Make Your Move: Hockey Puck Inspiration

By Blake Leong

Did you know that the game of ice hockey is 150 years old, but the goalie mask is only 30 years old?  Think about that.  That means that for 120 years, ice hockey goalies were being pummeled in the face with hockey pucks, and only 30 years ago, someone thought of an invention to prevent that from happening.

The lesson here is that new ideas, experiences, and better ways to do things are out there.  Someone just has to grab them out of the ether and wrangle them into reality.

When I worked at my last job, we did a number of things a certain way because “that’s the way they’ve always been done”.  It’s not that I wanted to reinvent the wheel, I just wanted some justification for doing things based on efficiency, or regulations, or even politics, anything but “just because”.

The same thing applies today.  In these “tough economic times”, now is the time that companies are looking to get lean and mean.  That’s not necessarily something to be afraid of.  These rough times force people to break the inertia and complacency that prosperity sometimes brings.

If you had a great idea last month to increase sales, today is a great time to bring it up to your boss.  Were you thinking about going back to school to advance your career?  You’re not alone; UH enrollment recently hit a record high.  Or maybe you had a great way to cut costs that might save the company.

It doesn’t have to be rocket science either.  A recent New York Times article cited the example of UPS.  They implemented two simple policies that saved millions of dollars.  First, they designed driver routes to avoid left turns.  Left turns waste time and gas because drivers need to wait for oncoming traffic to clear.  Secondly, they have a “no-idling” policy.  No matter how long the truck is stopped, the engine is turned off.

Tell me you couldn’t have thought of that yourself. 

So take this article as a call to action, and try something new.  Be bold, be daring, be innovative.  And when your new idea takes flight, and you reach the apex of your success, just be happy you didn’t have to get hit in the face with a hockey puck for inspiration.