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The NYT called Saturday night’s boxing match The Fleece of the Century, and it’s hard to argue against that. A lackluster boxing match with two entertainers showing us that it was all just a big ruse as they buddied up during the post-fight press conference.

McGregor couldn't keep the grin off his face as he said, “the cheques are a lot better in boxing,” all the while promoting his upcoming whiskey brand. The two hugged and smiled as they showed their cards–millions had bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Reportedly, the boxers walked away with a combined $300M bucks. Mayweather got $200M and McGregor left with $100M.

The view of the NYT article seemed to be the rule, not the exception. Everywhere I looked on Sunday morning the stories were the same. We were all fleeced, they said. Mayweather & McGregor pulled off the ultimate 9-figure con.

This kind of criticism reminds me a lot of pundits saying that Facebook was an overvalued flash in the pan in 2007 (Zuckerberg should have sold to MySpace for $50M, he lost out on the deal of a lifetime). It is not only short sighted, but it also seems to miss the point so spectacularly that it makes you wonder whether they live in the same world as the rest of us.

Here’s the flip-side of the NYT opinion:

Mayweather and McGregor earned every penny of their split $300M before they ever stepped into the ring. They created a spectacle, they spent months doing the “world tour,” and they created an experience unlike any other.

Whenever somebody asks me about sales training (or any training for that matter), I always challenge them with the “$5M Cash Test, ” first.

95 times out of 100, it becomes apparent that they don’t need training, and they recognize exactly the areas that they need to work on.

So what is the $5M Cash Test? Obviously, I’m not giving them $5M (or even asking for it, in most cases...) :-)

The test is this: Imagine you have a salesperson and you want them to close 100% more deals per month. Could they do it? More importantly, if you offered them $5M cash to accomplish that in one month would they succeed? Or would they fail miserably?

If you think they could, what would they be doing differently with that kind of money on the line?

If it’s just a matter of making more calls, polishing their pitches, being more diligent with follow-up, or anticipating and handling objections, then they could probably do it, and then retire comfortably.

In other words–if they could do it for an extra $5M, there is nothing stopping them from doing it today.

But what if they didn’t know what you were selling, and are only closing the (few) deals per month they currently do through sheer luck and numbers.

If they legitimately don’t know how to position your product in a way that’s

One of the little discussed joys of teaching my kids how to do tremendously fun things like swimming, or riding a bike, is that I get to reuse lines that I hated when I was learning those skills. My favorite, by far, is a variation on this exchange:

“That was awesome, but remember to look straight at where you’re going, not down at the ground!”

“I know, I know, you already told me that!”

“If you already knew it, then why weren’t you doing it? Let’s try it again.”

While I disagree with some of the Sandler sales training methodologies, I like the title of their book You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar. My four-year-old daughter is adamant about learning to swim this summer. Every chance we’ve had she wants to get in the pool and practice with me. In no time at all, it’s coming together. She’s determined to learn by doing it.

Something that kids learn quickly is that it’s easy to know something, and it’s hard to do it. It’s a lesson we seem to forget as we get older and settle into our professions, though. In my work with clients, I often find a tremendous disconnect between knowing what to do and getting it done on a regular basis.

People, departments, and organizations can get so involved in their day to day workings that they miss the obvious. Or they think, "That's too simple to be helpful." Or they think "Surely, we must have a good reason for NOT doing this blisteringly obvious thing, and I'm too busy to find out what it is right now..."

Over the past ten years, I’ve worked with small companies doing a few million in revenue to global, publicly-traded Fortune 500 businesses and every one of them had plenty of blatantly obvious, simple, of-course-you-already-knew-that, things that weren’t getting done. There’s a lot of learning going on, or the quest for something bright, shiny, new, or better, but they’re often missing the fundamentals.

One of the fascinating parts of the Checklist Manifesto was when Dr. Gawande explained why surgical checklists were so effective. It wasn't because doctors were learning new techniques from the list. It wasn't because it was teaching them some "secret 18 steps to successful surgery" that they hadn't learned in med school. It was because it forced them to do everything that's required and to think about every piece that's required, in every surgery. It sounds simple and obvious, but the truth is that

when the pressure is on, it's easy to forget the simple stuff, and the simple stuff is where the greatest results come from.

We don't want you wasting your time looking for the latest "secret," which you can only learn from us, and which will leave you as lost after you learn it as you were before. Instead, we want you to be looking for the simple things that (for whatever reason), you're not doing.

This attitude and desire for something “new” is one of the most common features of human nature that I see in my clients (and in my younger self), regardless of their industry or size. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been trained to be information junkies, or perhaps it’s because we’d rather feel like our lack of success to this point is because we didn’t know some magical secret, rather than because we neglected to do the obvious work. Whatever it is, it’s everywhere!

Here’s an example to make this more concrete:

One of the first things we do with every client is to determine a measurable activity that is critical to performance, and then start tracking that activity. Every customer service person in a large B2B organization says it’s obvious how to provide excellent service, but when we follow what proactive efforts they’re making, we often find they’re not doing much of anything. They are busy, they’re stressed, filling their days with work, but the activities that they told us were the absolute, bottom line, most important and most impactful aren’t getting done nearly as much as they need to be.

I was once told by an executive of a major organization after delivering multiple pages of recommendations that, “ We’re already doing everything you’re telling us to do,” when in fact they weren’t doing any of it–at all–and certainly with no consistency or congruency across the company.

I sure hope they bring their water wings to the pool.

Your challenge for this week:

Think back over the last couple of weeks. Have you heard any ideas, or been given any suggestions, that you dismissed as being “basic” or “boring” or “old news,” but that you still aren't doing? If so, take a closer look at them and see how you can put them to work in your company.

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My mentor Alan Weiss often tells the story of working with–and subsequently being fired by–W. Clement Stone who argued that a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) was the key to all success. Alan was fired for telling Mr. Stone that he had a positive mental attitude because he had $400M bucks in the bank!

I just returned from a client event where one of the speakers talked about the importance of every employee having a “positive mental attitude” as they went through their day-to-day duties. I could see a few people’s eyes rolling around the room, and it’s easy to understand why–a comment like this is almost as “hippy-dippy, frou-frou” of saying a PMA can bring you riches of more than hundreds of millions of dollars. W. Clement Stone would have fired me too!

As I thought about this, It reminded me of many client discussions I’ve had with CEOs and senior executives. The co-author of my next book, Shawn Veltman, has had many similar client discussions. The best ones would often say something like this, “You know what bugs me? When someone shows up and tries to impress me by telling me everything that’s wrong here.” These CEOs often talk about consultants and others who try to open doors by telling them everything that’s wrong with them or using blogs and social media shaming as a way to create consulting opportunities. But then they say something like, “But what’s valuable–and impressive–is when someone can look for opportunities instead of just looking for problems. Any dimwit can find a problem!”

So perhaps those frou-frou statements mean something?

Attitude is a valuable, corporate asset that needs to be developed, harnessed. And in many cases, any sign of dissent needs to be dealt with swiftly.

In my line of work, I often find that the people who complain the most or are most hesitant to adopt new strategies are usually the ones performing the worst. On the flipside, it’s almost always the top performers who look at something new or fresh and ask themselves how they can apply it to their work. They’re top performers for a reason, I guess.

Let me give you a more accurate example. I often rant and rail about the importance of

process in sales, marketing, and just about every customer-facing aspect of the business. When we’re working with an organization to help implement a sales process, we usually get buy in from everyone at face value, but behind closed doors we hear of people who say things like, “That might be really good for the new guys, but I’ve been here for 30 years and I know what works. Nothing is going to help me improve. I’ve seen it all before.”

It’s often the worst performers who bring the most negativity to the scene. But what’s even worse is when the smart, intelligent, people who represent our greatest opportunity for growth spend their time and energy looking for problems or looking for why this or that won’t work. It’s like a corporate cancer that eats away at everyone’s attitude. Even the good guys, can be tainted by a lousy attitude.

There are a few ways to combat this and develop an attitude as a valuable corporate asset. Look, there is nothing is going to turn around a lousy corporate culture instantly, but there are a few ways to start going on the offensive. Here are a few ideas.

Your Challenge For This Week:

Identify an area of your business (or life) where you’ve dismissed something or haven’t given it the attention it deserves and revisit that–see if you can talk, convince, or move out of a gut reaction belief that it won’t work, and find a reason that it would. You don’t need to actually make a change–but see if you can convince yourself that the positive side will work.

As a leader: The next time you run into this with one of your people you can say something like, “Okay, John. You’ve made it clear this isn’t going to help us. But let’s suppose your job is to convince me it will work. Give that a try. Do it now. How could it work?”

As an employee: The next time you find yourself immediately dismissing something, change the narrative. Instead of allowing your mind to say, “This won’t work,” ask yourself “how can this work?” or “what if this works?”

As a human being: Do something you’ve dismissed without trying, or next time you resort to being negative about something, just change the story in your head and ask yourself, “How can I be less of a "Debbie Downer" here and more positive?”

As trite as it may sound, there is a lot of truth to the old observation that to get a