Over the Wires and Into the Lake!

How do you measure success?

Not just your KPI or your OKR* or whatever else appears on your performance dashboard at work.

Just you, personally.

How do you know when you’ve done something good, something special?

I was thinking of this the other day. Maybe because the days are shorter and summer has turned to fall.

When I was kid, my friends and I played a lot of baseball. Every day, all summer long.

We had two of what you might call “sandlot baseball” fields: one, a retention area surrounded by three cul-de-sacs and a fairly busy street and two, an unused swathe of grass next to a neighborhood tennis court.

For the first field, a home run was a ball that sailed over telephone wires that lined the street bordering our field.

Over the wires! Home run!

For the second field, a home run was one that flew into a lake. It had to fly in… if it rolled in, it was just a double. And we called it a lake, but it was just a pond.

Into the lake! Home run!

So many wonderful summer days with Rob, Bill, Billy, Willie, Captain Al, sometimes Al’s brother Joey, Steve, the other Steve, Ralph, Big Mike, Big Dave, and me (even though I was big, I wasn’t Big Dave, I was Doctor Dave… and now I notice that our names were all pretty similar).

Decades later, I’m still close to Rob (check out our podcast, “Marketing vs Sales”!) but none of the others.

And I’ll still think “Over the Wires!” and “Into the Lake!” when something goes well.

How about you? What favorite memories remind you that you’ve still got it… whatever “it” may be?

See you tomorrow!

(*That’s Key Performance Indicator and Objective-Key Performance Indicator)