By Luke Melms
Did you know that until this year no team had ever lost 100+ games in a season and made the playoffs the following year? The 2017 Minnesota Twins accomplished the feat after going 59-103 last year.
Obviously the players showed up and played the games but the leadership drives the vision that history doesn’t have to repeat itself. The credibility of what Paul Molitor accomplished in the season of life on the field as a player is now manifesting itself in the dugout.
What does this practically mean in business? Whether you aspire to start your own company or lead within someone else’s, it is hard to give away what you don’t have yourself. As a Hall of Famer, Paul Molitor wasn’t leading based on a book he read or watching a YouTube video.
Last December, I had the chance to chat for a few minutes with him. I walked away thinking about how we all have the responsibility to pass on what we have experienced to help others trying to figure out how to create their own success story.
In business or baseball, we can all pull from our personal success story. We owe it not only to ourselves to become a success in the first place but those behind who need great mentors as they navigate building success themselves. It would be hard to imagine any baseball team hiring an individual to manage whose only ties to baseball are being a big fan that has watched hundreds of games.
Anyone who wants to earn the privilege to lead others must first build the discipline that will someday be required of others. In an era of instantaneous anything, it can be easy to see those who are succeeding in business and think it happened relatively quickly. Becoming an overnight success is only possible from years of effort that seem to suddenly become public. Paul Molitor didn’t magically become a great manager. It is the byproduct of a 21 year career in the big leagues along with years coaching in capacities outside of managing.
Whether it is going from on the field to the dugout, baseball to business, or from associate into a management role, our previous season is part of our story regardless of how well or poorly it ended. How we choose to write the next season is up to each of us.
