but a couple of them are crying.