Why going for strikes should be your ambition in business life

By Henrik Brabrand, CEO - TRANSEARCH International A/S

Most of us have tried bowling some time in our lives, and we can all vaguely remember the feeling of making that first strike where all of the pins were knocked down with the first ball of a frame.

When we make that strike, it gives us some special privileges. Not only are we awarded the maximum ten points, we also get a bonus of whatever is scored with the next two balls. In this way, the points scored for the two balls after the strike are counted twice.

Business life can in many ways be compared to bowling as that golden strike can put us in the fast lane to career advancement or business success.

It is difficult to make that first strike and even more difficult to replicate it again and again. But every time we make it, it gives us the right of serve and rather than starting at “level 0” next time, we start at e.g. “level 10+” – potentially ahead of the others.

In our experience, sustainable successful business leaders have one particular thing in common – they have practiced, practiced and practiced again to make those strikes. They know that those strikes came through stopping and returning to the beginning of all the small failures they have encountered when learning how to “bowl” or lead, seeking continual critical feedback while focusing persistently on shoring up weaknesses in relation to those given failures. By persistently and passionately employing targeted, mistake-focused practice over and over again, they have automatically attended to their mistakes until they get it right. 

Not many people are aware that what in fact takes place is a complex neurological process. In the same way that rubber insulation is designed to wrap a copper wire to make the signal stronger and faster, by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking away, so is the chain of (impulse carrying) nerve fibres in the brain wrapped with neural/cellular insulation called myelin (Colvin, 2008; Coyle, 2010). The more myelin we can produce, the more insulation is provided to our circuit of electrical impulses and the faster and more accurate will our thoughts and movements be. Every time we practice a skill in a targeted and intelligent way, we fire our circuits, build myelin and improve our skill, accuracy and speed. So, if you practice those bowling skills and correct those small mistakes and misdemeanors, you will eventually make a strike, and then another one and yet another one, and those strikes will elevate you faster and faster to success. The good news is that everyone can produce myelin. However, myelin has to be earned, which can only be done by putting more time and energy into what we term “strike practice” - a concept originally termed “deliberate practice” and introduced by the Swedish professor Anders Ericsson (Coyle, 2010).

High performing business leaders have demonstrated an innate desire to improve themselves, incited by a high level of energy, commitment and passion. In fact, what makes a decisive difference between high performers and average performers is a life-long period of “strike practice” within a specific domain.

I once had a Finnish finance professor at the University of INSEAD at Fontainebleau who told a small anecdote of an old friend who was a highly ranked professional downhill skier. The professor occasionally joined his friend in the mountains for a day of skiing. Almost every time they skied together, the friend would spend hours diligently and repetitively exercising very basic elements of skiing. This puzzled the professor, as he expected his friend to be more focused on training the difficult parts and sophisticated moves of downhill skiing matching his advanced level, rather than training all the basic stuff that one would expect a beginner would practice. He then asked his friend why he was so focused on training the basic elements and his friend said, “in order to continuously improve my skiing even at my level, it is crucial for me to never lose sight of the fundamental elements of downhill skiing, as this is the whole foundation for improving the difficult moves.” The professor used this anecdote to explain why in his teaching he would often jump back to repeating and training his pupils in some of the basic, fundamental skills of finance, as this was the foundation for understanding and improving one’s skills within the more complex stuff.

Through “strike practice”, a person will continually increase their mastery of a task or skill eventually bringing them into a state of flow - a mental state where a person is so involved in a task that time slows down.

Generally speaking, high performing business leaders practice their craft more than average performers do—trying out different out-of-the-box solutions and paths—resulting in the development of broader and deeper perspectives—and fewer mistakes—eventually leading to better judgment. With “strike practice” rooted in double-loop learning, the high performing business leader develops the ability to recognize patterns, exercise expert judgment and navigate more smoothly in changing games or settings. Every time a suboptimal decision is taken—or poor judgement is made—high performing business leaders stop, spin back the tape in their minds and critically evaluate the mistakes made. Repeatedly, this is trained by imagining how improved paths of decision are employed in the same or comparable contexts.

However, in the corporate world, it takes more than “strike practice” to become a high performing business leader but “strike practice” is a fundamental necessity that all high performing business leaders must be willing to employ as a prerequisite for delivering sustainable above average performance within a given context.

Sources:

Colvin, Geoff: “Talent is Overrated”, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1st edition, 2008.

Coyle, Daniel: “The Talent Code”, Arrow Books, 2010.