Everybody’s Business

A Game of Inches:

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES IN 2022

It’s several weeks into 2022 and I still don’t know how to feel about this new year. At the start of 2021, I felt optimistic, and that turned out to be a pretty wild ride. It’s difficult to predict what lies ahead during the next several months.

Perhaps, with new medications available, COVID-19 will begin to dissipate, more workers will return to their jobs and the economy will become more robust (read about the future of e-commerce on page 20). Or, if more challenges arise, we might be left slogging slowly through another cumbersome year. Although I’m unsure of what hiccups lie ahead, I’m trying to remain cautiously optimistic.

Searching for ways to maintain a positive outlook for the year ahead, I’m reminded of the 1999 football movie, “Any Given Sunday.” In a pivotal scene, the coach, played by Al Pacino, tells the team that the upcoming game will be the “biggest battle of their professional lives.” He says they can either play as a team or continue with their divisiveness, “Now either we heal as a team or we’re gonna crumble.”

While relevant to today’s world, it’s not the “let’s get along” speech that sticks with me two decades later. It’s the part about inches. Pacino says, “You

find out life’s this game of inches. So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small — I mean one-half a step too late, or too early, and you don’t quite make it. One-half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it.” He urges his team to win the game by taking it one inch at a time. “On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw ON THIS TEAM, with our fingernails

WE FIGHT FOR for that inch because THAT INCH. ON we know when we add up all those inches

THIS TEAM, that’s gonna make the

WE TEAR (expletive) difference between winning and OURSELVES AND losing,” Pacino says. EVERYONE ELSE Basically, he’s telling his team to take the AROUND US TO game one play at a PIECES FOR THAT time, one tackle at a time and one down at a INCH. time, as a team. That’s ~AL PACINO something I saw a lot of at tradeshows in 2021; industry friends reaching out to one another, helping out, working together to push through these challenges. That’s a pretty appropriate way to approach 2022, I think; one day at a time, rolling with the punches, working as a team. Let’s keep that going in 2022.

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