You win some, you lose some
“You win some, you lose some.”
I really hate that phrase.
I hate it because losing feels lousy; I want to succeed, perform, and win.
At the same time, if my standard is that I have to always win, if I can never have an off day, or misjudge a situation, or stick my foot in my mouth, that’s unrealistic. If that’s my standard, I’m going to play everything safe, only take on “challenges” that are easy wins, or I’m going to be down on myself. A lot!
Bob Bowman, in his book, The Golden Rules, got me thinking about this in a new way. If you don’t know the name, Bob is a legendary swim coach who worked with swimmers like Michael Phelps and Léon Marchand; the swimmers he’s coached have won almost 30 Olympic gold medals.
When he sets goals with his swimmers, he never lets them say, “I want to beat so-and-so, I want to win a gold medal.“
Instead, he gives them a different standard of success: “Your job is to swim as fast as you can between point A and point B. Swimming fast has nothing to do with your opponent or a medal. Medals, money, your heat, your lane, other swimmers, social media, the media — that’s all irrelevant noise that will only slow you down. Keep it simple.“
When we choose a goal like the swimmer proposed—win the medal—our success and feelings of accomplishment become tied to so many things we cannot control. Instead, Bob sets a process goal: swim the race in a certain time. If the swimmer beats that time, they should win the gold. There’s always the possibility that another swimmer is better that day, but if you swim your best time, you can still be proud of your performance.
Getting present is how goals happen
I spend a lot of my Mondays looking at a number. The gap between where I am and where I told myself I’d be by December.
A founder I coach does the same thing with a dashboard she created for herself. She checks it like she’s playing in a playoff game. Every red cell is a verdict on her performance.
The scoreboard is not the game. The game is the conversation I’m in right now—was I present? Did I listen well? Did I tell the truth? The number is the medal. It’s what happens after I do the job well, over and over — not what I’m supposed to manage day to day.
Decide the process you need to win
This is even more important when working with a team. Deciding ahead of time how the team will judge its performance can head off many tense conversations.
Coach K, in Leading with the Heart, agrees that a goal has to be something the team can actually control. You can control how hard you prepare. You can’t control whether the ball bounces your way in overtime.
One practice worth stealing from these coaches: decide your process before you’re in the pressure moment; name ahead of time how you’ll make the call, run the meeting, or handle the objection. Then, when something goes sideways, the postmortem isn’t “you screwed up”—it’s “did we follow what we agreed on?” No blame. Just the process, revisited.
Are you more focused on winning the medal, or following your process in each moment? How could you be clearer with your team about what “good” looks like, so you can have more productive postmortems?
Hit reply and tell me what your version of “point A to point B” is.
