There’s No Win in That Game #51
We set a lot of rocks and goals during our EOS sessions. We talk about setting them in terms of being “stretchy and attainable.” This is a challenge at times. You must consider the time of year for the business, your own commitments within your role, the people you need to partner with internally and externally to ensure successful completion, the resources you need and many other factors.
Teams challenge each other as to whether each rock is attainable within the 90-day time frame or not. Many times, there will be questions about whether someone is sandbagging or not. Until this week, no one had questioned the term, so we Googled it and learned the origin:
As Word-Detective.com puts it, the poker term describes: “a player who held off raising the stakes in order to lull the other players into a false sense of security. The poker sandbagger would pounce late in the game, clobbering the other players with his good hand.”
The poker player, in other words, misled his opponents about how good his hand was, until it was time to whip out the figurative “sand bag” and beat those same opponents with it.
Golf and gambling have always gone together, and the poker use of the term eventually allowed it to cross over into golf.
Regardless of the origin, to withhold what you’re capable of in order to look good is not a strategy most teams will benefit long term from. There is healthy tension when declaring something you aren’t certain you can accomplish during a certain time period and then doing it. Once accomplished, you feel proud, excited, and more confident over time as you continue to deliver on those declarations. It’s like archery, as you draw the arrow back and land it directly in the bulls-eye.
When you sandbag, it’s like drawing your arrow back, landing it in the wall and running across the room to draw the bulls-eye around it. There’s no win in that game.