Trying advice

I am losing count of the number of times people quote Yoda’s advice: “do, or do not, there is no try”. We are in danger that this unhelpful phrase will come to define our approach to business in this decade.

I will not stoop to ad hominem attacks on Yoda (beyond pointing out that he is FICTIONAL. He’s a PUPPET. Actually, given that he was voiced and operated by Frank Oz, he sort of counts as a MUPPET. And if he’s so smart, how come SPEAK PROPERLY HE CAN’T?)

Instead, I’d like to go to the heart of his statement: there is no try. This is blatant nonsense. Anything worth doing well requires us to try. It’s called practice.

Yoda, my little grey-green friend (and anyone quoting him): may I strongly recommend a book called “Bounce” by Matthew Syed? He elaborates on the theory that real excellence requires ten thousand hours of practice. As a former UK table tennis champion, he knows what he’s writing about.

Syed is a proponent of “purposeful practice”. If you or your organisation want to become good at something, then practice practice practice. This could include all sorts of things – cold calling, delegating, prototyping, negotiating – basically anything non-linear.

The conditions for good purposeful practice are:

• be very clear about what you want to achieve
• break it down into chunks of individual activity
• choose a chunk that stretches you
• try it and see what happens
• adjust and repeat
• adjust and repeat
• adjust and repeat

So an amateur golfer will go round a course, hitting the ball about 80 times, and call it practice.

But a pro will try a specific shot, and try it many times, each time noticing the result (maybe with the help of a caddy or video), and adjusting some of the inputs – club, aim, grip, stance, swing. This is purposeful practice.

I’ve followed this approach myself with a client, with great results. Click here to find out how.

It’s worth trying.

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P.S. It is interesting to note that the Star Wars Databank describes Yoda as being of “a species unknown”. This is Yoda-speak for “an unknown species”. Once you start speaking Yoda, stop you can’t.