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How to learn to spend time continuously analyzing competition and context to evolve with them.
Much has been said about Kobe Bryant, one of the NBA’s greatest ever players who recently passed away.
Much has also been said about the Mamba Mentality, a current of thought coined by Kobe himself to identify his way of living, reasoning and approach to life in sports and otherwise.
Also famous was his farewell letter to basketball published in The Players’ Tribune. The final piece read:
[…] We both gave ourselves everything we had.
And we both know, regardless of what I’m going to do,
That I will forever remain that child
with rolled-up socks
garbage can in the corner
5 seconds to play.
Ball in my hands.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”
The words that had moved everyone had then inspired in 2017 the making of the short animated film by Dear Basketball which won an Oscar in 2018.
The book The Mamba Mentality.
What happened prompted me to pick up his book “The Mamba Mentality. How I play ” trying, where possible, to get more specific.
From the very first pages of the book, the one who traces this philosophy is the historical coach, Phil Jackson, who coached Kobe from 1999 to 2011 with a short break in between: in these twelve years he saw him mature in many ways.
The thing that struck Phil, however, was Bryant’s attitude of constant improvement. He says:
“My staff would meet at 8:30 in the morning before a practice to prepare for the day. Often when I arrived I would find Kobe taking a nap in his car parked in the spot next to mine.
He had already been in the gym at 6 a.m. for pre-training exercises, before the others arrived.”
This attitude of continuous improvement is later reiterated by Bryant himself in the later years of his career:
“Over time I no longer just looked at what I saw, I started looking for what was missing.I used to look at what could and should have happened, eventually studying the footage became an exercise in looking for alternatives, countermoves, options.All the minute details why certain moves work and others don’t.”
Also:
“What I did 10 years ago to win the first title is not enough now: the game evolves and you have to evolve with it.”
Here, perhaps lies the summary of his thinking, his greatest legacy: through an analytical, meticulous, and constant approach, Kobe felt it mandatory to take his game to the next step because of competition that continued to improve.
The attitude your museum must have.
Similarly, you who work in a museum must learn to spend time continuously analyzing competition and context and evolve with them. What may have worked when you were in college and what you may have learned in the last few years no longer works today.
Today many museums have begun to understand the importance of promoting their facility and are beginning to implement perhaps the same actions as you.
And do you know what happens when so many people do the same thing? Well, that thing becomes useless.
Now your goal is to find the way to evolve, to promote your museum on a daily basis, through a method of working, differently from your competitors, before, during and after your guest’s visit.
If you don’t know where to start you can do it from here.
