The tension on Sunday night was palpable. Two gladiators trading blows. Weaker men wilting to the wayside. The crowds roaring at every thrust and parry as the two strongest men survived on the largest stage. They didn’t thrive, they survived. The conditions were brutal. The pressure was enormous. The stakes were at their pinnacle.
Distinguishable dismay permeated the crowd when each hero faltered. Shot by shot they faded in the limelight until only two remained. The greatest and most recognizable of the gladiators reached a crossroads. Attack and risk being exposed or defend and apply a surgical strike on his target. Minutes felt like hours as he weighed this decision. In the end, Rory McIlroy decided not to go for the green on the 15th hole in the final round of the US Open. He elected to layup, and it cost him the major title he had been seeking for the past nine years.
Rory’s fatal flaw wasn’t the errant tee shot on fifteen. No, it was that he didn’t listen to the advice I gave him a week earlier. No, he didn’t listen to me – instead he tried to get his information from YouTube.
Welcome to Swimming in the Flood; a podcast where we develop the resilient leader’s mindset by navigating difficult currents in business. My name is Trent Theroux.
Last weekend, I was sitting at a bar in Toronto, Canada the night before an event. A couple barstools down was the number three ranked golfer in the world, and one of my personal favorites, Rory McIlroy. Rory just completed the final round at the Canadian Open with a disappointing one over par and was enjoying a beer. (I was having a tequila and soda with lime…just to complete the picture). I was sneaking quick glances at Rory while I enjoyed my drink. Gosh, I felt like I was in sixth grade again making eyes to my heartthrob Sheila Fay. I didn’t want to bother Rory. Truthfully, I’m much too important of a person to start up a conversation with him. Rory was sipping his beer and watching YouTube videos of a golf course. My eyeballs were strained as I tried to glimpse what course he was watching on his phone. I could only imagine that they were from the Los Angeles Country Club where he would be playing the US Open the coming week.
Telepathically, I was trying to communicate to Rory to be aggressive on every par five. Last year, he lost the British Open because he took a passive strategy on the longer holes. I was using every brain cell that I could to telepathically communicate to go for it. Well, every brain cell that wasn’t managing the onslaught of tequila. Go for it, Rory. Go for every par five. Well, you know the outcome. Rory chose to lay up. He made bogey on the hole and lost the tournament by one stroke.
What surprised me most was that Rory was learning the course by watching YouTube. The Los Angeles Country Club does not allow visitors or, sometimes, their members, to play. It is as exclusive as a Taylor Swift front row seat bought through Ticketmaster. It is tough to get on. Four-time major champion Rory McIlroy had never seen the course before. That sounds like a very challenging position to compete from.
According to CIO Magazine, business intelligence is a set of strategies and technologies enterprises use to analyze business information and transform it into actionable insights that inform strategic and tactical business decisions. Gathering the right business intelligence can help provide holistic views of business operations, giving leaders the ability to benchmark results against larger organizational goals and identify areas of opportunity.
One of the earliest recorded uses of business intelligence was from 1865. Sir Henry Furnese gained profit by receiving and acting upon information about his environment, prior to his competitors. In this instance, Furnese was taking battlefield results and using it to buy and sell futures contracts in foreign markets. Brilliant, right?
I am now going to give you my unscientific, non-peer reviewed, resilient leader theory on vanquishing grief. Are you ready? Got your pencils out? Here’s it is. Walk The Course. You heard it. Walk The Course.
Folks, thank you for listening to Swimming in the Flood. Resilient leaders face challenging currents, and it is tough navigating, but with one tack or another we can get there together.