You Can’t Win ’Em All

“You can’t win ’em all.”
This was an old war film from the 70’s starring Tony Curtis and Charles Bronson. I haven’t seen it personally but Wikipedia tells me it was about two soldiers assigned to transport an Ottoman governor’s daughters from Turkey to Cairo. But, the governor wasn’t exactly open with the soldiers about what they were really protecting.

“You can’t win ’em all.”

I also heard this as a child whenever we lost a game. It was supposed to be comforting.

It wasn’t.

We still lost and our goal was to win…every game, every time we got on the field. It did nothing to hear we were not supposed to win every game. In fact, it made me feel like you, the coach, were not as interested in winning as I was.

But then, adulting happened.

I began to have conversations and meetings where my job was influence. As a leader, my job was to guide and facilitate but also to persuade, if necessary, in order to move forward.

I discovered it wasn’t always possible to win everyone over. No matter how charismatic, persuasive or how compelling a story I had, there was inevitably one person who wasn’t impressed or swayed by it all.

Sometimes you gain unanimous approval and at other times, only general consensus. Unanimous…