Joe DiMaggio was a Major League Baseball player with the New York Yankees from 1936 to 1951. He played with the Yankees for his entire 13-year career in the big leagues. Most notably, DiMaggio still holds the record for most consecutive games with a hit (56.)
Beyond the baseball almanac, “Joltin’ Joe” has many lessons he can teach us away from the baseball field. There is one specific quote that still holds true to this day for many business professionals.
When asked why he hustled on plays that have little effect on the outcome of a game or on his team’s standings in the league, Joe responded by saying, “because there’s always some kid who may be seeing me for the first time. I owe him my best.”
The MLB season is long. There are 162 games in the regular season that stretches from April to October. It may be reasonable to assume that sometime within that arduous stretch a player, especially one playing for a losing team, may not always give it his maximum effort.
How often do you find yourself doing that in your business? When things are slow, or when you do not have a lot of important work going on, how often do you find you are not giving it your best effort?
Now imagine that when that professional baseball player did not give his maximum effort, it was the first time a young boy playing Little League came to watch a Major League Baseball game with his father. Imagine if that little boy saw the professional player not give his maximum effort. Maybe he would assume it would be OK for him not to give his best effort whenever he played baseball. Even more so, maybe the father might never take his son to another baseball game because he was not impressed by the product on the field.
The business lesson to be learned from Joe DiMaggio is simple: always do your best because you never know who is watching. It is easy to be on your best behavior or perform at your best when you know that all eyes are upon you and your every outcome will be judged. However, what do you do in your business when you think nobody is watching you? How do your actions change between these two scenarios?
Real professionals know that they must give their maximum effort all of the time. If they were not giving their best effort, could they really call themselves a professional?
The higher the level of performance required from that professional, the more is expected of that person. When more is expected from you, typically more responsibility is given to you as well. And when more responsibility is given to you, you have the opportunity to promote change, carve new paths, and allow the others around you to grow.
To get to this level in your business life, you must show that you are a professional. You cannot show that you are a professional until you have proven that you will give your maximum effort all the time, even when you think no one is looking at you. Joe DiMaggio knew that the only way to conduct himself on the field was to always play his best. How often are you always playing your best?
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