Take a moment to complete the quick survey on enhancing, improving, and optimizing your individual performance.

As someone with more than a passing interest in professional sports, I was genuinely excited when I recently had an opportunity to attend a hockey game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Toronto Maple Leafs. (I’m originally from Pittsburgh, PA, so it’s not hard to figure out where my loyalties reside). Earlier in 2016, I made it to a couple of post-season games, including a game during the Stanley Cup Finals – a truly terrific experience! To many who follow sports, there’s nothing quite like the post-season – the intensity and drama underscore the reality that EVERYTHING is on the line.

The other reason that I appreciate the post-season is because getting to the playoffs is the reward for those teams that work harder, are more disciplined, and perform more cohesively. Not surprisingly, these traits are often synonymous with success in the business world, as well.

If you listen closely to interviews with the most talented players in just about any sport, they tend to say almost the exact same thing regarding the key ingredients to their individual and team success. The very best players share an almost universal commitment to “getting better.” They are devout students of their own performance, to include understanding their individual strengths and areas of opportunity, because they want to get better. They seek outside input from coaches and others to obtain greater situational awareness because they want to get better. And, they are constantly working on the finer points of their game – all the subtleties and nuances – because they want to get better.  Getting better translates to competing more effectively; getting better means becoming more efficient; getting better means being accountable and making sacrifices to elevate one’s game. As a case in point, consider the following clip featuring the consensus “best hockey player in the world.”

So, what about your team? What about you? What do you or your team deliberately do as a means of keeping the blade sharp? What drives you to be introspective and push to elevate your skills and results to the next plateau? What steps do you take to work on your business, so that you can be more effective working in your business?

Perhaps you can rattle off a short hit-list of things that you have done this year in pursuit of “getting better” – if so, that’s genuinely awesome – good for you. Many of us, however, are so immersed in our respective day-to-day routines that unconsciously ride a wave of activity which seemingly pushes us from one moment to the next. We have little time to incorporate moments of formal introspection into our business life. And the problem with this, If you really pause to think about it, is this:  it’s really hard to get better, if you don’t deliberately plan to get better.

So, if you are drawing a blank about your individual self-improvement endeavors over the recent past, I encourage you to complete a very short Getting Better Self-Assessment, which you can find on this webpage below the video.  It’s a short, super-quick survey, and If nothing else, it will serve as food for thought for better understanding and/or measuring things you may be presently doing or can do right now to begin investing in yourself and your success. My expectation is that when you complete the assessment you will either arrive at a moment of affirmation, or perhaps a moment of enlightenment.

The title of this blog is a simple question that asks: If you aren’t getting better – what are you getting? Interested in adopting your own Getting Better strategy? Just drop me a note. I’m more than happy to spend a few minutes discussing straightforward game plans and approaches that can yield real value for you or your team.