Baseball legend shares his motivators for success with IT service management crowd.
Cal Ripken, Jr. delivers keynote address about incorporating perseverance, consistency and integrity in daily tasks at itSMFusion 2007 conference in Charlotte, N.C.
A room full of IT professionals shared a common lament Tuesday as a keynote address delivered by Cal Ripken, Jr. had them all wondering how life would be if IT systems and processes worked as hard, long and well as the baseball legend.
The Hall of Famer, who earned the nickname Iron Man for playing 2,632 consecutive games, delivered his keynote to nearly 2,000 IT management professionals at the ITSMF USA Fusion 2007 conference in Charlotte, N.C. While Ripken didn’t have IT-related anecdotes, he attributed his long and successful career in baseball to taking a handful of steps each day that anyone in IT could do. Ripken’s recently published book, “Get in the Game: 8 Elements of Perseverance That Make the Difference” served as the basis for his speech that touched on issues IT managers face.
The industry organization and its conference target IT professionals working to implement long-term IT process re-engineering and service management policies across multiple systems, domains and devices. The challenge most often cited with such IT improvement efforts is changing people’s minds about how to do their jobs. Ripken, whose accomplishments are too many to list here, may have convinced a few attendees that the most important change they could make is in their attitude.
Here are the key elements Ripken said helped him achieve success in baseball and beyond.
1. The right approach
For Ripken, the right approach to his job with the Baltimore Orioles was a pure and honest one. Ripken said he attacked each day and the challenges it represented head-on, despite whatever issues he may be experiencing. And he worked to meet the expectations of managers regardless of their requests.
He referred to common conditions in his industry such as Randy Johnson-itis or Pedro Martinez-itis, in which for no stated reason a player cannot play in a game because of an unspecified illness to illustrate his point. For Ripken, the illness could be easily caused by pressure to perform and fear of disappointing management, the media and most important, the public.
“My job was to come ready to play and to put myself in the hands of my manager. It was not my job to make those decisions,” he said.
2. A strong will to succeed.
This element is part genetic and part learned, Ripken said, but in order to succeed he had to have a fire burning within and a strong desire to meet his goals. While he thinks this drive is hard-wired into some people, he said he learned that it’s not always about having that drive, it’s about putting it to use to make positive changes.
“In my early days, I would throw tantrums when the game didn’t go my way,” Ripken recalled for attendees. That is, until his mother asked him the point of the outbursts and advised him to turn what seemed to be a negative into a positive. “I realized it was a power source to tap into and use it to my advantage.”
3. Passion
Simply put, Ripken said everyone has to love what they do for work to truly persevere and achieve the longevity he did with his career.
Ripken learned from his father that “far too many people are working at jobs they don’t love” and to this day said he believes that “passion and love for what you do is what carries us through and makes it worthwhile.”
He recalled a year in which his team lost the first 21 games of the season and how badly it felt to lose all the games from the start of the season. But his love for the game kept him coming back and in the next year — he and nearly all his teammates — returned for a season that led them to compete for the pennant.
“Money is a nice thing, but it doesn’t bypass happiness or problems,” he said. “You’ve got to love what you do.”
4. Competitive
Another trait that kept Ripken moving forward in his career was a healthy external and internal competitive attitude.
He listed several types of competition: the “collective drive to beat the Yankees” his team shared; the face-off with young players itching to move him out of his shortstop position; and the internal goals he set for himself to remain driven and avoid complacency.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Ripken said. “I would give younger players the benefit of my experience and my advice, but if someone is watching, I’d make sure they saw the player’s potential but also that he’s no Ripken.”
5. Consistent
Ripken, whose record boasts numerous All-Star awards, says it’s not the highlights on ESPN that make a successful career.
“You can’t always get the game-winning catch or make the game-winning hit. It’s everything you do in between that defines your value,” he said.
For instance, when Ripken played shortstop for the Orioles while Ben McDonald pitched he was able to call the pitches to the catcher and help McDonald deliver the right pitch to the players. That ability, which was not required of him, made Ripken irreplaceable in some games when maybe he wasn’t doing as well as he could with hitting or fielding.
“All the ways you can make contributions on a daily basis define your value,” he said.
6. Conviction
Sometimes confused with stubbornness, Ripken said conviction requires a thick skin and an ability to stand up for your beliefs when you know you are right. He added the ability to “see things through to the end” to his definition of conviction, a trait he learned from his father.
7. Strength
Ripken said it took him retiring from baseball to realize the need to maintain both physical and mental strength to achieve goals.
He said he realized while playing baseball he had to keep his body in a certain physical condition and prepare his mind by watching tapes and understanding how teams and players attacked the game. But when he moved out of athletics and into a more business-oriented career, he mistakenly fell short on maintaining his physical health which had a negative impact on his mental well-being.
“I quickly gained weight, I had no energy and was never more tired than I had been in my entire life,” Ripken explained. “You can’t forget about yourself, taking care of your physical and mental health, to reduce stress and keep driving you forward.”
8. The ability to manage life.
Throughout his career, Ripken said the way he managed relationships in his life, both professional and personal, helped keep his momentum going forward.
For instance, when new management would take over the team, Ripken would go to the manager, congratulate him on his new position, welcome him to the organization and communicate to him how Ripken envisioned, say, his spring training schedule. By doing that, Ripken said he simplified the manager’s job of dealing with Ripken’s schedule and kept himself happy with his schedule, while also meeting the manager’s pre-set expectations.
“I encourage others to take this level of control with their managers, without being combative. I helped my managers better manage me and they appreciated,” he said.
