Coast or Lunge - You Decide

There is a wonderful scene in Legally Blonde 2 when Elle Woods, played by Reese Witherspoon, begins an address to a joint session of congress with the words: “…this is about a matter that should be at the highest importance to every American, my hair.” After the congressmen gasp she proceeds to explain how her experience in a beauty parlor taught her about how everybody can make a difference if they care.

I want to talk about my fingernail. Well, maybe not my nail but about fingernails in general and what they can teach us about life and work and making a difference.

Most people will probably remember Michael Phelps for his record of eight gold medals in a single Olympics. It was an exciting accomplishment, one that we may never see duplicated in our lifetimes. It was the well-deserved honor of the kid from Baltimore who labored for years, swimming 8 hours a day, burning up 12,000 calories a practice, focused so intently that, as he put it, all he ever did for years was eat, swim and sleep.

In the middle ages there were devout worshippers who sacrificed their lives in singular pursuits. Saint Simeon Stylites sat on top of a column for 37 years praying for eternal salvation. I certainly hope he earned a seat next to St. Peter since I don't think a gold medal would have been enough to compensate for decades of only eating, sitting and sleeping. Yes, apparently he had his food sent up to him by rope.

I have to admit I am almost more impressed by the thousands of athletes who have worked as hard as Phelps but never stood on the top platform to see their country's flag raised. Imagine
the hours of devotion and drudgery and then having to leave the Olympics with nothing to show for it.

No, I honor Phelps for a different reason. When I think of Phelps I do not think of the eight medals but of one medal, the seventh, earned for the 100 meter butterfly that he might have lost.

Yes, lost. As Phelps turned at the wall for the final lap he was behind Milorad Cavic, the Serbian swimmer in the next lane. As he approached the wall he was a half body behind Cavic, an impossible distance to make up. But then a miracle seemed to happen. Phelps took another stroke, lunging with his arms to the wall as Cavic, who did not have enough room to take a stroke, glided toward the finish line.

Phelps won, by one hundredth of a second. One hundredth of a second after a race of 50.58 seconds. 5,058 hundredths that is. At that speed and distance his victory was the length of a fingernail.

Apparently swim coaches teach their athletes to pace their strokes the way hurdlers judge distance to the next hurdle. Curiously, there was an article about this published just days before Phelps' seventh race. The idea is to prepare to arrive at the wall with speed, enough to overcome one's opponent as well as trigger the pressure-sensitive clocks at the wall. These clocks are calibrated so they react to touch and not to the wave action in front of them. After the race the Serbians, and much of the swimming world, reviewed the race to determine whether the Omega clocks required too much pressure and unfairly favored Phelps’ lunge. Ironically, Omega was one of Phelps' sponsors. But the review confirmed that it was not a technological
glitch or some unseen hand reaching out from the clouds to guide this remarkable athlete.

Was it luck? Luck is what happens when your rival on the parallel bars fails to stick a landing and loses a point. Was it skill? Cavic was as skilled and, in fact, swam a better race. No, it was Phelps who got to the wall first because he wanted to, because he needed to, because he would not settle for second or take his victory for granted. He earned that gold because he worked for
it, one fingernail length more than the next guy.

A fingernail, maybe, but a metaphor for what we can do when we stretch ourselves, when we take one more stroke, when instead of coasting we lunge at the finish line of our dreams.

If brevity be the soul of wit...

People sometimes say I am wordy. I paged back through some earlier blogs and regret to report that they are right! I guess I forgot the old adage: “God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we speak.”

I was reminded of this when reading a recent story in the Atlantic by one of my favorite writers, Nicolas Carr. The article, “Is Google Making us Stupid,” suggests that we have lost our capacity for reading lengthy, nuanced articles as we have become accustomed to assimilating information in easily digestible form. We like our oral communication in sound bites, our written communication in bullet points. We’ll watch an hour-long Powerpoint presentation with rapt attention, but listen to a 20 minute speech? Never!

As the world becomes “googilized,” people are reading less and absorb information differently. It would be easy to assume that this is a generational phenomenon, that while Gen X-ers under 25 might be comfortable with bits and bites and rest of us are still happy to read epic novels like War and Peace, thank you very much! Sadly, that is not the case. When an email comes in that’s very long, I often put it aside or print it for later. Sometimes I forget about it. I’m sure others do the same. The long and short of it: It is better to be brief, and have somebody listen or read what we say, than wordy and lose our audience altogether.

We could fight against the tide and continue to write lengthy missives to each other. Or we could recognize the need to adapt to our customers and colleagues and change the way in which we communicate. I think we need to adapt. My recommendation: In our emails and other communications we must:

Use bullet points, wherever possible
Keep paragraphs and sentences short
Summarize information

I have recently reminded my colleagues at MXenergy that we need to apply these lessons not only internally but in all of our communications, including:

• Emails and letters to customers
• Advertising copy
• Website copy

Btw, I hope you’ll forgive the FYI. For now, g2g.

A Plug for Team USA

Watching the Olympics over the weekend I was struck by a comment by one of the coaches. It may have been during the USA/China basketball matchup last night, said to be the most widely viewed sporting event in history, with perhaps as many as 700 million viewers. They call this year’s team the “Redeem Team” because they are eager to redeem themselves from the ignominy of our defeat by the team from Greece during the summer Olympics in Athens four years ago. Thank goodness the “home team” advantage did not apply this year as well!

Many people have noted that this year’s basketball team has taken a different approach. In 2004, the players who headed to Athens could barely control their Olympic-sized egos. This year, each player seemed to blend into an almost seamless choreography of graceful athletes, no one player standing out from the rest. Kobe Bryant could have been expected to steal the attention from some of his lesser known colleagues. Instead, he was almost invisible on defense, grabbing the rebound; the only stealing he did was robbing the Chinese of one basket after another. Lebron James, nicknamed “LeBronze” after Athens, was the consummate leader as co-captain, pulling instead of pushing his teammates to victory.

And then I heard the coach say: “It’s not the player’s name on the back of the jersey that counts; it’s the team name on the front of the jersey.”

We live in a world ablaze with the incandescence of celebrity. Our media stalk the rich and famous, gawking at their private lives and public foibles, aping their style choices, soliciting their opinions. Our popular movies follow heroes and add to the fame of actors who tell the stories. Our newspapers sell the juicy gossip of the illustrious while our magazines attract readers with their pictures. Our concert halls and stadiums are filled by shouting fans who would spend as much on tickets as a family of four in the Sudan makes in a year. People that are so egotistical we would probably evict them from our dinner tables are interesting enough for us to talk about ad nauseam with our friends, even use as role models for our children.

That is why the Olympics stands out. For two glorious weeks in the summer every four years we get to watch what happens when, for a few precious moments, egos as big as the ocean are mixed, blended and transformed beyond recognition, like the ingredients in a fine soufflé. Whether they are playing individual sports like tennis or biking, or team sports like hockey or volleyball, they wear their uniforms proudly, displaying the front and not the back. Imagine what one rower can do in a skull; now think of eight rowers, their movements synchronized, almost floating over the water. The gymnast on the rings is a sensation; but to watch the teammates urging each other onward with intense mental concentration through each heroic move, each inadvertent misstep, that is sublime. Take a basketball player, a craftsman at the free throw line. Now watch him rising into the air above a basket, taking a pass from a teammate and redirecting it with a subtle twist of his hand; he is transformed into a graceful member of a corps de ballet, a dancer whose feet walk on air.

Sometimes I think we love to watch sporting events because of what they say about us as human beings, about the way we transform our own dreams and ambitions into impossible achievements. The effort, the win, the new record, are all metaphors for our lives, personal and professional. As we root for others we are really rooting for ourselves, for the home team, for the family and friends up in the stands, for our aspirations and our achievements. And when somebody fumbles, we enjoy that, too, because it reminds us that we are human after all.

Recently I’ve had the pleasure of watching a similar team effort, every bit as awe-inspiring and probably more important than many of the sporting events I’ve enjoyed in the past … and then quickly forgotten. We at MXenergy have been working on a new project that has the promise to transform our ability to communicate with our customers. It will help explain to our customers the risk of energy price volatility and the importance of what we do when we offer them price protection. The project is akin to a gymnastics meet, demanding intense concentration from every part of the company. I have been overwhelmed by the way our team of professionals has been working

together, passing the ball and not hogging it; supporting each other and not undercutting each other; sharing the limelight and not stealing it.

Tonight the women’s gymnastics are on. I can’t wait.