School of "Hard Knocks"

I've discovered a new show on HBO called "Hard Knocks". It's a documentary on the Kansas City Chiefs training camp. Every show is filled with teachable moments for business. Training camp is all about personnel evaluation, personal motivation, training, job measurement and job performance.

In business, if we exhibited even a fraction of the organizational development effort depicted by this series, most of our companies would be performing at a much higher level.

In football, from a player's perspective, it's easy to tell whether you're winning or losing - how you stack up against the competition.

You get beaten on a play. The coach yells at you (or not). You make a block. You catch a pass. You check the scoreboard at the end of the game. You check your record at the end of the season. You win the playoffs or you don't. Success or failure is pretty black and white.

In business we deal in shades of grey. Few of us are pushed to excellence because there are several other people waiting to take our "roster position". Sometimes it's difficult to know whether you're clearly winning or losing. In fact, everyone on "your team" may even have a different definition of what "winning" is!

I've worked in several companies where one division earns a big bonus (wins), while another earns nothing (loses). Yet both divisions traded under the same NYSE ticker symbol!

It seems to me that we have an opportunity to learn something here. If we can somehow develop a common definition of winning, and craft incentives to win or lose as one team, perhaps we'd all spend more time finding ways to work well together, to challenge each other - to improve all our performances.

And organizational development would move out of HR and into the daily lives of every department.