You may have heard this, but the Chicago Cubs snapped a 108-year streak between World Series victories last night with a thrilling 8-7 extra-inning win over the Cleveland Indians.
It took more than five hours to nail down the world championship Wednesday night but just mere minutes on social media for people to begin speculating whether the Cubs will win again next year. Many of their key players are under the age of 30 and only a couple of key contributors can leave the team through free agency.
In sports, personnel decisions and the short peak periods of athletes always plays a part in how well a team performs the next season. There is another issue to battle – complacency. There are scores of teams and athletes through the years – from the boxer Rocky Marciano, to golfer David Duval and basketball star Michael Jordan – who simply woke up after a major achievement and just didn’t feel like he or she had the drive anymore to compete at the highest level.
Complacency is an issue for many businesses as well. When someone starts a company or takes one over, they have a roadmap in mind, a destination, a goal. Jason Todd, founder and managing director of Thinker Ventures, says the key is to always be thinking of “the next thing.”
“Unlike baseball, there is no off-season in business, no pinnacle of achievement each year and a fresh start the next. It’s just one long story being written a chapter at a time.
Any achievement of a milestone or metric should be celebrated. The celebration is necessary but the celebration will end. The long-term value of achieving a milestone is building momentum to know what can be done and use that energy to move to the next thing. The key is to have understood the long-term story that’s being written. Prior to achieving that milestone one must know what the next milestone is. Otherwise, the energy of the celebration will dissipate and you’ll be unable to use it to get started on the next thing. And, there needs to be a next thing. Without the next thing, customers will lose interest, employees will lose interest in working, smart minds will decay. Setting a goal in the future, with intermediate milestones along the way, celebrating each one, and then continuing to the next, keeps people interested, alive.
Baseball is a thrill because of the feeling one gets when your team wins. Business can be, too. In baseball, someone said that the World Series was the pinnacle. And it keeps people interested because it’s every year. If it were a longer arc – say, 10 years, many people would lose interest.
In business, each business defines its own pinnacle. Yet sometimes that pinnacle can be years into the future. It’s important to set intermediate milestones that move toward an ultimate goal, celebrated along the way and clearly shown how something amazing is coming together.”
Jason Todd