For Want of a Nail

Several years ago I went to see my friend Dov Mickelson, ’91 BEd, in a production of Frankenstein, staged by the Catalyst Theatre. One memorable part of the play was a song by artistic director Jonathan Christenson, ’89 BA, ’92 BA(SpecCert), ’96 MFA. It was his version of the nail-and-shoe parable: “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost / for want of a shoe, the horse was lost / for want of a horse, the rider was lost / for want of a rider, the battle was lost.”

The parable advises us to mind the details that underpin something bigger, and I found myself humming the song in the days after I spoke to former Golden Bear hockey player and current Edmonton Oiler Derek Ryan, ’11 BSc(Hons).

Oilers fans are ever hopeful about the team’s chances to win hockey’s biggest prize. And if Ryan were to hoist the Stanley Cup, he’d be in the roughly 15 per cent of NHL players who’ve ever had the chance. Not bad for an undrafted player who made his rookie debut in the NHL in 2017, aged almost 30. Ryan recently signed for an additional two years with the Oilers and, now 36, he is arguably playing his best hockey. His unusual career path earned him a nomination for the Bill Masterton Memorial trophy, awarded to a player “who best exemplifies qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to ice hockey.”

That’s true of Ryan, but as a description of his journey it misses something. It’s one thing to be a good guy and persevere, but it’s another to establish and maintain a relentless build — over years.

For want of a nail, he might not have made it this far.

Hockey scouts look for a rare combination of size, skill, athleticism and explosive speed, evident when an athlete is still a young teenager. Players who are destined for the NHL will often be there by 20, drafted out of juniors. At 21, Ryan was 5’10”, 170 lb., undrafted, studying science at the U of A and playing for the Golden Bears at Clare Drake Arena. He was preparing for a future off the ice, with thoughts of going into pharmacy, and he learned what every student athlete must: the discipline to balance academics and sports.

The skills Ryan built in the juniors, followed by the self-discipline he honed in varsity hockey, earned him the chance to play pro in the Austrian league. So Ryan and his wife moved to Europe, thinking of adventure — maybe followed by pharmacy school.

“In Austria I learned how to play on the larger ice surface, and the style of play was really about offence,” he says. Pundits say that the extra five metres in the width of the ice means a less physical, more tactical game. So when Ryan found the puck, he had a bit more time to develop the play.

“After three years, we moved to Sweden, where the play is very defensive,” he says. “It’s 1-0 and 2-1 hockey games all the time.” Ryan learned to take advantage of rarer offensive opportunities while building his defensive game. Improvements stacked up and he was voted league MVP.

Ryan’s is less a story of putting in 10,000 hours of practice and more one of making 10,000 fine adjustments. “I’ve spoken a lot about my journey. It’s something that I cherish,” Ryan says. “It’s given me the perspective I have now.”

Incremental change is also the stuff of cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, an evidence-based psychological therapy.

“There are many interconnected factors that characterize mental health problems, including a person’s thoughts, emotions and behaviours,” explains Ellen Klaver, ’16 MEd, a registered provisional psychologist completing her PhD in counselling psychology at the U of A. She says changing one factor will help change the others. For example, CBT can take small steps to target thoughts, leading to changes in a person’s behaviours and emotions.

It’s an old idea. Klaver points out that Epictetus, a philosopher who did his thinking around 1,900 years ago, said that events are not what upset us, it’s how we think about them afterwards.

Learning to reframe our thoughts is a journey of multiple increments. It often involves creating clear goals that are achievable and measurable. While this comes naturally to some, the rest of us might flail a little towards a goal, in life or therapy. CBT is a strategy that feels custom-built to realize these refinements, however you define them.

Dramatic organizational change can also be realized through small gains based on incremental learning.

Hyeik Kim, an assistant professor at the Alberta School of Business, studied 2,400 world airports that each served more than 10,000 passengers per year. She and several international colleagues found a consistent difference between poorer-rated airports and higher-rated ones: the better performers, 437 of them, were owned by private equity funds rather than run as public infrastructure. The better performers were able to increase the number of passengers per flight, which is a marker of success.

“Fund managers want to stay in business, and their reputation is based on their performance,” Kim told Folio, the U of A’s news site, in March. Yet building value for investors didn’t involve slashed costs, high prices or staff layoffs. In fact, she found there were no layoffs and if costs rose, the increase was modest.

Private equity management practices created gains through small improvements — by increasing the number of routes and terminals and by adding low-cost carriers. They improved retail and food services, waiting areas and cleanliness, borne out by passenger surveys and industry awards.

Whether in sports, business or ordinary life, small changes are behind big achievements. They’re the nails that help us win battles, demonstrating that people and whole systems make gains by increment. And that’s part of the journey that all of us can cherish.