Cultivating Excellence

The Art, Science, and Grit of High Performance in Business

Darryl Cross, William Cross

• Publisher: River Grove Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781632991355
• eBook ISBN: 9781632991362
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Why and how do world-class leaders and great performers consistently beat their competition?
?They realize they cannot go it alone. They use teams and coaches to amplify their results. Many performers who have already surmounted exceptional tests and challenges and have succeeded in business, sports, the military, or the arts well beyond their peers think performance is only up to the individual. Many become frustrated when hours of hard work, years of experience, and expensive educations don't lead them to the top of their domain. They are already among the best, but they want to be the best.
The elite realize there is only so much they can do on their own to achieve that status. They understand they need coaches, colleagues, and competitors to provide the collaboration and competition that serves as a constant push to keep forward momentum going toward attaining that next level.
In Cultivating Excellence, Darryl Cross uses thirty years of experience to show top performers that the key to continued enhancement of performance and success is an exceptional coach and team. They guide the elite performers to see situations and challenges in new ways (art), to perfect their craft to the n th degree (science), and to commit to deliberate practice that eliminates performance gaps (grit) and puts the summit within reach.

1

THE ART OF HIGH PERFORMANCE

“What is art but a way of seeing?”

— SAUL BELLOW

“He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”

— LOUIS NIZER

“I adapted an antiquated style and modernized it to something that was efficient. I didn’t know anyone else in the world would be able to use it and I never imagined it would revolutionize the event.”

— DICK FOSBURY

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty, because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”

— STEVE JOBS

Imagine you’d managed to mistakenly find your way into a pasture and had upset the local bull that had proclaimed that grassland to be his. Your primary goal would be to simply run faster than the bull. If you were alone and without help, there would only be one option: run to the fence before the bull reaches you. Let’s assume you got to the barbed wire or electric fence first, but the fence is five feet tall. Could you scale it? What about without touching any part of it with your body? Even with all the adrenaline in the world flowing through your veins, this sounds impossible!

When Dick Fosbury was sixteen years old, he challenged this idea. Now, to be clear, he wasn’t chased by a bull. He wanted to make the Medford High School track team. In Oregon, back in the 1960s, 1.5 meters (approximately five feet) was the minimum qualifying height for the high jump in high school track meets.

Fosbury was a tall, lanky guy. He played basketball and ran track in addition to trying to clear that bar. However, those long legs and arms so advantageous in other sports were a bit of a liability while trying to defy gravity by going over a high bar.

There are not many rules for performing the jump. You must not dislodge the bar, and you must take off on one foot. Thus, methods to clear the bar proliferated over the years. The dominant techniques of the time had colorful names, such as the western roll, upright scissors, eastern cut-off, and straddle method. Each was a time-tested, standard method of accomplishing this relatively unnatural task. However, Fosbury had little success with any of the traditional ways. He could have spent years studying and perfecting one of the methods that wasn’t ideal for his body and ability. He could have stayed well into the night, practicing over and over again each day until he finally improved. Or, he could experiment with getting over that bar in a new way. That is exactly what he did.

Starting in 1964, Fosbury started using his own technique: head first and backwards. Many of his coaches, teammates, and local sports media were quick to ridicule—but that did not last for long. As he perfected his technique, Fosbury began to win, breaking long-standing high school records. He continued to perfect his style while at Oregon State University, despite his coach’s encouragement to use a more traditional style during meets. However, once Fosbury returned to his preferred method for clearing the bar, he broke collegiate records. Not only did his collegiate coach become a believer, but he then taught Fosbury’s method to others.

By 1968, Fosbury had gained national attention, become the country’s No. 1 college high jumper, and qualified for the US Olympic team. He continued to find ways to perfect his unique technique, which became widely known by the name we use today: the Fosbury Flop. In the end, his innovative streak, quest for perfection, and hard work paid off. Fosbury won the gold medal in the high jump with a mark of 7 feet 4¼ inches, a new Olympic and American record. Since then, the flop has become the dominant method used in the event. One day, there might be a new innovation that changes how high jumpers soar over the bar, but for now, the art of high performance as demonstrated by Dick Fosbury is the standard. It took him seeing things in a new way to make it possible.

What really made his technique feasible? Was Fosbury smarter than everyone else, more creative, or just lucky? Success might have resulted from a combination of these things, but other variables and factors played a role. First was the advent of the modern landing pad, made of soft foam and elevated three feet off the ground. Before the early 1960s, jumpers cushioned their fall by landing in sawdust or wood chips. A high jumper in those days could have tried Fosbury’s technique—once. At that time, the flop was not a replicable approach due to the unforgiving effects of gravity and solid ground.

Second, Fosbury was not built like many other high jumpers. He was tall, long limbed, and generally lanky. Other high jumpers had compact bodies and tended to be built like sprinters with powerful legs. To help him clear the bar, Fosbury’s new approach provided as much crucial time with his center of gravity under the bar as possible.

Third, Fosbury’s coaches allowed him to experiment—partly due to his determination in perfecting his technique. He was working hard and hitting the heights, so why not let him try? All coaches, however, would not have been so accommodating.

When Fosbury first started his unorthodox approach, the head coach at his high school was trying to move him from one traditional technique (the scissor) to the western roll, the approach all of his other athletes were using. However, the coach could see that Fosbury was having troubles, and he saw he had an athlete willing to put in the time for experimentation. This was a critical moment in Fosbury’s evolution. A misguided coaching technique, one that demanded compliance, obedience, or unending repetition, would have stifled Fosbury (and been the end of this story). However, his coach encouraged experimentation, allowing Fosbury to use one technique in practice and a different one during meets. As long as his results improved, Fosbury would be given latitude to try different approaches. Luckily, this latitude continued into Fosbury’s collegiate years. Fosbury had an empathetic and visionary coach at Oregon State, and when he beat the school record in his first meet using the Fosbury Flop, his coach had seen enough. From then on, the flop became Fosbury’s coach’s primary method, which he continued to study and taught to others. Fosbury benefited from exceptional coaching—a partnership, not the authoritarian approach often brought to mind when most think of coaching.¹

Fosbury changed his perspective due to changing conditions of the sport, available technology, and his own particular limitations. This response allowed him to devise a new way of overcoming a common challenge. By adapting and innovating, Fosbury became the best at what he did and set the standard for others to follow.

This is the art of high performance.

Innovation in the high jump, however, did not cease in 1968, nor was it defined solely by Fosbury. While Fosbury kept his hands to his side as he cleared the bar, others stretched out their arms. He ran a “J curve” in his approach, but others utilized a “C curve.” A Canadian athlete named Debbie Brill had even developed a similar technique (the Brill Bend), but she did not win Olympic gold; as a result, her innovation didn’t capture the media’s attention and remained little known. Innovation, we see, never stops when competition is involved. The biggest limiting factors affecting achievement, however, are often found in the competitors’ own minds.

When high performers reach a limit of vision, it is sometimes because they are too close to the problem. Exceptional drive and work ethic have them so focused on performance that seeing things from a different point of view may be difficult.

However, a coach is more detached and able to see their current performance as it compares to past performance, other’s performance, and upcoming environmental changes. Sometimes the performer is the innovator; sometimes the coach has the new approach.

In most cases, the partnership between performer and coach changes an idea or aspiration into action and technique that can be perfected.

In case you were wondering, the new minimum qualifying height for the high jump at Fosbury’s high school is now six feet.² His art is now everyone else’s science.

WHAT IS ART, AND HOW DOES IT RELATE TO HIGH PERFORMERS AND HIGH-PERFORMANCE COACHING?

Ask a hundred people to define the word art, and you will get almost as many definitions. In fact, the phrase “I know it when I see it” is part of American cultural lexicon based on an interesting case, Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), decided by the U.S. Supreme Court (review at your own risk).³

Art is a challenging concept to define, and it is made more complex depending on who’s defining it. A non-artist may define it as a creation such as a picture, sculpture, or musical composition. A philosopher may define it as the process of creation itself. Artists may bristle at the thought of anyone trying to constrain the concept into a simple definition that trivializes creation, production, and the greater meaning of expression.

Art is also very dependent on the eye, ear, or mind of the beholder. To some people, the song “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses revolutionized the music scene. To lovers of classical music, or for example, Panamanian dictator General Manuel Noriega (who was chased out of an embassy after ten days of hearing it at deafening levels⁴), the song is garbage.

One definition of art could be “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.” In this context, the definition does not require a person to be an artist as a profession in their particular area of influence. It simply requires someone (under the same conditions, resources, and constraints governing others) to see things in new ways and be able to produce something original that creates a new source of direction, value, or advantage for themselves and others. For the purposes of this book, however, we need a solid definition, and so we do our best to encapsulate it into a useable concept (though surely we’ll offend many a scholar or artist in the process):

Creation or construction of an innovative product, process, idea, or application through seeing things in new ways and from new perspectives to yield unique results for appreciation, adaptation, or advancement.

Let’s break down those words and concepts into some manageable pieces for discussion.

First, “creation and construction” are meant to imply action. While the word art might be sometimes used as a noun when considering the results of creativity, we refer to art as a verb, designating the act of creativity.

Second, this action must produce something. The results might be a new idea, one that influences how we look at things or address everyday situations. It might be new ways to use common tools, components, and resources in business or to tackle challenges. Perhaps the action simply changes the order of steps or approach to problem solving. Of course, what is produced can also be something tangible, like a painting, piece of music, or technological gadget.

Third, and critical, is the idea that art sees things in new ways and from new perspectives. Art is most often the result of an individual or group having an “Aha!” moment once they are removed from an issue and consider someone’s else’s point of view or a different angle without self-imposed limitations (i.e., how things have been done in the past). From great painters to athletes and entrepreneurs, this change is a key part of creativity that liberates the creator’s ability to produce something new.

Fourth, the result must be unique. Specific variations might be very slight, but art is not something that is mass reproduced. While that might make those who find comfort in numbers and e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Introduction
• Prologue: The Potato King of Mars and the Rise of Maverick
• 1. The Art of High Performance
• 2. The Science of High Performance
• 3. The Grit of High Performance
• 4. The Functional Reserve
• 5. Holding a Whistle Does Not Make You a Coach
• 6. The Octane HighPer Coaching Model
• 7. Reflective Coaching
• 8. Fundamentals and Situational Planning
• 9. Simulation and War Games
• 10. Continuous Improvement
• 11. High-Performance Teams, Tribes, and Communities
• 12. High-Performance Culture Starts at the Top
• 13. The Way to Win
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Notes
• About the Authors