VIDEO - For when you're certain you could do the other guy's job better

It can get pretty tempting to see someone struggling a little bit in a job, or maybe doing fine in a job that you just don't see as very difficult or challenging and think to yourself -

'Look at Jim Bob over there in Marketing or PR or Comms, (doesn't really matter what), anyone could do that job. Heck, they should let ME do that job for a while, I'd show them it's not that hard and I'd get some things done.'

Yep, it's pretty easy to critique from the sidelines, and it's really common, (you know you've done this at least once), to devalue the relative complexity and contribution of functions of the organization that from the outside seem kind of simple, so simple that anyone could do them. Never mind the fact that it is pretty likely some folks in Operations or Logistics are looking at YOU, Mr. or Ms. Talent Pro and are saying the same thing about HR and Recruiting.

Guys are especially guilty of this kind of hubris I think, and nowhere is that kind of misguided confidence/arrogance manifested more completely in the context of sports.  Most guys have played at least some sports in their lives, more watch professional and amateur contests on a regular basis, and still more 'retired' from their chosen sport more than a little disappointed in how far and how successful they actually were as athletes.

It was from this shared experience of frustration, combined with a good dose of the 'He isn't that great/that isn't so hard' I referenced at the top that led to video below, (email and RSS subscribers please click through), a basketball contest between retired journeyman NBA player Brian Scalabrine, and four talented, but definitely amateur players that all, to a man, must have been thinking - 'Scalabrine? He was a bum. He rode the bench for most of his NBA career. I can take him.'

Check the video below, (you don't need to watch the entire thing, a few minutes will give you enough a feel for what went down.

Long story short?  Scalabrine, the 'bum', and during his career one of the worst players in the league, and no longer in what passed for his 'prime', crushed the assorted challengers by a combined score of 44-6. 

And while the challengers were certainly not professional caliber players, they all tried out for the show to play Scalabrine and were vetted as talented amateur players. From the video you can tell they all were actually pretty solid - the kind of guys that probably dominate their local gyms or rec leagues. But up against NBA-level talent, even the last guy on the end of the bench talent, and now too old and slow to keep playing talent, they all were exposed for what they really are, a bunch of guys who now realize, if only a little, what an NBA player can do.

So what? So what that a few playground ball players lost to a just-retired NBA player? What's that got to do with me?

Maybe nothing. 

But for me, well I just like the little reminder that often even the worst guy at a given job might still be pretty talented at that job, and perhaps more importantly, just because a job looks easy doesn't mean it is, and that just anyone could do it.

Congrats White Mamba...