Things you can learn from watching sport

Yes, you've always known it! That time you spend watching the Tri-Nations or international cricket when you're supposed to be at the office is GOOD FOR YOU. Here are some of the things I've learned from watching my favourite sports teams!

Most businesses have heroes and those heroes are necessary to score the big goals and inspire the rest of the team to equal brilliance. But be careful of heroes that demoralise the team with arrogance or a lack of team spirit. In a team sport (and business is unquestionably a team sport) individual brilliance is not necessarily good for the team.

And remember that brilliant players don't always make brilliant coaches.

Professional teams train

Practice makes perfect. A professional team trains for 10 times longer than they play. What does your company invest in training?

Professional teams don't drop players after one bad game

Much to the disgust of amateur spectators, professional coaches realise that mistakes are made, and provided that they are learning experiences, the player may play incrementally better in future.

Let your team take few risks and make a few mistakes. Your loyalty to them when the chips are down, will be rewarded with their loyalty to you when times are tough. And what they learn from their mistakes could be invaluable to your business.

Measure your wins

Success in sport is measured by wins, success in business is measured by profits. No matter what you get right during the game, at the end its the highest final score that wins. The purpose of all those perfect passes or no dropped catches is to win the game.

Sometimes businesses measure themselves by some very unusual scores - they congratulate themselves on keeping within the market budget or cutting overhead costs. And gloss over the fact that they still lost the game. Make sure that the measures you congratulate yourselves on (and reward employees and managers for) are the things that result in a winning score.

Many businesses make the mistake of living from financial year-end to year-end. They close each year close to the budgets and forecasts, and THEN consider what they will do this year. Think of a financial year as a single game with two halves. You have to plan for the entire season - and that may mean forfeiting a game now and then, in order to win the World Cup later in the season.

Keep the coach off the playing field.

It annoys the players and is unlikely win the game. Coaches coach. Players play. Managers manage. Hire people who are good at doing what they have to do.

Lead and you set the pace

Follow and you live by someone else's agenda. If you can't lead, and you're too proud to follow, get out the way because you're going to be crushed in the scrum.

Cheaters never prosper

Don't create a business ethic that in any way sanctions any level of cheating. A business that cheats its customers by padding its service bills, deserve employees that pad their overtime or expense accounts. Remember Hansie, Ben Johnson, Maradona. You are never too big or too important to lose everything.