Monday

Looking Forward to Monday

“Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.”

Yogi Berra, New York Yankees
What’s the biggest difference between Monday and Friday?

Let’s address this question with a little help from Yogi’s reminder of the importance of the mental side or ATTITUDE.

Like team sports, businesses succeed or fail based upon the total output from all employees. Simply, the total employee output needs to exceed the sum of each employee’s individual contribution.

Exceptionally successful sports teams and exceptionally successful businesses find a way to enjoy exponentially more output from their team performance than the sum of their individual performance.

While raw talent has always been a critical component, the raw talent on most teams and in most businesses is relatively similar.

Isn’t the real game-changer: attitude?

If you are leading a productive team, what does it say about your leadership, if your team refers to Wednesday as “hump-day” and Friday as “TGIF”?

A casual dining chain has even capitalized on “TGIF” and promotes the “Thank God It’s Friday” as part their brand. Isn’t something wrong if your team can’t wait for Friday?

What is so great about Friday, anyway? As the leader of a team or an organization, shouldn’t it trouble you that your talent can’t wait for the weekend days to arrive when they WON’T be coming to work with you?

Where is balance in all of this? Aren’t we really trying to make the most out of each and every day regardless of the day being a week day/workday or a weekend day?

With so much focus on Friday, where is the same amount of excitement for Monday?

Returning to the sports world, didn’t the US Women’s Soccer Team have a pretty good “Monday” against Japan during their 5-2 score in the final game?

The US Team’s “Monday approach” of storming out early to a insurmountable lead proved to force the opposing Japanese team to change their playing style with little to no hope of defeating the US Team. To insure their victory, the US team needed to play out the remainder of the game and deliver a strong “Tues/Wed/Thurs/Fri effort as well” and not simply celebrate their Monday success too early.

What would an attitude shift mean from “TGIF” to “Looking Forward to Monday”? We could also shift to casual Monday to get the week off to an enthusiastic start.

We could start scheduling the most favored activities on Monday.

As every manager knows, enthusiastic, motivated, focused employees deliver better results day after day.

If you can lead your team to embrace Monday with an enthusiastic start to the week, how much of a competitive advantage will you have as the team leader or business leader?

Good Hunting !

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About Boxwood Strategies

Bert Sadtler is the President of Boxwood Strategies and is a thought-leader for best practices recruiting, performance-based compensation and the shift in the changing paradigm toward acquiring critical senior level talent.

Boxwood Strategies is a management, consulting and recruiting firm located in the National Capital region. As   a dedicated, consulting resource to CEO’s and hiring managers, Boxwood develops   strategies for organizational growth through a focus on performance, as well as the evaluation and acquisition of critical talent.

To help companies meet numerous business challenges, Bert has co-founded the Alliance of Independent Managers, a group of diverse and accomplished senior-level professionals who are available to companies on a consultative and project basis. The focus of this group is to take “AIM” at a company’s challenges and opportunities, clearly defining it’s challenges, and deliver cost-effective solutions by using experienced, professional consultants instead of hiring full time employees. Market     sectors include: SATCOM, Space, Government Contracting, Communications and Technology.

Bert can be reached at: [email protected] and at BoxwoodSearch.com