If you are listening to this broadcast in the US, then it is a big week this week. Its Super Bowl week and next Sunday the New England Patriots and the New York Giants play off for the big prize.
Those of us who run our own business can learn a lot from these two teams. They got to be successful by putting in the hard yards. They began planning for this day several years ago. They had a game plan in the same way that we have a business plan.
They determined the best people to play in every position on the team and they encouraged them to be a team. They coached every member of the team to hone their skills, to be absolutely expert at what they do. That is not different than what we need to do with each of our employees. Ensure you have the best person for the job, continually train them, send them to seminars, and encourage them.
The Giants and the Patriots have a lot of competition, as do most of us that are in business. Both of these teams studied their competition, as do most of us that are in business. Both of these teams studied their competition learned their play, their strengths and their weaknesses and they worked out how to beat them when they met head to head.
In business, we need to do the same thing. We need to know our competitor’s strengths and weaknesses so that when we are competing for the same customer, we know how they play to win.
Both the Giants and the Patriots have great support for their team. They have coaches, trainers, masseurs, statisticians, nutritionists, strategists and the list goes on.
We also need great support for our business team. We need a strong board of advisors, individual team members need mentors. We need to be able to get as much help as possible from experienced people. It is much quicker and much cheaper to learn from other people’s mistakes.
Then the teams have a leader, the coach who works on the game and not in the game. He is able to have a helicopter view of what is happening in the whole game.
That is what all of us in business need to do, we need to step back and look at our business and improve the way we do things, not get so caught up in the day to day play that we lose the big picture.
Then finally there is the Quarterback, who runs the play, ensures that things get done, who selects the best option for each play.
If you have a business with a number of employees you need a quarterback in there to ensure your business runs like clockwork.
So, when the Giants and the Patriots take the field Sunday, think about how they got there and what you can take from their success into your business.