Transition 15 founder, Matt Perry reflects on his experience of elite sport and business environments and how that helps him to coach businesses and leaders to high performance.
My expertise is in leadership and team development which I was exposed to through the prism of elite sport. Initially as a young player, I looked up to and learned from mentors before becoming a senior player and imparting what I had learned to a new generation. I played in some fantastic teams during my time at Bath Rugby and also represented England and the British Lions where we were forced to accelerate team building and relationship-crafting processes before testing ourselves in incredibly high-pressure situations against the best teams in the sport.
Now I coach businesses and their leaders in principles that I have learned, developed and refined in some of the most testing environments and have seen similarities.
Aligned leadership
People can tell when leadership are at cross-purposes. In sport, this could be a coach and a captain obviously not agreeing and putting a brave face on things. There’s no reason to believe that this would be different at work. People respond to sincerity and a clear vision. They will check out mentally if they sense that management fundamentally disagree or can potentially ally with one point of view. This second eventuality is particularly disastrous.
Aggressive use of data
Sport has really embraced data analysis. Watch a top-flight sporting match, particularly in rugby and you will see an array of laptops in front of the coaches, providing them with live feedback during play to help inform their decisions.
You should be constantly analysing data in business, jettisoning what doesn’t work, refining what could work and doubling down on what does.
Sports people are constantly evaluated both by eye and by data analysis. Business people are not often analysed by either. Human performance analytics should be much more of a focus in the future of business.
Communication is critical
Data interpreters are critical in both sport and business. Without interpretation, data is noise. Very annoying noise that you don’t need and will then ignore, potentially to your cost. Work closely with your technologists, find a way to interpret what they tell you and integrate them into your team. High performance is impossible without analysis, interpretation and effective communication that leads to action. We use a behavioural analysis tool that provides data on how each team member likes to communicate, streamlining your processes and providing the optimum way to communicate information throughout your business. In sport and business, analytics is a team responsibility.
Ultimately, it’s a team game
In the NBA, teams focus on how the team performs when a player, or group of players, is in the game versus out of it. Even if a player has mediocre point and rebound totals, the team may perform better when that player is on the court. This is called their ‘plus/minus’. You might have these people in a business who individually don’t necessarily put up ‘big numbers’ but who are the office glue. They organise social events, help out struggling individuals or who just turn up every day smiling and positive. These people are hard to quantify but could be integral to your performance. Conversely, some people have great individual stats but can lead to an overall decline in team performance. How far you indulge individuals is something that needs assessing on a case-by-case basis.
Outsource what you don’t need to do yourself
Even large organisations can often benefit from strategic partnerships with external suppliers of analytical resources.
Sports teams enlist services like Catapult to do their data for them. Everyone needs something slightly different but don’t be afraid to outsource to a strategic partner. One of the things we do is work on optimising these relationships. Done well they can vault you forward. Done badly they can cause immense problems.
Do training
Sports people do training. We all know this. It’s been fetishised and glorified from Rocky montages to Jonny Wilkinson’s marathon kicking sessions and various gruelling Olympian regimes. How much training do you do in your business?
This doesn’t mean staying late, working longer, harder and faster. Some sports people overtrain. Overtraining leads to injury, fatigue and poor performance.
Work smarter, not harder is the operative philosophy here.
However, doing extra is certainly a way to make a little progress. Do you invest in upskilling your workforce?
Business could learn a little from the sporting mindset, improving a little every day and compounding gains over time rather than just clocking in and out.
'Have pride and purpose' - Richard Branson
Having a mission is important. People want to feel that what they do is for a reason, particularly with the rise of AI potentially leading to some forms of work becoming obsolete.
Having a reason or a goal at work is something that can motivate an individual and unify a team. To be fair these are obvious in sport. We want to win the World Cup. We want to stay in the Premier League.
But there are famous business goals too. IKEA want:
‘to create a better everyday life for the many people.’
What’s your higher purpose? Figuring it out and defining it can lead to monumental progress for your business and your workforce.
For an informal, confidential chat to explore how to transform your organisation’s teams, partnerships and employee engagement, contact Transition 15- e: info@transition15.com
