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When I say ‘chewing glass’, I’m referring to the activity of trying something very difficult over and over and over until you get it right. The hope is that once you are successful, you will be better able to repeat the success the next time you try.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

– Albert Einstein

We have all been in the situation. You wipe on a boss, head back in, and start over again real quick.  The inclination is that you hop right back in and try again and hope it goes better. There may have been a chance occurrence that caused you to fail in the previous attempt and people say “just get better”. You may also feel that because you are limited by time you need to get as many “attempts” in as you possibly can so that you get more experience. For example, say it is already getting late and your raid is going to end in 30 minutes so you group up and buff as fast as you can and try again.

I disagree with this method of attempting to achieve success. I contend that when you fail, instead of trying again immediately, you should instead step back and analyze what went wrong and try to correct that one thing the next go. By analysis and correction, over time, you will tweak your performance and achieve more than you thought possible.

Let’s take a look at real world examples.

“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect”

- Vince Lombardi

Vince Lombardi is an inspiration to many. A guy that didn’t achieve all that much beforehand, took a perennially losing Green Bay Packers to the Super Bowl where they won 37-0. He did it in 3 short years. He expected the best not only at game time, but during practice, at home, at all times.

Coach Lombardi set off a revolution in sports practice and business practice that focused on practicing skills the right way, not just setting aside time for practice. This can be put into practice in WoW by making sure people are focusing on farm content and not slacking off, so when you do reach a difficult fight everyone is on the same page.

Kaizen

Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement of processes. You assess what you did, tweak your changes and do it again. By doing this you become more and more efficient at ANYTHING you try. It involves everyone in an organization, from the top to the bottom, working together to perfect processes.

This theory was applied by GM, famously, in 1984 at the NUMMI automotive plant in California as joint venture between Toyota and GM. They went to the most under-performing plant that GM had and turned it around into the best performing plant in the US.

In WoW raiding, Kaizen can be applied in that everyone from the guild leader to the new recruit should feel like they can offer suggestions for improvement without hurting someones ego, and those suggestions should be acted upon or addressed.

Excellent performers judge themselves differently from the way other people do

Geoff Colvin in his book “Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else” concludes that we are not born with innate talents of any sort, but through proper -deliberate- practice, we achieve great things. The key is that when you perform or practice an activity you should judge yourself at a level just a cut above your current limits. By doing this you will be able to see small errors, correct them and try again. In practical terms, focus on little improvements like getting Blood Queen down 30 seconds faster, not having any deaths on farm content, getting to the next phase on Lich King, etc. Rinse and repeat long enough and you will be amazing in whatever it is you want to do!

The goal should be to take all of these ideas and make them work for your guild and your raid group. Does your guild already incorporate some of these ideas in your raids? Give us some examples of what your guild does to improve.