The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

by Anita Bhogle

‘The one per cent things tend to be stuff that is not particularly sexy,’ says Niall Booker, former CEO of HSBC

Higher levels of competition demand higher levels of execution.

They were all good but the names that come to mind when we say champions are Becker, Federer, Djokovic … players who have won time and again. Consistency creates the aura that surrounds champions.

Agility

Saugata Gupta.9 ‘It’s about speed and excellence … it’s an “and” and not an “or”.

‘In many cases, agility is a bigger strength than ability’, thinks D. Shivakumar, strengthening Saugata’s view.

After Monty Panesar made his test debut in 2006 against India, he showed great promise. Two-and-a half years later, he hadn’t managed to bring too much variation into his bowling. He became predictable, and batsmen could read him with ease. And so one day, in his typically no-nonsense style, Shane Warne asked during commentary, ‘Is Monty playing his thirty-third test, or is he playing his first test for the thirty-third time?’ If you don’t innovate, you become predictable.

Innovation helps in delighting the customer and stealing a march over your competition at least till the time they catch up.

Ronnie Screwvala very rightly says, ‘Innovation is as much in execution as it is in ideation.

In sport, we often talk about ‘big occasion’ players who can hold their nerve when pressure and scrutiny are at their highest.

the team that runs even between overs.’

revelation

Joe Montana, a US pro-football legend said, ‘He gets on a roll, and everybody else starts looking at the board to see what Tiger is doing. They are watching TV too, and they should be playing.’ That

heyday,

futile

sheer

Ask yourself, can you win a match before it begins?

Inevitably

is, does he look like he wants to be there?

does he look like he would rather be elsewhere?

When you saw Viv Richards taking the field, you could almost ...

Body language is critical in sport as it is in everything we do,

Dean Jones told us this great story about playing against the West Indies in their glory days. He was a young man and very nervous but was trying to mask it by putting on a brave front. While he was batting, Desmond Haynes at short leg kept laughing. ‘What are you laughing about?’ Jones asked. ‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ Haynes said. Jones thought he would be a bit smart and said, ‘Yeah, but don’t tell Joel (Garner).’ To which Haynes responded with more laughter. ‘What now?’ Jones asked. Haynes paused for a moment and replied, ‘He already knows,’ and broke into more peals of laughter.

earful

boggling;

Probably body language is best manifest in the area of sales where the retailer knows that the salesperson requires the sale to achieve his targets, and yet the salesperson needs to appear committed enough to convince the retailer that it is in his interest to place an order.

subliminally

demeanour

monk.

amidst

‘Essentially, it was adrenaline training—rope-climbing, scaling walls, walking on a tightrope 70 or 80 feet above the ground. The idea is to get a rush, a flow of adrenaline, and then to remain calm in that situation.’13

A calm mind is not about doing nothing’, says Ajinkya Rahane. ‘It’s about keeping yourself busy, particularly if you are going through a tough phase. It prevents your mind from being flooded with negative

thoug...

oblivious

denial.

succinctly

summed

heritage

demeans

When asked about why an outstanding Pakistan team lost the final of the 1999 World Cup rather tamely, their captain at the time, the great Wasim Akram, said too many people were worried about what would have happened if they lost. Rather than thinking of winning, they were consumed by the fear of a possible reaction to defeat.

Former English cricketer and brilliant coach Bob Woolmer, who died suddenly during the 2007 World Cup, often used to quote Joan Rivers, ‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery.’ Good teams win, move on and get ready for the next day.

There’s nothing wrong with having your goals really high and trying to achieve them. That’s the fun part. You may come up short. I’ve come up short on a lot on my goals, but it’s always fun to try and achieve them.

recesses

‘It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

diligently

Dravid says that at various points in time he has set performance as well as result goals for himself, but believes that performance goals work better for him because the result is not always in his control.

ensconced

we divide the people into two teams and ask one team to run towards pre-determined spots where a set of tennis balls are kept. Each runner has to reach the spot, pick up the ball, throw it to the person collecting it and run towards the next one and so on.

fathom.

When I was an Area Sales Manager in Karnataka with Hindustan Lever, selling Brooke Bond Red Label Tea, the weekly turnover in a market was 30 tonnes. I announced a week where we would aim to touch 100 tonnes. All our resources were pooled and the target was achieved. This created a “can do” feeling in the team.