Businesses borrowing sports concepts
A lot of people do not realise it but sports and business are very similar. In sports, there are several concepts which are similar to how businesses are run. One of the biggest common concepts in the two disciplines is the concept of competition. Both businesses and sports have to deal with competition and the top athletes and the top businesses out there have to deal with fierce competition and learn to rise above it to stay on top. These and other concepts display the many similarities between sports and business.
If one takes a long hard look at both sports and business, we notice that there are a lot of similarities between the two. Both disciplines recruit the highest levels of talent, train them, nurture them and reward them for good performances. Both also have a strong sense of competition between them, with sports stars always trying to stay one step ahead of the competition just as businesses do. The similarities are alarming because they both have origins in war. Sports originated from war, as a way to train soldiers and a lot of concepts of war such as strategy and defeating an opponent are now a part of sports. The same is true for businesses because the same sorts of concepts such as crushing the competition, guerrilla tactics and defending from attacks are all concepts of war.
In sports, there is a strong emphasis on team work, defeating the competition, coming out on top, attacking when needed and defending at other times. These concepts are the same in business; a company relies on the team work and cooperation of its employees, there is a strong desire to be the number one, to lead, to defeat the competition, and to attack their rivals at all times and defend their own market share on the contrary. Business leaders are like coaches of sports teams in many ways. They both have to create game plans and strategies that their teams follow, they have to recruit quality players/employees, they have to play/work to win and they have to focus on the fundamentals.
Business women in particular can learn from sports. The problem for women is that not a lot of them play sports when they are young so they do not acquire the same skill set that boys do at a young age. Sports allow boys to learn about team work, competition, strategy and leadership. Since women do not learn these essential concepts at a very young age, they do not have them when they enter the workforce and this is why they sometimes find it difficult to deal with the pressures of the business world. If they can play sports or enrol in some sports programmes, it might help them gain vital skills that can make them even more powerful managers.
Modern companies are facing global competition just as athletes have done for many years. Athletes face competition from other athletes and teams from around the world and the same is happening in business. With globalisation and technology, businesses are being confronted on all sides by newer and stiffer competition. Businesses like athletes have to change their strategies constantly and train the next generation of managers to deal with the threat effectively.
There is a flip side to this as well. Critics say that businesses should not learn anything or borrow anything from sports. The argument here is that the life span of an athlete or a career in sports is very short so the perspectives and outcomes will be different from business. Also in sports there can only be one winner, whereas in business there can be two market leaders or many companies can win supply contracts. The final point this argument makes is that in any contest there is only one coach that leads his or her team to victory. Coaches are failure prone and businesses cannot run like that with such a high percentage of failure. No matter what the truth is, businesses can really benefit from using sports concepts in the same way where sports can learn a thing or two from the business world.
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