Why I am disgusted at our obsession with Presidents, Messiahs, Saviors. Plans, strategy are just 10% of the battle. Executing the plan is 90%. Here is a vivid, timely example. Tagging people who I know deeply care for the country. Excerpt, with my [comments]. The Deutscher Fussball Bund decided that talent [for the German National team] was too precious to leave unfound, and so in 2002 launched a national program to find ALL of the best talent. Germany’s standardized national program starts teaching the same skills to 6-year-olds all over the country. It’s run in every town by coaches who have to get a license from the DFB. By age 8, as training continues, scouts are watching for the kids good enough for the club programs. This spring I watched my German godson, Paul, play. He’s 8 years old. German kids don’t play herd ball [all herding around the ball]. They play their roles, make clean passes, and pick their shots. None of this is left to chance. And standing on the sidelines—for a league game between 8-year-olds—were professional scouts. Joachim Löw, Germany’s coach, is blessed with a generation of gifted young players — Schürrle (22), Müller (23), Hummels (24), Ozil (24), Götze (20), Kroos (23) … the list goes on. Müller, Kroos, Schürrle. They scored five of Germany’s seven goals on Tuesday. [Götze, who scored the winning goal in the Final, is only 20. They are all talent harvested from the program that started in 2000, when they were ALL less than 10 years old.] As I always tell my people, its ALL about execution. You can do this with football, the economy, education, or disaster readiness. Presidents with only 6-year terms have no chance to execute 14-year programs. So they just steal all the money, or have no vision, or try hard for just 4-5 years. Only we, the people, can really execute for a decade. But many of us cant even be bothered to pay taxes, for example. This is our country, and our only country. If we dont fix it, nobody else will. Our 10-year olds are texting, or sitting under a banana tree instead of a classroom. Thanks to Kathy for the article. The full article: mobile.businessweek/articles/2014-07-08/how-germanys-14-year-soccer-plan-crushed-brazil-in-world-cup
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 05:17:27 +0000
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