Back to the Basics

By Rob Hubert

Everyone who knows me also knows that I have a passion for football. It's the ultimate chess match and game of strategy and execution. You may also know that I coached pee-wee football at one time in my life.  For three years I had the blessing of coaching five, six and seven year olds. I myself being a student and always trying to gain an edge and knowledge began to search for information to help my team. That's when I found an audio cassette of a speech given by Lou Holtz, the former division one head football coach.

Your probably thinking what does this have to do with IT and why are you blogging about this. Lou Holtz said, we become a team when enough people care. He also had the philosophy that if anyone has a problem, then we all have a problem. Obviously we are in IT and most of us work as part of a team. How many times have I failed to ask for help and take on more and more work than I can handle and that eventually leads me to frustration. Lou Holtz sets a context for his teams, that we are a team and we are here to achieve our goals together. That is obvious, but often forgotten or overlooked.

I borrowed three even more powerful things from Lou Holtz that I taught my football team.  I set this up as the "three rules" that we have on our team. At every practice and after every game, this group of twenty boys would repeat after me. 1. Always Do Your Best, 2. Always Do the Right Thing and 3. Always treat others as you want to be treated. Every football player could recite these three rules to anyone at anytime. These my friend, are the basics. May they come to the forefront of your work day every day.

Rob