The tenuous connection between Kirk Cousins and the world of corporate innovation.

I know I've written some guff on here in my time, but bear with me on this one. Even if you're not an NFL fan. Maybe, just maybe, there's a good lesson in here...

I have a knack of picking sports teams that have an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory ... Burnley Football Club, the Mets, the Oilers and my beloved Minnesota Vikings. I blame my love for purple and gold primarily on my propensity to pick teams like this ... well that and my mate Pat McCool.

It's not been a good start to the season for the Vikes, and a lot of the blame game as been placed on the shoulders of our beleaguered quarterback. Now you see, Kirk Cousins is quite possibly one of the most talented QBs in the league, and yet you'd be hard pressed to find him remotely near the names mentioned among today's elites. He's not a Mahomes, Rodgers, Brady, Jackson, even a Brees. Despite his talents, it's unlikely he'll ever experience the success of even the lesser talented Manning brother, I'm talking about Eli.

Kirk is a man with some great stats that suggest he could be an under-recognized gem. He's got a great arm, his passing accuracy is up there with the best and his highlights reels are pretty special too. He's a focused and dedicated character to boot, all in all, there's a lot to like.

Sadly, our Kirk has a really fundamental flaw. He gets the yips. He gets them bad.

“If he does have a weakness, it’s that he’s too much of a perfectionist. He wants everything to be perfect. Unfortunately, I can’t get guys 30 fucking yards open all the time. There are going to be some tight-window throws he’s going to have to throw some days. I’ll call some of these in practice, and if it doesn’t look exactly the way I drew it up, he’ll (say), ‘I don’t know if I like that. I can’t call it in a game.’ I’m like, ‘Bud, c’mon.’" - Jay Gruden

Innovation teams have this same challenge. More often than not, they spend too much of their time trying to be perfect, but the thing is, they don't operate in a vacuum. You can try to innovate perfectly, yet for as much as you follow the methodologies, processes, accessing the right skills and experiments, doing it by the book and answered all the questions asked of you, the chances are the enabling conditions and the moment to make your move will have passed.

If you try to do this in the NFL world, your offensive line isn't going to hold up every time (or ever in the case of the 2020 Vikings), you'll get a bad snap, the receivers don't run the right route or the defense just does a good job ... before you know it you've got an edge rusher about to hit you like a freight train causing you to lose yardage. Or you do what Kirk does, check it down, throw it away, make a very short completion inside for small yardage but still have to punt it away. Rarely will you be given the trust by the coach to go for it on 4th down.

Innovation happens at its best in moment of chaos, to continue the QB analogy, the elite players thrive on broken plays, collapsing pocket protection, making an instinctive split second call, taking a risk and landing the big gain on a jump pass that the playbook would never instruct you to make.

Like this...

So what am I really saying here?

1. If you run an innovation team, back yourself to do great things without needing to check all the boxes and get it perfect.
2. I've got some of my frustration being a Vikings fan off my chest.

Have a great weekend folks!