Corporate football

Recently, I had the opportunity to become familiar (again) with the daily operative tasks of talented sales reps with a few years of experience. The objective was to tailor their ESP training to their specific tasks. This is how a writing by Claus Moller, the founder of Time Manager International (TMI) titled “Corporate football” came to my mind. Let’s see what we can learn from it. Before each game, coaches get all players together to give them instructions individually. Later on, games often turn out to be quite different from what was expected and instructions are no longer applicable. In such cases, players have to wait for half-time to be given new instructions, provided that the coach does not have anything more urgent to do. The coach is a member of the National Chamber of Coaches and has to attend a meeting during the half-time break. During the meeting, coaches discuss how hard it is to motivate players and how self-complacent stars should be handled. Sometimes, coaches get back to see the second half of the game and become even more convinced that their players are only interested in their personal success, instead of the team’s glory. Some coaches never see the second half. The players are all members of the Players’ Association and are concerned about their salaries and the way money is to be divided among them. There are several branches in the Association, like one for goalkeepers, one for defenders, one for midfielders, etc. During the half-time break, they also attend meetings of their own “trade” organisations and discuss their specific complaints and problems and proposals to make life easier for their colleagues. The only thing they all agree about is that not enough people come to see them play. The situation is probably familiar to many of us and we can agree that this is not they way things should be. The objective should be to score and win the game. We should be able to mobilise all our employees to work for our collective success. When people do their best, a very special type of personal commitment to the group is born. People in such groups share the same values. Leaders are not responsible for everything and do not claim all the credits for success. Energies are devoted to solving problems instead of finding scapegoats or creating ideologies why these exist. Teams like this play to win.