“In basketball, the team that takes the most shots usually wins.”  – Coach Doc Rivers, Los Angeles Clippers.

I’ve been a basketball fan most of my life and have never thought about the game in these terms. Really, I don’t even know if it is true. But, it jolted me to consider the game plan differently.

Actually, it supports much of what I believe about the game.  If you have the ball, you want to keep it until you get a shot off. To lose it before you shoot is called a turnover. So, you want to avoid turnovers.  Whenever a shot is missed, the team that rebounds it has an opportunity for the next shot. So, being the team that gets the most rebounds is important.

In fact, if you can get the most rebounds, how well you shoot isn’t as important.  If you can defend fiercely and cause a team to lose the ball before they can get a shot off, you get the most shots.  You get the drift. You defend, you rebound, you protect the ball. It all leads to getting the most shots.

We take shots in business as well. We can make more sales calls than our opposition. The more calls we make, the sooner we get a yes.

We can experiment with our processes more often. The more we experiment, the more we discover. The more we discover, the more we refine processes which yield better results.

We can concentrate on every shot we get to serve our customers with the goal of converting each one to gain a positive in our financial and emotional bank account.

Rivers points out that you win by scoring. You score if you shoot more. You shoot more if you remain focused on that goal.

Are you squandering chances to shoot at work?