Keep it Simple
Approx 3 min read
Did you know the backspin on a golf ball hit with a wedge exceeds the RPMs of my GT350? My Shelby redlines at 8,250 revolutions per minute. The backspin on a wedge hit can reach over 10,000 RPMs! Furthermore, a 110-mph swing can generate a 150mph ball speed, or the equivalent power of a .22 rifle shot. The face of a golf club only meets the golf ball for 1/200th of a second. The grooves on the face of the club grip the ball in that minuscule time and create the spin rate you need for that club/ball combination. Low spin (think driver) typically leads towards more distance. Iron play generates more spin and more precision and, for a good golfer, more control.
Golf is one of those sports that gained immense popularity because of its genius. The game has all the elements to challenge you, frustrate you, and invigorate you. Golf is far more complex than simple; talk to any golfer and they’ll tell you. And yet, to win, or even become a decent player, keeping it simple is exactly what you need to do even amid remarkable complexity.
Golf Digest has a special on YouTube where they follow Tiger Woods around as he coaches, guides, and chats with special guests. The two I watched were Dwayne Wade and David Spade. Wade isn’t that good, and one thing Tiger kept saying to D-Wade was to “keep it simple.” Tiger likes to talk about the feel and his connection to the next shot more than he talks about the actual physics of the game. His advice recalled a book I’m reading called, Golf’s Sacred Journey, where some of the key points of instruction were balance, rhythm, and patience. In essence, stop overthinking the physics and keep it simple.
An example of how overthinking and complicating things can dink up your game is Bryson DeChambeau. Bryson is a pro golfer who remade his body over the last year to generate enough strength to essentially overpower courses by applying the law of motion where force equals mass times acceleration. He tweaks and tweaks, searching for perfection all the while overcomplicating an already complicated game. Unfortunately, he’s not improving but regressing. If I had the opportunity to coach Bryson, I’d tell him to relax and simplify everything in his control. The elements of golf out of his control are tough enough.
Business, like golf, is complex. To find consistent success, leaders must simplify and avoid overcomplicating the aspects of the business in their control. Business growth naturally creates elements of chaos and complication. It’s like in golf: The bigger the stick, the more complicated it is to hit. Most of us hackers try to force fix our swings by making sweeping adjustments. In the process, we only make matters worse – the self-licking ice cream cone concept. We over think and mess up, then try to fix it and make things more worse. Our tendency is to over-correct our errors. Have you ever yanked a ball way to the left, then thought about it until the next hole, and then fired one way to the right? It’s because we overcomplicated the game and lost our balance, rhythm, and patience. Our natural inclination is to overcorrect rather than focus on the one issue in front of us. We let the last hit be a distraction for the next hit and didn’t “clear the mechanism.” You can only play golf one swing at a time.
There are a lot of parallels between golf and business. A guy like Bryson focuses on details that he can’t control rather than simplifying the details he can control. I recommend avoiding overthinking and over-complicating an already complicated environment. Trust me, the business world is tough enough and doesn’t need our help to make it more so. Keeping things simple is something I’ve had to work on, and I still do. I remind myself that one simple adjustment can make a massive difference. This is true in both the golf swing and business.
Businesses do well and grow when they do a lot of little things very well. That success repeats when they prevent growth from overcomplicating their business. They simplify the messaging, desired outcomes, processes, and systems while drilling into specific priorities. We had a guest speaker recently who said, “What is one thing, that if it got better makes the biggest impact.” For my golf swing, that one thing was my backswing. What is it for your business or job? How can you keep it simple?
