Was listening to an interview yesterday my buddy did yesterday w former MLB slugger, Alex Rodriguez.
He started sharing a story abt how in his time w the Yankees, he was mired in a huge slump: many at-bats in a row, no hits, no HRs. It was the middle of his career, & his manager was a guy the players often referred to as “The Godfather,” Joe Torre.
Joe saw that ARod was struggling & so one day in batting practice before a game, Torre motioned to him, he came over, & the manager said: “Young man…I’m going to tell you what I told Dale Murphy when I was w him on the Braves: Take care of the small things & big things can happen.”
Later that nt, ARod was up at the plate. He swung hard at the 1st pitch & missed by a lot, trying to belt it over the fence. He then looked back in the dugout, & Torre made a motion to him: his hands first stretched out wide, & then brought together in a more narrow way. On the next pitch, ARod focused on nothing but his leg pivot, specifically, & the angle & force that was ideal for torque to put full power into a swing. That next pitch found its way into the left-center field bleachers, a big HR.
ARod, mid slump, w the help of Torre, switched his focus from the end result, to the details, & that led to big things happening.
The serendipity of when I come across things is pretty huge. I don’t take it for granted. This video my friend shared of the interview, was posted yesterday, on Bell Let’s Talk Day. You might ask why then, these 2 things are related.
The devil is in the details. I love that there’s a day where ppl talk abt MH – even if the campaign originated in one country, Canada, it’s been running for 11 yrs now. It’s gained momentum beyond Canada. Yesterday there were over 150 mill impression generated on SM w the now popular hashtag. And yet, the big pic…we are still mired in a MH & suicide crisis, globally. Rates amongst the highest (in some age groups THE highest) they’ve ever been.
So as Theo often reminds us “We have the greatest awareness in the history of our planet yet rates highest in the history of our planet…lthe msgs aren’t working.”
Could do a whole post on the Bell Let’s Talk campaign. But will save that for another time. On a surface level, the campaign asks ppl to “talk” – but what about? So many posts just w the hash tag. So many just w a disorder label. Why isn’t it “Let’s Talk About Our Stuff.” Why don’t we give direction? Is it bc it’s a telecommunications campaign? And even marketing pieces where the first two instructions as to what to do are: 1) make a call today, 2) send a text today. Two things that have zero to do w the hashtag. Maybe they’re indirectly saying, that’s how you “talk about this”?? I’m not here to bash a corporate campaign. But I am here to critique that we have to pay attention to the small things, to make the big things happen. Not just w the Bell campaign, w all MH campaigns.
