Success Means Practicing Right So You Can’t Get It Wrong

Practice makes perfect … not true. You have to add one word … Perfect practice makes perfect.

I wish that I had coined that phrase, but I didn’t. Legendary pro football coach Vince Lombardi did. Practice something time and time again and, if you don’t know what you are doing, all you are really doing is perfecting errors. You have put a ceiling on how good you can become.

For example, a golfer can go out and play eight days a week. He can practice eight days a week. And if he doesn’t know what he is doing, all he is really doing is perfecting errors — eight days a week.

I have studied the Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic languages and quite frankly, people think I am a heck of a linguist. Actually I am a lot slower learner than most of the people with whom I started my languages classes. But there is one marked difference: I finished. They didn’t.

In Japanese it might take 200 hours. Russian 300 hours. Mandarin (Chinese) 400 hours. But eventually that breakthrough occurs.

It’s kind of like a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps 100 times without a dent in it. And yet on the 101st blow the rock splits in two. And it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before. If you’re not willing to practice — and practice until you get it right — you will never make the 100 blows that make the breakthrough on the 101st.

Talking Points

A perfect example of the above is when my son, David, and I were taking Japanese language lessons from the Berlitz language school in preparation for our four-week trip to Japan. At the time, David was an undergraduate student at Stanford University and right at the peak of his learning curve. I was somewhat over the hill and would not be considered a fast learner. However, it made no difference whatsoever because of my perseverance. Two weeks into the class, David was on page 150 of the text and I was on page 50. By the end of the course, he had learned approximately 35 percent more than I because of his speed and younger brain. To overcome this, I had to spend an extra three weeks of studying to catch up with him. So you see, in the final analysis, we both had the same Japanese vocabulary. I just had to pay a higher price.

Look at the great athletes and musicians. There are no walk-ons at the Super Bowl or Carnegie Hall … or in corporate boardrooms, for that matter. The level of performance in those exalted places is only partially a reflection of talent. There are two other qualities that are indispensable for making it to the top — determination and expert coaching.

Over a lifetime I’ve had numerous coaches to help me develop whatever natural talent I have. I’ve had coaches for public speaking, writing, ideas/creativity, foreign languages, running marathons, and many others.

Competitive Instincts

Whatever it is you do, you can be better at it if you just keep on learning. I certainly have not mastered the art of making envelopes, selling envelopes or developing new envelopes.

The minute I persuade myself that I have learned all there is to learn about a subject and can relax, that’s the moment my competition will hand me my head and slam me into the pavement. The annals of business are filled with stories of companies that thought they had it made and could milk their enterprises as cash cows without having to bother about improving their products or services. It’s amazing how fast they found their markets disappearing.

Apply this lesson to your own business. Hire people who are still learning, people who feel that learning is a lifelong process, either in the classroom, the office or at home. Show them you want them to grow — and your business will grow too.

I will never ever forget one of my visits to Moscow where I spotted a help-wanted sign that translated: “Inexperience Wanted!” In short, they didn’t want anyone that had been practicing bad habits. They wanted a new and fresh employee that they could train properly.

Mackay’s Moral: All the world’s a stage, and most of us need more rehearsals.

Harvey Mackay is president of Mackay Envelope Corp. and a nationally syndicated columnist.