Best Practices from Jim Valvano

You may or may not have heard of Jim Valvano, but you are more likely to have heard of the V Foundation (cofounded by Jim Valvano) and his quote, “Don’t give up, don’t ever give up.”

If you have not seen his speech at the Espy Awards, it is very inspirational (and emotional) and worth watching. He was much better with his words than I am, so I will not interpret that speech.

Without going into his history too much, he was a college basketball coach. He coached at several schools but won a National Championship at North Carolina State University in 1983. To those that follow the sport it is colloquially known as cutting down the nets. He had a great personality, and as such, he had some unique best practices. They revolved around two things: acting out your successes, this is taking visualizing your success to another level, and focusing only on your current challenges to overcome them.

For the first best practice, he would hold one practice a year where the team would practice physically cutting down the nets. They were practicing what they would do once they won the National Championship. This was done every year, years before the team won a National Championship, years they had losing records, every year. When asked about this practice, his response was that was the goal so they should practice it. Afterall, what is practice for besides preparing for a future action?

Another one of his best practices was his saying, “survive and advance.” This is about overcoming adversity. Getting through the task at hand and moving on to the next one. Future actions do not matter until you get to them. The National Champion NC State team used this motto during their championship season. Their regular season did not go as planned, and they needed to win the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament (including beating the Michael Jordan led University of North Carolina Tarheels) to even make it into the championship tournament. That is a feat hard enough in its own right. But the team was focused and found ways to get multiple comeback victories along the way. They would survive and advance through ten total games to win one of the most exciting tournaments ever.

To follow Jim Valvano’s success, act out your ultimate goals to help make them real, and focus on the task at hand. Proceed only once that obstacle is gone.

Until next time…we are Advoco, make every minute count.

About Colin: Colin Whitney is a Solutions Architect with Advoco and looks forward to helping others achieve their EAM goals. He is a graduate of both the University of Iowa and the University of Georgia. When he is not working he enjoys getting outside and watching college football. Questions? Send Colin an email!

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