<font color=red>ON THE ROAD</font> The Playmaker in All of Us

To achieve success, become a playmaker.

Keynote speaker Brian Holloway made this plain and simple to a packed Grand Ballroom Nov. 2 at the Green Industry Expo in Columbus, Ohio. Using a mix of pro football musings, humorous personal stories and in-your-face management philosophy, Holloway imparted his unique brand of wisdom to encourage attendees to achieve greater results.

“In order to win today we need to be focused on what we can do as leaders and playmakers to take our business to the next level,” he says.

Holloway is no stranger to playmakers. He himself was captain of the 1985 AFC Championship New England Patriots team and during professional football career played alongside and against some of the NFL’s greatest playmakers such as Walter Payton, Joe Montana, Reggie White and John Elway.

In the NFL, according to Holloway, battles are played out on a 100 yard field. And at the start of the game, each team, evenly matched, lines up their players to face off against one another.

“But something happens on one side of the field and by the end of the game both teams are not the same product,” Holloway says. “Someone was able to find a way to give more. To win you have to invent and create new ways to win.”

And a number of parallels exist between success in business and success on the football field. One of the most important, according to Holloway, is fostering a group of passionate individuals and modeling them into a cohesive team of winners.

As such, success ultimately lies the team’s makeup and its organizational excellence. Like in football, Holloway explains there are for different part to any business team.

There are those members who share the same values, share the same goals and make money. These individuals, Holloway says, are the group’s core individuals, the playmakers.

“As leaders we must challenge them and marry them with new ideas to create new ways of thinking,” he says.
Next, according to Holloway, there are members who share the same values, share the same goals but don’t make the money. These are people who need training and development.

“Inside them lay the ideas to unlock the problems that will arise six months from now,” Holloway says.
Another group, Holloway says, are those individuals who don’t share the values, don’t share the same goals and don’t make the money.

“This is what’s called an ‘easy decision,’” Holloway says of these individuals. “You have to love them enough to let them go. It’s exactly what they need to snap them out of their trance. If you can’t make this decision you’re not running a business, you’re running a recovery center.”

The final group, and perhaps the most difficult members to manage on any team, is made up of individuals who don’t share the same values, don’t share the same goals, but make money.

“This group has a secret society,” Holloway says. “When you’re not there, they’re with the other members of the team and asking them ‘What are we really going to do?’” If we don’t get that handled, it’s not your team and it’s not your business. It’s theirs.”

A successful leader and a playmaker is the catalyst that keeps everyone else on the team together, Holloways says.

“It starts with the team, it starts with a nucleus, it starts with you as a playmaker,” he says. “You must make a difference everyday in your jobs, with your clients and at home.”