Practice Everything to Be Ready for Anything

When I was the Director of Digital Marketing at the Minnesota Timberwolves about 10 years ago, I had a very junior team. For those who are not familiar with the sports industry, sports teams are largely driven on the backs of very young professionals, usually fresh out of college, who are hungry for the opportunity to work in sports. Since the majority of a sports team’s revenue goes to supporting player contracts, the younger workforce is much more affordable for team owners.

Having this younger group of professionals on my team I viewed as a great growth opportunity for myself. I was given the chance to teach and grow new professionals and do my best to set them up for success in the future. A responsibility I did not take lightly, and made sure I took the time to install the best lessons I could.

We Talkin’ About Practice

Given that my role and team were part of a professional sports team, I found a perfect analogy for helping my team get better at their roles on the digital marketing team.

I incorporated the idea of practice, something most are familiar with during their time as part of youth sports teams, as something our team needed to do to stay sharp and get better at our craft.

If you played any sort of organized sports as a kid or young adult, you know you spent much more time in practice than you did playing an actual game. If you played basketball, for example, you might remember what felt like endless dribbling drills, layups, and free throws you practiced every day. Think of how many free throws you took in practices, and compare that to the total you actually shot in real competitive games during the course of the season. The free throws you made that counted in the official scorebook were just a small fraction of the actual practice free throws you made. And if you spent most of your time “riding the bench” for the basketball team you were on, your number of in-game appearances at the free throw line might have even been zero.

So why all the practice? Why the thousands of practice free throws, ground balls, and corner kicks?? Because you have to practice everything in order to be ready for anything.

The same can be said for business, and all of the functions within business, like marketing, sales, and technology.? The concept of practice still holds true.

Everyday, as business professionals, we are tasked with performing duties to achieve the best results possible.? I am willing to bet that the way you perform a task in your job today (assuming the duties are relatively the same or time) achieves much better results than it did when you performed the same task a year ago.? Why?? Because each time you did that task over the course of the last year, you got just a little better, a little faster, and a little smarter, which got you to today’s version of that task.? All the previous times you completed that task were essentially just practice tasks to get you to execute today’s task, which probably (hopefully) was the best you have done to-date.? The practice over time made you better.

An Example: The Practice of Blog Writing

Say you oversee the company blog as part of your role on the marketing team. Throughout the year, you work on different styles of blog posts. You try interviewing customers and vendors for some of the topics of your blog posts. You learn good keyword research skills. You try different calls to action. You learn everything there is to know about marketing analytics as they relate to blog content. You write post after post for weeks and months.

Each blog post you write is like a practice session. Getting just a little better with each post you publish.? Most of your blog posts may never provide a return on the time and effort you put into them, but the act of writing them was worth it, because…

You wake up one day with an email from your company’s CEO…

You Never Know When You Will Need to Perform at Your Best

The email is about a new potential partner the company is currently engaging with. Your CEO just had dinner with the CEO of the potential partner.? A tentative deal was struck, but your CEO wants to make an impression to seal the deal.? Your CEO wants a blog post published, that highlights key elements of the business that would show the potential partner the benefits of a comprehensive partnership with your company.? And she wants it in two days.

All of the blogs you have written… All the metrics you have analyzed... All the keyword research you have done…? That was all practice for this “game time” performance. The practice has given you the confidence to get this task done, and done well.? You didn’t take managing the blog half-heartedly for the last year, which is now paying off.

You never know when you will be called on to perform a function of your job at the absolute highest level.? But when that time comes, like being on that free throw line with no time left on the clock and you need to make that shot to win the game, you want to be ready. You want to know that the practice you put in was for a reason.

Practice everything. And I Mean Everything.

Denny Green, the former NFL head coach, liked to throw little surprises in during practices. Knowing that anything can cause a game to be delayed or interrupted, the coach would occasionally just stop practice, right in the middle of the practice, for sometimes up to 20-30 minutes, providing no reason to the other coaches or players. When he would decide to start practice back up, he wanted to see how the players reacted and performed after the interruption. He wanted to practice the unknown.

To get prepared for the 2017 NFL Super Bowl, the New England Patriots walked through practice sessions that lasted the length of a real game, including an extended break in the middle of practice to simulate the longer than usual halftime the Super Bowl required.? The Patriots practiced the halftime break.

There should be no difference for you. You should practice every day.? Are you a programmer on the IT team?? Practice writing code, separate from whatever is on your to-do list. Try different styles of code.? Try to break your code. Get others to try and break your code. Practice coding.? Do you write press releases as part of the marketing team?? Practice writing press releases. Imagine the craziest scenario you might ever have to write about. Make it up. Make it crazy. It is practice… you are trying to learn because you never know.? Do you work in sales?? The list of things you can practice is limitless. Write test scripts. Practice them on co-workers, family members, friends. Work out the kinks, then put it in practice.

Do all of these things hundreds of times. Over and over and over.? This is your version of practice.

Practice Everything In Order to Be Ready for Anything

Your youth sports coaches back in the day were right… practice is important. I would argue that you need to spend more time practicing your craft.? Because you will never know when you get that call to perform at your best when everything is on the line.

This article first appeared on BobStanke.com.