One of the inspirations for the name Sixthman originated from the basketball term, The Sixth Man, which refers to the non-starting member of the team who consistently impacts the outcome of the game.
In 1988, I played this role on my High School Basketball team even after getting off to an auspicious start. It was the first game of the year and within a few minutes of me getting into the game, I had already taken 3 shots and missed them all. During a timeout, my coach pulled me aside and said “Andy, your role on this team is not to shoot, it’s to play great defense, grab rebounds, get the ball in our good shooter’s hands and out hustle everyone on the floor.” *see image below
Up until that moment, I was operating under the assumption that everyone was playing the game to get open, shoot & score. From that day on, I focused on those things and was able to help my team win without scoring many points. It was the first time I had heard the concept of playing my role and it has appeared in my life many times since then.
A couple years ago, a good friend’s dad handed be a book called the E-Myth. The author makes a great point about the 3 roles that must be played in every venture for it to work. The Technician, The Manager & The Entrepreneur. The book features story after story about businesses started by people who are only strong at one of these critical roles and either give up or fail before realizing they need the presence of all 3. It doesn’t suggest that all businesses must have at least 3 people in each to play each role. It simply proposes that their must be a presence and balance of all 3 disciplines for a business to thrive.
It is so true in my experience and we all know someone who launched a business based on their strength in one area only to fall down because they were not developed or focused on the other two. Maybe it was the “Idea” guy who did not follow thru on promises or the “Bookkeeper” who was unable to create demand for their services.
When I walked into my son’s room this weekend, I noticed a toy airplane without wings on it and it reminded me of this theory in action. The propeller is the Technician spinning thousands of times per minute creating thrust for the plane to move forward. The cockpit is the Manager monitoring performance and directing action. The wings are the Entrepreneur taking wind and making it travel a longer distance to go over the wing than below the wing resulting in the plane lifting into the air.
For those of you who know me, I am clearly of the Entrepreneur mindset and once I realized that it was ok not be a great technician or manager, I was able to recruit talented people to compliment my strengths.
Are you mainly an entrepreneur, manager or a technician?
-Andy
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