Tiger Woods and Improving the Best

A great article about Tiger Woods in the paper this morning that led to a couple of thoughts about conversations I’ve had with a few folks over the past day or so.

I’m only really interested in improving the top brands. And let me tell ya why.

Forever business has been hammering on underperforming sectors and divisions. The greatest opportunity has been seen in a stock or corporation that is “underperforming”. Buy low sell high, y’know.

This is fine for the material world—and can work great in the spiritual as well, but primarily what works in the world of creativity and “strengths” is improving the best. There’s a great book on this called “Now Discover Your Strengths”. This has lots of personal and personnel applications but the most exciting opportunities are systematic and institutional.

What their data show is that it is vastly easier and more rewarding to improve strong performers operating with their strengths than underperformers developing “core competencies” (and it’s Gallup so they have lots of data). A strength shows an aptitude. And aptitude—desire—is non-replaceable.

I was talking with John Moore from Brand Autopsy (www.brandautopsy.com) about Whole Foods and his question was the same—who would tinker with a double-digit performer? Rob Engleman, from the Engleman Management Group (www.englemanmanagement.com), who I met with yesterday said the same thing.

What I said to them, and honestly believe, is that a corporation that can change without severe outside pressure—can innovate (in a material or cultural sense) and then innovate again—will find itself with exponential depth and ability. Rather than multiplicative. And its profits will follow. Right now our expectations are so low we don’t even believe the company we dream of is possible. The growth we dream of. The life we dream of.

We survive and token-change along until outside forces (god, the competition, tsunamis, whatever) force our noses to what we want and then reluctantly take enough steps toward our own truth to mitigate the immediate circumstances. We have a mid-life crisis and so divorce the wife. We get sick and so stop eating sugar for a few days. We awake hung over and so swear off drinking (and last until the next stressful Friday).

To get into the world that we know we are capable of, this type of tokenism—with ourselves and in business—will have to stop. In a very real sense it is a manageable victimization. We feel we cannot grow, or change, or be ourselves (or stop eating sugar) while we are on this planet, in this economy, with our family. This, of course, is not true.

As I’ve been getting into in the last few days of posts, what this really amounts to is drama. And drama is the quintessential addiction (and #1 sticky). But the competition isn’t going to kill us if we don’t make our logo red like theirs (actual meeting decision), our partner isn’t going to leave us if we either assert our desires or show our vulnerability, and we’re not going to spontaneously combust if we set about making the culture and economy we’ve always desired. There’s no reason that to grow up and raise children we have to move to the suburbs and forgo neighborhood relationships. Or pay for private schools. There’s no reason that we have to stop listening to current music from ages 32 to 52 (when we flip and start listening to Yanni or Tuvan throat singers out of desperation). We can have and build a mature, spiritual, vital, fun, real mature culture of our own.

All we’ve got to do is pay for it.

But back to Tiger Woods. Genius that he is. Quantum competition killer that he is.

Tiger, who’s spent the last year working on his swing (and getting married—see what happens when we decide to grow consciously), says he’s starting to feel in the groove again. This after a year of drubbing in the media (see where listening to them will getcha?), after people speculating that love was messing up his golf game (what planet do these people live on?). Deepak Chopra even suggested that he needed to loosen up. No one had any love for Tiger. Luckily, his love for himself was unconditional.

In front of the whole world he had the strength and courage to make himself vulnerable and appear wrong. For a whole year. I’d like to see one CEO who had the guts to go up against Wall Street for even a year because of an inner conviction.

Tiger has won tournaments in both November and December. And has taken the flaw out of his swing. When asked if he was back to where he was before he said no. –I’m better. Better than when he broke all those records and looked unbeatable. He knew that he, like Whole Foods, Microsoft, and a whole bunch of professional skateboarders, had taught the competition an awful lot of new tricks. And that the grommets (the hot, young upstart kids) were coming. He knew he had to make himself a king.

In the article he is quoted as saying that he knew a bad day would have to be 69. Instead of the 72 it could be when he was knocking everyone’s socks off.

Luckily he’s applying quantum knowledge in the material world. Spiritual competition doesn’t require anyone to lose. Once you’re in it’s just a matter of how well you can win. There really is a whole world to think up, create, build, learn from and enjoy. You didn’t think the promise of god was this tight-ass nonsense did you? We haven’t even seen a decent painting painted in 20 years. And half of y’all don’t even have time to feel the love you’ve worked so hard to maintain.

All we have to do is start making what we want and buying what we want. And I believe it’s not only possible, but immanent. The question is: do you wanna go? Ain’t no one gonna lower the truth.

We could even start giving venture capital to people who we think see the way out (in?). But that’s another post. Until then commit to growth and ignore everything you don’t love. Take complete responsibility and let yourself relax and wiggle into even higher states of being when you’re already at your peak. Ignore every single wound or slight that has ever happened to you—yesterday included. And pretend you are free to do as you like.

Cause you are. I’m off to tabulate survey results.