Business is a competitive game
Business Report magazine
Feb 9, 2024
I love the idea of the Customer Experience Engine. But an engine is not the only useful metaphor for thinking about how to upgrade your company. In my last entry, I talked about the insights generated by thinking about your company as a garden. This time, I’ll share why I think succeeding in business is a lot like winning in sports.
Playing sports has been a huge part of my life. When I was growing up, I went to the state championship in three different sports, and we even won one of them. And I’m not alone. Sports is the most common extracurricular activity of American kids and one of the most popular entertainment activities for adults. So, the sports metaphor makes a lot of sense to me and to many, many leaders.
For example, the business-as-sports analogy reminds us that success requires fitness in the fundamentals. Not only do you need to learn fancy footwork and trick shots, you also need to be in shape. So, to win you need to regularly run, lift weights, and drill on the basic skills. In business, these are things like showing up on time, making products that work every time, and responding quickly to your customer. It doesn’t matter how fancy your tech is if you’re five months late delivering it to the client.
Also, sports taught me that you play like you practice. If you want to win more games, improve your practice sessions. Sadly, very few companies actually do any practice before they play a “live game” in front of customers. As a counter example, when Chick-fil-A opens a new location, they spend a week with the new staff making food and delivering it to an empty restaurant. They don’t want their first “game day” to be the first time they run the play. If it’s truly important, find a way to practice before you perform.
The sports metaphor also forces us to face the fact that business is a competitive game. It doesn’t matter if you achieve a new personal best if the other racers get to the finish line before you. You only win if you perform better than the other racers. If your customer experience isn’t better than your competitors, it doesn’t matter that you’re performing better than last year if your competitors are even faster. A tragic example of this is K-Mart, which made major improvements in its operations every year, right up until they went bankrupt. They did improve, but they didn’t improve as fast as Walmart did, so they fell further behind each year.
Finally, all the best players have a coach--and it’s hard to be a player and a coach at the same time. Either pull yourself out of the day-to-day tasks so you can be the team coach and/or find someone who can provide outside perspective.
So, take a moment and consider your “sports team.” How strong are you on the fundamentals? What would practice sessions look like? And is your rate of growth better or worse than your competitors? And who is your coach?
