Being a supporter of Texas A&M with a daughter currently going there, part of me wants to see Johnny Manziel turn around his NFL career.  However, I also think that he has been given several chances and just can’t seem to get out of his own way.  His antics off the field show that he isn’t taking the opportunities as seriously as he should.  His most recent big mistake was lying about partying during the Brown’s bye week.  Here are some of the things we can learn and hopefully he will learn from this:

1. Covering up your mistakes is almost always going to be punished more harshly than owning up to them.  He is benched right now not because he was partying in Austin but because he flat out lied to his coaches about it in an attempt to cover it up.  I have seen this time and time again in my professional career as well.  Sadly, some people never seem to break out of the CYA (cover your a$$) cycle of mistakes and consequences.
2. When you are given an opportunity to show your commitment that is the time to double down on your focus to the team and your job.  Manziel was just named the starter coming off of a strong performance against the Steelers heading into the bye week.  Instead of studying game film of the Ravens and showing focus in the bye week he decided to “shut it down” and ended up partying in Austin, TX.  It’s really important to recognize that when your organization asks you to step up that you seize the opportunity and make the most of it.  That is definitely not the time to take a break or do anything but prepare to help your organization win.
3. What he did was more than just a cover up of his mistake.  He flat out lied to his boss.  If you do that in your professional career you can certainly expect consequences.  Depending on the lie, you might end up getting fired.  In any event you better believe that once you have violated the trust of your boss it’s going to take quite a bit of time and demonstrations of honesty/integrity to regain it.
4. Sometimes we focus on the wrong things.  In Manziel’s case he was worried about getting caught partying.  Sure, the team wouldn’t have been thrilled about that but they could have gotten over it.  Thankfully, he didn’t end up getting in trouble with the law or anything too crazy while partying (except demonstrating bad rapping skills).  Manziel took something that could have been excused and made it way worse for himself than it needed to be.  He said the video could have been old (really???).  The lesson here is to not try to shift focus from the mistake to something else.  We all make mistakes and have a fairly high tolerance for others that make mistakes.
5. Without integrity and honesty you will never have trust.  Especially as a quarterback/team leader for the team to follow you and the organization to trust you, you have to earn that trust.  If you continuously let them down then you are almost certainly headed toward getting let go.  Extremely talented players/employees can sometimes get away without honesty and integrity but they won’t be trusted and at best they will simply be tolerated.

I do hope that Manziel will learn from this most recent mistake.  Honesty and integrity need to mean something and if he can’t see that then I have significant doubts about his ability to make it as an NFL quarterback.  In reality, I would say the same thing applies to anyone with any role in any organization.  We all need to place a higher level of importance on maintaining and rewarding honesty and integrity.  If we have employees that need reminded of that maybe they should take a look at what has happened to Manziel.  He went from being the named starter for the rest of the season to the third string quarterback and rightfully so.

Unless you’re sitting on a huge inheritance, a prior successful business sale, or have the ability to scrape by to bootstrap there is a good chance you’ll need investors to help get your startup going.  Dealing with potential investors is tricky to say the least and goes well beyond just identifying them.  Once you do get a meeting or even a chance encounter here are a few things you should try to avoid when pitching potential investors (in no specific order):

1. Stating a Lack of Competition – When you tell a potential investor that there’s absolutely no competition for your business model, they hear one of two things: either you’ve completely failed at market research and don’t know your customer base, or you’re pitching an idea for which there is no market. Either way, you’re not painting a very convincing picture.
2. Guaranteeing a Return – You want to encourage people to invest in your business, and you know investors are in it for the return. Still, this doesn’t mean offering them a guaranteed profit is going to increase their chance of signing on for the ride. In fact, it can do just the opposite. There are no guarantees in business, and a seasoned investor knows this to be true. Making unrealistic promises about profitability, especially in the short term, can leave potential investors turned off immediately.
3. A Lengthy Elevator Pitch – Some of your most valuable opportunities will be short and unexpected, so you need to have an elevator pitch ready for those moments. If you can’t hit the high points of your elevator pitch in less than a minute, you’ll have trouble snaring the attention to secure an actual pitch meeting.
4. Skipping the Exit Strategy – Your goals may be to start a successful long-term business you can turn into a family empire, but your investors aren’t thinking about returns over the course of several generations. They want a return in less than ten years, so you’ll have to address the exit strategy for your investors, something most entrepreneurs overlook altogether. How will your investors see a return if you’re not banking on a long-shot IPO?
5. Insisting on Non-Disclosure Agreements – The desire to protect your business model is an understandable one, but demanding your investors sign an NDA before the pitch is a surefire way to derail negotiations. In all but the most innovative situations, the investors to whom you’re pitching will have seen your idea or one with striking similarities before, and know they will again. Most will not run the risk of litigation in the future just to hear your startup pitch.
6. Leading with Your Backstory – No matter how compelling your life history may be, your investors don’t want your biography as a lead-in to your business plan. The backstory doesn’t indicate whether or not your business will be lucrative, and if your pitch isn’t able to stand on its own in the absence of your memoirs, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
7. Gunning for Sympathy Dollars – Just as it’s a bad move to lead with your life history, it’s also poor form to start your pitch with a story about any of your personal tragedies. You’re not going to get funding by virtue of having suffered through difficulties in your life; investors are looking to invest in financially sound business proposals.
8. Pushing a Religious or Ethnic Angle – Your funding pitch should detail your business plan, not your ethnic background or religious beliefs. It’s always best to avoid any mention of religion or ethnicity unless these things have a direct bearing on your business and product.
9. Starting with Flattery or Connections –  You may be a fan of the potential to whom you’re pitching a proposal, share an alma mater or that you grew up on the same street, but flattery and pointing out things you have in common with investors is a great to waste valuable time. Remember, you’ve got a short window to showcase your business plan, investor exit strategies, market research and other pertinent information. Don’t squander that time attempting to build an emotional connection with investors.
10. Relying on the Product to “Sell Itself” – Customer acquisition is crucial, and your potential investors want to hear how you plan to build a customer base. Saying your product will “sell itself” shows a lack of foresight and, again, a potential lack of market research.

Learning what not to say and do are only helpful, though, if you understand why these things can have a negative impact and derail an otherwise promising pitch.  It’s not enough to avoid tricky phrases; you need to know what potential problems they highlight in your business plan. Even with all the right information and a great pitch, it may take time to secure the funding you need to get your startup off the ground.

NOTE: Some of these came from similar posts by Mark Cuban on Cyber Dust.  If you join Cyber Dust be sure to add me there as well.  My Cyber Dust username is kenneymyers.

I could have chosen to talk about the Patriots or Panthers, but instead I chose to focus on the win streak that the Golden State Warriors have going on in the NBA this season.  It’s not that one winning streak is better than the others (it doesn’t get better than undefeated), it’s how they have gone about it and what we can learn from their players and coaches.  I am a Rockets fan so this is by far the viewpoint of a homer/fan.  With that said, they have something truly special going on that is worth diving into and seeing what we can apply to our business teams.  I wanted to do this by focusing on some recent quotes.

1. “I’m completely okay with the fact that the wins don’t count on any record book for me,” said Luke Walton. Since Walton is an assistant to Steve Kerr  (Kerr is not able to coach for health reasons so Walton is leading the team in games), the wins are counting for Kerr and not Walton.  I think we can learn how important it is to have a top-down commitment from our teams. It would be great if all coaches/team leads in organizations were more concerned with team wins than their own career achievements.
2. “Whether or not we get it, it really doesn’t affect our ultimate goal of trying to win a championship,” said Luke Walton.  Here’s another lesson for management and team leaders to stay focused on the big picture and goals of the organization.  It’s a long NBA season and the Warriors know that from the top to the bottom of the organizational chart.  Their eyes remain on the prize which is to win another championship.
3. “It would be a cool milestone,” Klay Thompson said. “Shows how special this team can be.”  It is important though to recognize that our teams are doing something special when they are on a streak of wins.  That’s far from losing focus it’s just appreciating a moment in time and recognizing that your team gets it.  There is nothing wrong with appreciating the fact that you are on a great team.
4. “It’s kind of a quiet confidence that we don’t feel like we’re going to lose anytime soon,” Stephen Curry said.  I think this is a defining characteristic of this team.  They aren’t cocky about it, they just believe they can get it done.  That’s the kind of team that I want to be a part of and that I’d like to have throughout my organization.  How about you?
5. “The way we’re playing … we can get even better, ” Stephen Curry said.  I think striving to get better realizing that we are never going to be perfect is a great outlook/attitude to have.  No matter how many wins your team racks up, knowing you can all individually and collectively perform better is contagious.  Staying hungry and pushing yourself is a great way to keep your team and organization moving in a positive direction.

It’s really hard to dislike the Warriors with the way they have been handling themselves (for me it’s impossible).  Even though we all know it’s a long season and they will most likely lose at some point, I’d like to see them get the record tonight and start 16-0 (I can’t believe I just typed that).  It seems like a classy organization and I think we can learn a lot from how they are going about their business every day.

The quotes used came from the following articles:

• Fox Sports
• Inquirer

So my social media feeds were blowing up yesterday over Kevin McHale getting fired by the Houston Rockets and my immediate thought was “scapegoat.”  It got me thinking about how that might be applied to business and specifically project teams at work.  Imagine if you will that you are the manager (coach) and you have assembled an amazing team with tons of talent, but they just can’t seem to pull together to produce winning projects or maybe to really even get anything done.  If you are that manager here are some suggestion to avoid getting replaced like Kevin McHale:

1. Find the source of the problem and conflict.  It sounds like a super simple idea (and it is) but for some reason people like to avoid conflict and that includes talking about the issues they have with teammates.  You can either do this individually or with the whole team but eventually you need the whole team to air it out.  For instance, I have led projects where there were problems based on the perception of how hard someone else on the team was working.  That caused the rest of the team to not be as motivated.  In reality there were things being completed that weren’t clear enough and the “solution” was just communicating more effectively in daily scrum sessions (it was an agile project).
2. Find out if you have a bunch of ball hogs on your team.  In some cases, just like in basketball there are ball hogs on your project team.  People that want to hog all the good tasks and/or take all of the glory.  If you have a ball hog you may have to intentionally sit them out on some tasks to give the other team members a chance to shine.  If the situation doesn’t correct itself you may even have to permanently bench them.
3. Make sure you have a strategy that plays to the strengths of each team member.  There are times when people get confused by the roles they are supposed to be playing on the team (a developer acting like the business owner or a back-end developer acting like a designer).  A good manager (coach) needs to clear that up and make sure that the best person for each task is the one executing the task.  Maybe you have a shooting guard doing a majority of the ball handling instead of the point guard for instance.  That’s not maximizing the individual value of that team member.
4. You are going to be held accountable for the wins and losses of your team so accept and embrace that responsibility.  In the end you have to find a solution that works.  Continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome will likely lead to everything unraveling for you and the team.  Make changes and do everything you can to position your team for success.  Don’t make your demise be the lack of trying different solutions to making it work.
5. Don’t bank on past wins to be enough for you get a pass on present failures.  Kevin McHale just LAST YEAR led the Houston Rockets to the western conference finals.  That’s solid!  However, in reality it didn’t save him from being fired after a terrible start to the season.  So what happened?  Daryl Morey accepted his responsibility as a leader to execute on #4 above and try a different solution.

What happened to Kevin McHale is actually pretty common in the business world as well.  Having amazing team members alone isn’t enough to make your business or your project successful.  You have to constantly be working to get the most out of them.  While it’s true that the players/team still has to perform there is no escaping that the project manager is the one likely to hear “You’re FIRED!”  Just ask The Donald…

There is something to be said for making the most of every opportunity given to you in life.  This past Monday night we saw a great example of that when TJ Yates came off the bench to step in for Brian Hoyer and lead the Houston Texans to victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.  What was he doing just a few weeks before that?  He was on his couch watching NFL games like the rest of us.  After just a two week crash course (or refresher) on the playbook he was called on to lead the offense and it wasn’t flashy by any means but he got the unlikely win over an undefeated Bengals team.  Here are just a few of the things we can learn from that to apply to our professional careers:

1. Keep your mind and skills sharp as you never know when the next opportunity is going to come to you.  Especially when you aren’t working (aka got cut from a team), it can be challenging to get motivated to learn new skills and to stay in game shape.  However, you never know when a big interview (team tryout) is coming and your game-readiness will be put to the test.
2. Stay focused on your goals and believe that they can still happen.  After struggles or failures it can be really easy to give up on your dreams and sometimes that is in reality what you need to do.  However, if you are still in your prime and think there is a shot then don’t give up until you have exhausted all of your options.  If you don’t believe in yourself and your chances then nobody else will either.
3. Once your big break comes that isn’t the time to let up, you need to bust your butt to learn the playbook.  When you get a new opportunity it’s time to show the people that hired you that you are willing to do whatever it takes to help the organization win.  The faster you get back up to speed and learn the policies, procedures, and strategies the more likely you are to help the business win.
4. Play the role the organization needs you to play.  Every position on the team is important whether it’s the backup quarterback spot or starting role.  What is important is if your organization needs you to step up and make a big presentation or fill in on a project for a client, you jump in with both feet and give it your all letting everyone know that they can count on you when they need you the most.
5. Some things just seem to be meant to be.  For TJ Yates, he seems to be destined to beat the Bengals.  Last time he had a great run in 2011 as a rookie he stepped in due to an injury and beat them not once, but twice (he won a playoff game against them as well).  You never know who your Bengals might be maybe it’s that competitor your organization is always up against that has been crushing it lately (undefeated and always winning the business).  Maybe you are the difference maker that can lead your team to victory over your competitor consistently.

I don’t know but there is just something magical about what TJ Yates accomplished on Monday night.  It’s a story that many can relate to because it’s about stepping up and making the most out of the opportunities that life throws your way.  So ask yourself this… are you ready?  What are you doing to make sure that when your organization needs you to step up, you lead them to victory?