My Learnings From Golf

I recently played a round of golf with a group of friends, which turned into a round like all the others I've played as of late...  A good time with friends but a higher-than-it-needs-to-be stoke count.  You can learn a lot about yourself and others on the golf course, from people's knowledge/view of etiquette to how we deal with challenging situations and/or mistakes.  I remember when I was young I got my dad a hat for father's day that said "I hate golf, I hate golf, nice shot, I love golf."  At the time I had no idea the significance of what that hat said but for all the once/twice a month golfers out there, like myself, it couldn't ring more true.  


I don't know if there's another sport in the world that teaches patience, reflection, focus, hand eye coordination, strategy and the ability to move on (when things don't go well) better than golf.

Confidence - I find that when I stand over the ball with any club other than my driver I have a feeling of confidence that I can make the shot.  With my driver, I worry and wonder where the shot is going to go.  It's no surprise that I'm very inconsistent with my driver and the opposite with every other club.  Off the course this tells me that if you go into a situation with a positive mindset and confidence them you will have a better chance for success after mentally creating the success first.

Focus - When you have a friend chattering at you in the hopes that you won't win the hole, can you block that out?  When you're putting and the people on the next tee box are talking loudly, can you block that out? When you're faced with a pressure putt or drive can you overcome the pressure?  This is all about focus to me, and off the course your ability to focus through the distractions is a great skill to have.

Reflection - After I hit a bad shot I always try to think about what I did that lead to the bad shot.  In golf there are many small things in my swing that can lead to a bad shot, but trying to understand what went wrong helps me to attempt to correct it on my next shot.  On the flip side, when I have a good shot I use that to build my confidence.  Off the course, reflection drives learning and growth.  At the end of each day you should set aside some time to reflect on the day and ask yourself, what went well and what didn't go well?

Get over it - This is the toughest one for most people, definitely myself included.  Take that bad shot and simply move on, get it out of your head and don't let it ruin your next shot.  Off the course, it's hard to let go sometimes, but if you can master that skill then you will find yourself getting to success faster and more often.

Patience - You've got 4-5 hours to work on your game.  If one shot goes bad, there's going to be many more chances to make up for it.  Enjoy the time your spending with friends/family.

I love to golf and will do so as long as I can.  One day, by remembering to focus on the things above and much more practice I will be able to enjoy the game at a level that I'm not at today.  My goal is to be a scratch golfer.

The Ideon Difference

Since joining Ideon back in 2002, I have been witness to, and part of, many scenarios that put Ideon in a category of one, where I know that we are untouchable.  Where our Team Members go above and beyond to selflessly help our customers.  Over this past weekend another one of these outstanding customer service scenarios happened again.

Late on Friday night, one of our sales team members received a panicked call from his customer asking for a delivery of boxes the next day.  We don't normally make deliveries on the weekend and as a result did not have any drivers working that day.  However, I phoned one of our drivers and he offered to come in and make the delivery.  I should point out that he did not have to come in, we have a third party freight company who could have made the delivery for us, but our driver wanted to come in and help.

The production crew that was in that day were great!  They jumped all over getting the order ready for shipment, which is something that is not a part of their regular weekend duties.  Moreover, they stayed in touch with me throughout the day to let me know where everything was at so I could keep the Sales Team Member and customer informed.

Next I got in touch with our head Shipper to ask where the product was located, so the production crew who was in that day could pull the order for the driver), but without me asking he volunteered to come in to work and help the Production Team organize the shipment.

All of this was made easier by the fact the Ideon has embraced technology and I was able to access our production and shipping schedules remotely, enter an order from my iPhone and stay in touch with everyone mentioned above through text messaging.

In the end, the customer got their order well before they needed on Saturday and gave me yet another reason I'm proud to work with the Ideon Team.  I am WOWed!