Thoughts.

The implications of this alone are significant, but he goes a step farther and talks about changing said programming–with Korean Air, they changed the culture of communication in the cockpit by enforcing English use, as the Korean they had defaulted previously (which, much like Japanese, has in-built status considerations for speech) was encouraging imbalanced power dynamics where the younger copilot would not question the elder, even if he knew the other was in the wrong (which led to a spat of preventable plane crashes back in the ’90s and before).

How do you change an ultimate team’s culture? Specifically, how do you create a culture of work (and, eventually, success), from a team culture that is more laid back? Certainly a large part of it is eliminating the vestiges of the anti-work culture, and this is perhaps the most difficult feat to accomplish. Generally, when you’re talking about getting rid of the slacker (or taking the slacker out of the player) you’re talking about potentially butting heads with your peers, your friends, your teammates. For this reason, I’m inclined to think this change is not one that is easily done overnight–instead, it’s a process that can take many years to achieve fully.

Plant the seed of hard work and perseverance in the young, impressionable minds. Get a batch of bright-eyed freshmen to buy into the culture of work, and while you might not see immediate payoff, perhaps when they’re seniors they’ll have worked hard enough to take a team to nationals. (Perhaps not). Making an impression takes a strong example–as tough as it may be to get, you need strong, hard-working leadership. It may not be possible to get everyone, but if you have an established core of hard-working veterans, that can and will resonate with young players who may be searching for just this outlet. Of particular importance is a team’s senior leadership–outside of a team’s captains, it’s these guys, the vets of the vets, that set the tone, and make the biggest impression on your freshmen.

The goal is to reach a tipping point with your hard workers where so many people are working so hard, the guys on the fringe will have no choice but to fall in line (or fall by the wayside).

It’s not easy. In particular, players need to see payoff for their hard work–obviously winning more games is a plus, but a big win like a strong showing at regionals (or perhaps just making regionals–your goal should be specific to your team’s situation) will go a long way towards creating a culture of success. Once players see that hard work leads to more success, it will become easier and easier to ask that of your teammates going forwards.

At least, this is what I think (and have seen). I think the biggest legacy any group of seniors can leave is the impression they make on their underclassmen. You can’t do it all yourself–you have to create a culture, a team system, that continually breeds success. Anyone can contend for a year–it’s making a Program that really takes work.

In this instance: becoming an expert. I’ve heard it said (yet another short snippet I want to attribute to Zip, but can’t verify) that you need to perform a throw 10,000 times in order to master it (e.g., 10,000 forehands), which is perhaps an ultimate paraphrasing of the 10,000 hours rule–for the uninitiated, this states simply that in order to reach an expert level of proficiency at something–ANYTHING–you need to invest about 10,000 hours into experience/practice/whatever you want to call it.

Gladwell hammers this point home with a few examples, perhaps most notably with Bill Gates (his high school had access to computers for programming work before most COLLEGES had anything, allowing him to be one of few with a huge head start on the programming skills progression), and the Beatles (who apparently played a ludicrous number of live, all-night performances in Hamburg, Germany, before they ever hit it big). In both instances, he refers to the times when they were able to gain an exceptional amount of experience in a relatively compressed period of time–for Gates, his high school years; for the Beatles, Hamburg–as crucibles for them reaching the magic 10,000 hour mark.

The connection with ultimate is easy to see here. How do you get your 10,000 hours? There’s a reason growth at the college level was (and is) so explosive–perhaps the best crucible for any aspiring ultimate player out there is to be part of a team in college.

When else can you simply call a friend and be throwing within 10 minutes? When else are you FREE enough to spend all your daylight hours out on the green, tossing back and forth lazily? When else do you have such easy frequency of practice, tournament, game experience? (you might counter with “high school” here, and that’s fair).

I’m not saying you can get to 10,000 hours in 4 years. But compared to, say, club ultimate, where practices are pretty infrequent and players generally have full-time jobs and no throwing buddies a stone’s throw away, college is a time you absolutely MUST seize if you want to go from a player to a baller on the ultimate field.

Obviously the idea extends beyond simply preparing for ultimate (academics have a similar crucible in college and grad school if you’re willing to embrace your subject matter, for instance), but this is, after all, an ultimate blog.

If you’re still in college, or better yet, yet to arrive at one, make sure you make the most of your time there. You never know when you might spend your following year working full-time in a country where the majority of people who do know frisbee (and there aren’t that many in the Japanese countryside) think, “with a dog?” and opportunity to learn is less. Don’t take your chances for granted.

*I definitely recommend the book. If you’ve read his other works, he takes more of the wide-lens, population-based approach that typified The Tipping Point, but still has his usual style of fleshing out larger stories with specific incidents. Especially if you’re still young and wondering about what you might want to do with yourself in the future, this book might give you a better idea of what you’ve got and how you might identify opportunities when you meet them. As an ultimate player with an interest in psychology, I’d also recommend his book Blink, which explores decision-making, specifically the unconscious variety (real-time decision making on the field, anyone?).