Also known as "Don’t Kill the Messenger." There was a time when I played softball. Now this softball team I played on was coed, and consisted of quite a few seasoned players. One of our games required us to play a very young team. This team thought they had the win in the bag.

I got a base hit, then the guy batting after me got a double, and I was on third base. Here came the next pitch, and BINGO I was heading to home plate. Well the catcher for the other team was STANDING on the base, so I had no choice but to mow her down. As I turned to help her up, she threw dirt in my fact (I had contacts then), and I proceeded in making the game extremely interesting. Needless to say, she got kicked out of the game for poor sportsmanship, and I had to sit out one inning for giving her a black eye.

What this taught me was that it is good to listen to seasoned ways of doing things, and look for the goodness. Take the goodness and make it work in your environment. That is why for every new project I work on, I look at how they did things in the past, and apply that GOODNESS to the future to guarantee success. So, don’t get upset when the more seasoned people talk about only one way of doing things. Just show them a new trick, and don’t get kicked out of the game.