Mike Eruzione, Captain of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team
I recently attended a customer appreciation event hosted by Cisco at the Sports Museum of America in Lower Manhattan. The panel discussion featured a number of executives of both Cisco and financial services companies that use Cisco networking solutions discussing the evolution of social media. The eye-opener for me was research cited by Carlos Dominguez, SVP of Cisco, who reported that the Butler Group found that time spent searching for information wastes 10% of an employee’s salary. In Prepare for the Worst, Plan for the Best: Disaster Preparedness and Recovery for Small Businesses (Wiley, second edition, 2008), I reported that putting in place a version control and file naming system saved me from wasting significant time in search and retrieval exercises. In fact, I put the system in place to mitigate against everyday disasters, such as human errors, but it had an immediate payoff in terms of improved efficiency.
Cisco and Social Networking
The highlight of the evening was the keynote address from Mike Eruzione, the Captain of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team, often referred to as the “miracle on ice”. His optimism and enthusiasm were infectious. He drew many parallels between the economic and political climate in 1980 and the one we are experiencing today. His remarks focused on the miracle of teamwork, of which social networking is a part, which surely represents our more positive future to build from our current difficulties. He noted that in sports, as in business, everyone judges you on the result, whether it is a gold medal or a profitable quarter.
Social Networking
You are not evaluated on the effort you put into achieving that result. Eruzione was an inspiring speaker and what I most appreciated about his remarks was his love of the game; he loved the intrinsic rewards of playing hockey, he did not appear to be motivated by the extrinsic rewards of gold medals or fame. So it is with entrepreneurs; it is an inner-directed game for the sheer joy of it.