Pole Valuting

So let's imagine that it's Monday morning. You come into work and your boss catches up with you to tell you about a new project. Your goal, jump over a bar that is 18' in the air. The process? Grab a long stick, run a fast is you can down toward the bar, jab the stick in the ground, and use your momentum to propel yourself up and over the bar.

No big deal, right? And how many of us would willingly do this?

I don't know what possesses someone to compete in the pole vault. I mean, who in their right mind would do this?

Okay, I'm guilty. I tried it once. Snapped the pole (no, I don't have pictures). Seems there is also a required component dealing with body mass (and I had way too much of it at the time). Of course, that experience taught me that maybe I should stick to shot put and discus. But some people look at the pole vault and say "no problem".

The interesting thing is that we ask people to pole vault all the time. "Can you cut a day off delivery?" "Raise customer satisfaction." "Our goal is to be a world class organization." So, do you run faster, plant the pole better, learn how to drive off your knee to get move bend in the pole, or push off the pole at a better apex? Or do you go "...we can't do that..."?

The cool thing about pole vaulters are they are never afraid to fail. If they are afraid, you can almost guarantee they will miss. When they are not afraid, the may miss, but they know what it takes to succeed.

The simple questions for us:

• Are we picking the right people to be 'pole vaulters'?
• Are we willing to allow our pole vaulters to fail in order to learn how to succeed?
• Are we setting up our pole vaulters to succeed?
• Are our pole vaulters 'afraid' to vault?

Good luck in your jumping and here's to clearing the bar!