Running business is like a game
of soccer!
There is a captain, a coach and
multiple players trying to achieve the same goal – ‘Goal’. You know a bit about
your opponents but you don’t know it all. You anticipate their actions and try
to plan your game accordingly. You either play to your strengths or try
defending your weaknesses.
Business is pretty much like that
only. There is a business head, who is the captain of the team, assisted by
business consultants, who act as coach, watching match from outside and trying
to help the team with their inputs in whatever limited interactions they have.
While other players in the team, some senior some junior, play the game
(mostly) as instructed to achieve the results through the strategy formulated
by captain and the coach.
Every player is strategically placed
in the field (i.e. in different functions) to derive maximum benefits in the
game. Each player performs his job and passes it onto the next player for their
contributions. Sometimes the ball comes back to the same player again and
again, for fresh contributions every time. Sometimes they get tackled and
sometimes the pass doesn’t go through properly but that is all part of the game
– players try to minimise it but still bound to happen at times.
The only difference in business
is that there exists a second ball- call it the ‘Black Ball’. This is the ball
of blames (powered by bureaucracy and office politics), where everybody tries
to get rid of the ball ASAP. In effect, parallel running game with Black Ball
turns into a game of musical chairs, with smaller sub-teams competing against
each other, where the one handling the ball when music stops is accused of the
all the wrongs that happened during the game. Everybody knows it is an epidemic
but people enjoy playing this game much more than the original soccer that they
were supposed to play. To the extent that even sometimes they end up losing the
game to weaker teams.
Coming back to the original game,
as I was saying every individual/group of people has his/their role defined in the
field. For example, there are forwards expected to turn every opportunity into
goal (marketing team), there are
half-forwards to create higher opportunities for forwards (e.g. product development or innovation teams), midfielders to
ensure the strength at the centre (core
strength area – could be manufacturing), half-backs to cut the opponent
from reaching my D (other core functions
– could be procurement, supply chain etc.) and finally the backs to provide
the final layer of protection (generally
Finance). The captain is out there playing in one of the positions, may or
may not be the most critical position, while the coach is standing out and
watching the players play. Further, depending on the strengths of individual
players, different teams adopt different strategies with specialised positions
like hole players, box-to-box midfielders, holding midfielders, sweepers etc.
In every game, there would a
larger dependence on one or multiple of the players but other players are also
required to play an acceptable level of game. To start with, it is important to
have the right coach and the right captain to plan the right strategy for the
game and equally important to have right players in the right positions – mind
it great forwards player will not be able to do justice to his potential if
asked to play in half back.
Looking at very basics of the
game, it is most crucial for any team to do proper passing of the ball- to the
right players – to show just the right amount of aggression at right positions
and to keep an eye on the opponent’s moves. Businesses also require people to
perform their individual responsibilities with proper ownership while also
coordinating with related functions to enable better outputs. Teams running in
silos hardly do any good to the business, while passing on the ball to wrong
players also reduces the efficiency of the teams. Just imagine a midfielder
playing brilliantly, tackled the opponent and carried the ball near opponents
goal post but did not pass the ball to forward and just left the ball in D and
came back – although the player individually might have shown sparks of
brilliance but the team overall could not benefit from his moves. Had he passed
on the ball to the forward at the right time, it could have turned out as a
valuable score for the team.
The only worse I can think of is,
if the captain is clueless about how to play the game. He, along with the
coach, is supposed to set the rules of the game and bring a discipline in the
team, failing which the team is on its own and the lack of coordination would
be pretty evident (like the case described above). The team would not know
whether to play attacking or defensive, what combinations to play, moves to
make etc etc
So the rule is simple-
In order to win a game of soccer- get the right players, right captain
and right coach- get your playing strategy right, communicate the strategy to
team and just play by the rules (execute the strategy)
In order to run a business- get the right employees, right business
head and right coach (typically Board of Governors or Chief Management
Committees) – get your business strategy right – communicate the strategy to
team and just play by the rules (execute the strategy)
