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In-Depth Information
A Key Observation about Real Performance Improvement
I believe I always knew I had repeating specific weaknesses, but had never taken the
time to determine if there was something I could do about them,
and then do it
.
What I find interesting is the similarity to what happens when I do a gap
analysis. I have found that leaders in organizations are rarely surprised by
my findings exposing their most significant weaknesses. In fact, I almost
always hear complete agreement with my findings, and hear senior man-
agers tell me they have known what I say is true for a long time.
But why is it that the problems still exist in many organizations when Senior
Management has known about them for extended periods of time? In some
cases, the reason is that the right fixes appear so straightforward that we end
up brushing the issue aside. Sometimes the answer just seems
too simple
. I
provide examples of this later in this chapter.
In other cases, the organization might not know how to fix them. Because
they don't know how to fix them, they give up without trying and then they
just keep coming back. I didn't know how to fix the problem I was facing on
the golf project either—that is, until I followed those simple, but critical
steps. Let me explain what I did differently to address my golf swing repeat-
ing specific weaknesses.
9.7 My Golf Swing Repeating Specific Weaknesses
I had a subconscious tendency over time to allow my left grip to weaken to
the point where my thumb was almost resting on the top of the club shaft.
The left thumb should be turned so that the V that is formed by your thumb
and index finger points over your back shoulder. My V would be pointing at
my nose. My second tendency was without thinking to start placing the club-
head behind the ball with an open clubface.
6
Refer to Figure 9-1.
Because this would happen gradually over time, I wouldn't notice it. When I
would go to my teacher, he would grab my seven iron and square it up. It
always looked to me like the clubface was extremely closed. This would feel
very awkward and I would swear it was crazy to hit a ball with a clubface so
6. An “open” or “closed” clubface refers to the angle the face of the club makes with respect to the
intended line of flight of the ball. “Closed” means that the face of the club is lined up to the left of the tar-
get. An “open” clubface means it is lined up to the right of the target.
