Earning It

The NFL draft is wrapping up this week and the months of predictive analysis will now continue with months of event analysis. Everyone will want to know if the experts were able to correctly predict a player's NFL success based on his college work.

I was thinking about the college players who were drafted this morning and the high level of success they experienced at the collegiate level. Some of them have won Heisman trophies, player of the year awards, All-American honors, conference championships, and national championships. Those are all impressive accolades, but they don't guarantee anything professionally. All of their college accomplishments have only earned them an opportunity to succeed at the next level. Now that the draft is over no one cares about what they have done in their past, but only want to see what they will do next.

I don't know that's quite as cut and dry for the rest of us, but there is some truth to that principle. Our past leadership decisions don't guarantee our future success, but they do provide us the opportunity to make the next right decision. Even with an impressive pedigree we still have to be disciplined and focused enough to bring our best for the future. We might buy ourselves a bit of grace with our history, but at some point we'll need to step up our game enough to make a difference at the next level.