something remarkable happened a few days ago. i bet that you didn’t hear about it.

in a youth hockey league tournament, one team’s starting goaltender became ill just before the start of the game and couldn’t play. they had to resort to suiting up one of their defensemen, bryce mcgary, as an emergency goaltender in order compete. when the coach of the opposing team was told of the situation and realized the emergency goaltender was short on equipment, he had his son—jacob leclair, the backup—lend some of his.

wow.

but then it got even better. after the first period, the score was 5-0—a blowout even by youth hockey standards. that’s when this happened. jacob skated over to bryce during the intermission and started to give him some coaching on how to play the position better. after the second period, he did the same, providing bryce with more pointers and offering even more encouragement. jacob’s team still won 8-0, but—in his first game ever standing between the pipes—bryce posted a remarkable .830 save percentage, stopping 39 of 47 shots against him… in his first game!

it really makes you wonder: when was the last time you helped a competitor become better? as organizations in business, we’re competing all the time for contracts and work and market share. but when do we give back to the marketplace? instead of sharing our knowledge and passing that on to others, we try to keep it hidden within our firewalled gardens. we replace honest conversation and education with marketing pitches and sales materials.

but what if we changed the game? what if we were more like jacob? what if we took our knowledge and gave it back? what if we had our experts create podcasts and share their secrets to success? what if our executives held google hangouts and shared their lessons learned? and what if we gave it all away for free? how cool would that be?

something remarkable happened a few days ago. i’m glad that you heard about it.

story from minnesota hockey magazine, accessed 2014-01-22