Winners & Losers
Posted by estiator at 12 July, at 11 : 12 AM Print
MANAGING FOR SUCCESS By CONSTANTINE N. KOLITSAS Business Coach
A manager once told me that you can have success or you can have excuses, but you can’t have both. That was a wake-up call to me, at the time, a young man moving up the management chain. And from that point forward, I never looked to make an excuse but, rather, to understand that it was my job to overcome problems rather than giving in to them and putting them in the excuse column. Because this wasn’t just a shiny management quote—it was the truth. And it motivated me to look beyond the glossy business-book cover jacket slogans to find which of those truths are and which are simply fodder for the booksellers.
Over the years, I’ve collected quite a few of these. Perhaps some will resonate with you as well.
To begin, there’s Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach, who famously said that winners never quit and quitters never win. This truth about the virtue of tenacity also nods to the fact that it takes quite a few failures to create a success. It’s the calculus of business. Success without that trial-and-error dynamic is pure luck. And while there’s nothing wrong with a little luck, it typically doesn’t fare well as a business strategy.
A less well-known aspect of Lombardi’s philosophy is his more detailed segmentation of winners from losers. To paraphrase: The winner is always part of the answer, and the loser is always part of the problem. The winner always has a program, and the loser always has an excuse. The winner says, “Let me do it for you,” and the loser says, “That’s not my job.” The winner sees an answer for every problem, and the loser sees a problem for every answer. The winner sees a green near every sand trap, and the loser sees two or three sand traps near every green. The winner says, “It may be difficult, but it’s possible,” and the loser says, “It might be possible, but it’s too difficult.”
Winners never quit and quitters never win. This truth about the virtue of tenacity also nods to the fact that it takes quite a few failures to create a success. It’s the calculus of business. Success without that trial-and-error dynamic is pure luck.
Throughout the years, Lombardi was among scores of sports legends to have their observations embedded into the management zeitgeist. Of those, two more stand out on our topic. Lou Holtz, another foot- ball legend (player, coach, analyst) from the sport’s vintage era, offered up this bombshell: “Winners and losers aren’t born; they are the products of how they think.” Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest player to ever play the game of basketball, had this to say: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
And in the pages of those business books, a few quotes stand out: “A person either hates losing enough to change or he hates changing enough to lose” (Orrin Woodward, bestselling author and leadership guru). “A loser says that’s the way it’s always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way” (Sydney J. Harris, journalist). And “The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do” (Denis Waitley, bestselling author).
Finally, a personal favorite from Laozi, an ancient Chinese philosopher: “A winner listens; a loser just waits until it is their turn to talk.”
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Constantine Kolitsas is a business consultant and president of Greca Hospitality Group, the owners of Greca Mediterranean Kitchen + Bar. He can be reached at dino@grecamed.com.
