Defining the Gray: Stop Going Through the Motions
What the greatest classroom in the world taught me about leadership, AI, and the things we value.
Growing up, I had a football coach who used to tell us that the football field was the greatest classroom in the world.
His name was Coach Colligan.
At the time, I probably didn't appreciate just how much truth there was in that statement. Like most young athletes, I thought I was there to learn how to block, tackle, run plays, and hopefully win a few games along the way.
But some of the most valuable lessons I took from that field had very little to do with football.
Decades later, as I find myself coaching my own children and navigating a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, I'm beginning to appreciate those lessons differently.
The Little Things
I remember one practice during my freshman year. There were probably forty of us on the field when Coach Colligan asked one of my teammates to do something.
The kid responded with a simple, "Yeah."
Coach stopped everything.
It wasn't "yeah." It was "yes, Coach." Or "no, Coach."
The player pushed back a little. What was the big deal? He'd acknowledged the request. Everyone knew what he meant.
Coach wasn't having it.
He told him to go home, write a two-page paper about the meaning of the word "yeah," and bring it back the next day.
I still remember that exchange.
Not because of the paper, but because all forty of us understood that something seemingly insignificant mattered.
Looking back, I don't think the lesson was simply about respecting authority. It was about being intentional in how we approached our responsibilities, our teammates, and the people around us.
How we responded. How we prepared. How we showed up.
The little things weren't separate from the big things. They were the foundation.
And those habits followed us long after we left the field.
Stop Going Through the Motions
Another coach, Coach Hnatuk, had a phrase I can still hear today.
"Stop going through the motions!"
He said it constantly.
Whether we were running drills, practicing plays, or conditioning, he wanted us focused. Not simply completing the activity, but understanding what we were trying to accomplish.
I remember one day when he made us a deal.
We were going to start practice with conditioning. Sprints, up-downs, all the things young football players love to complain about.
But he told us that if we committed to those drills, gave everything we had, and carried that same intensity into the rest of practice, we wouldn't have to condition again at the end.
For a bunch of young football players, that was a pretty attractive
proposition.
And something interesting happened.
We practiced differently.
We moved through drills with purpose. We paid attention. We weren't just waiting for the next whistle or trying to survive until practice ended.
That focus carried into the game that week.
Coach wasn't telling us conditioning didn't matter. Without the stamina and preparation to compete, none of the technique or strategy would mean much.
But the purpose of conditioning wasn't to see how many sprints we could survive.
It was to prepare us to play football.
If we could accomplish that through a more focused, intentional practice, why keep running simply because that's what we'd always done?
The standard hadn't changed. The approach had.
Becoming the Coach
Fast-forward a couple of decades, and now I'm the one standing on the sidelines and walking around a gymnasium, coaching my own sons and daughters.
It's funny how much your perspective changes when you're the coach instead of the player.
As an athlete, I thought coaches were primarily trying to make me better at the game. Improve my technique. Run the play correctly. Execute.
But now I recognize something else was happening underneath the surface.
We were learning how to practice.
How to fail. How to listen. How to work with different personalities, strengths, and abilities. How to commit to something bigger than ourselves.
And how to develop confidence through the process of getting a little bit better every day.
I've come to appreciate that the most impactful coaches aren't necessarily the loudest or the most enthusiastic.
They're the ones who help young people appreciate the process.
They understand that encouragement matters, but so does accountability. That repetition matters, but only when there's intention behind it. That mistakes aren't always something to avoid.
Sometimes, making mistakes is the point.
I try to bring those lessons into the gym when I'm coaching my kids.
We run. We condition. We practice fundamentals.
But I also want them to understand why.
Because the goal was never to run more sprints.
The goal was to become better players and better teammates.
A Different Playing Field
Which brings me to artificial intelligence.
We're being told how much faster we can operate. How many tasks we can automate. How much productivity we can unlock. How many hours we can save.
And there's tremendous opportunity in all of that.
I've spent much of my professional career working at the intersection of technology, business transformation, and people. I've seen how new technologies change what's possible.
I remember when high-speed internet made information accessible in seconds that previously required considerable time and effort.
AI represents another extraordinary shift.
But having access to information isn't the same as understanding it.
Understanding something isn't necessarily the same as knowing how to apply it.
And knowing what to do isn't the same as executing when circumstances change.
Anyone who's played a sport understands that distinction.
You can study the playbook. Watch the film. Know exactly where you're supposed to be.
But then the ball gets snapped.
Someone misses a block. A defender does something unexpected. The play breaks down.
Suddenly, the answer isn't sitting neatly in the playbook anymore.
You have to respond.
Business isn't much different.
AI can help us prepare, analyze, and make decisions. Its capabilities will continue to evolve, and the line between what technology can do and what people need to do will keep moving.
But if technology can increasingly perform the work through which people have historically developed their skills, judgment, and confidence, how do we develop those capabilities in the next generation?
And which experiences were actually developing those capabilities in the first place?
What About the Other 19 Hours?
I keep coming back to Coach Hnatuk and that conditioning deal.
Imagine I have a presentation that historically takes twenty hours to develop.
With AI, perhaps I can produce a high-quality version in one hour.
That's an incredible productivity improvement.
But what happens next?
Do I simply create nineteen more presentations?
Do I immediately conclude that I need fewer people?
Or do I spend that time understanding my customers more deeply, developing my team, challenging assumptions, and exploring more creative solutions?
The easy answer is to say we should always reinvest that time into creating greater value.
But I don't think it's that simple.
Businesses have financial responsibilities. Efficiency matters. Profitability matters. Sometimes reducing costs is necessary.
And sometimes the most valuable thing we can do with the time we've recovered isn't immediately obvious.
I suspect that's where many leaders find themselves today.
Somewhere in between.
They recognize the opportunity. They're being encouraged to move faster, automate more, and operate with fewer resources.
But they're still trying to understand what comes next.
What does creating more value actually look like?
What do our customers need that we haven't been able to provide?
What could our people become capable of if we approached their development differently?
And what do we value enough to protect, invest in, or build upon?
Those questions don't fit neatly into a productivity dashboard.
In sports, the scoreboard tells us who won and who lost. In business, we measure revenue, margins, productivity, and customer outcomes.
Those measurements matter. They reflect real responsibilities and consequences.
But they don't tell us everything.
A scoreboard doesn't tell us whether a young athlete learned to believe in themselves, whether a teammate learned to support someone who was struggling, or whether a group of individuals learned to accomplish something they couldn't have done alone.
And I wonder whether we're facing a similar challenge with AI.
We can automate a process, save time, improve a metric, and move on to the next opportunity.
But did we make something better?
Did we develop the people who will navigate whatever comes next?
Or did we simply find a more efficient way to go through the motions?
The Greatest Classroom in the World
Twenty years from now, I don't expect my children or the young athletes I've coached to remember every play we ran, every game we won, or every sprint I made them run.
But I hope they remember something about the little things.
About showing up. About respecting others. About working hard and taking pride in what they do.
About making mistakes, getting back up, and finding the confidence to try again.
About learning to work with people who are different from them.
And about being part of something bigger than themselves.
Those are the lessons I hope they carry into their careers, families, and communities.
I think about Coach Colligan stopping an entire practice over a single word.
I think about Coach Hnatuk challenging us to stop going through the motions, then showing us that working with greater intention could change the way we practiced.
Neither lesson was really about the immediate activity.
Both were about what that activity was supposed to develop in us.
For generations, we've taught young athletes not to simply go through the motions.
Now we're entering an era where technology can increasingly perform many of those motions for us.
And while we're busy figuring out what to automate, how much time we can save, and how much more we can produce, I wonder whether we're spending enough time considering what those activities were meant to accomplish in the first place.
What do we value? What are we trying to develop? And what might we lose without even realizing it?
I don't know that there's one answer.
But I suspect it's a conversation worth having before the next whistle blows.
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Defining the Gray explores the space between technology, leadership, and the human experiences that shape how we work, grow, and lead.
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