Business Should Take a Lesson from Sports, Better Performance Means Winning

There are no more clear examples of essential productivity than in the world of sports. Success means winning, and winning is absolutely dependent on player performance.

In business, the lines for success are more blurred. Business doesn't have the same short term, easily identified outcome monitors. The clock runs all the time. The bottom of the 9th never comes.

However, regardless of how or when business success is realized, it is no less dependent upon player performance than is success in a sport. Good performance management, appraisal, and enhancement is a key ingredient to winning outcomes; that is, profitability.

This may be true, but when it comes to business, performance management, appraisal, and enhancement is light years behind the models common in sports.

Business needs to take a lesson. It will revolutionize results.

The difference between how performance is monitored and enhanced, however, couldn't be more different. I will address four of them in future posts: 

• Performance expectations are clear and mutually understood in the sporting world, but blurred for employees in most businesses.

• Player performance is monitored and corrected very regularly, even immediately, in sports, but is handled only quarterly or monthly for employees in business.

• Player performance correction and coaching for improvement is immediately available, but may not even be available for employees.

• Ongoing, regular training is commonplace and essential for any and all highly skilled athletes, while businesses assume that well recruited employees don’t need ongoing training. They should know what to do.

Could correcting these differences mean an increase in your company’s performance, and, with it, your profitability? You bet it could. In fact, taking measures to look like a sports franchise with the goal of winning will improve your revenues, reduce your costs, and create competitive advantages. It will take a lot of pressure off your management, as your staff adapts and innovates in ways that create value for your company and your customers.

Don't know where to start? You're not alone. Consider calling a professional, like a PEO. A good PEO should have a full coaching staff, a veritable well-equipped gym; in fact, everything you need so you won't have to hire a bunch of people to make sure you cover your bases. I work a lot with one particular PEO, Administaff.  I know, firsthand, they could help you pull this off very easily.

In the words of FedEx’s Fred Smith: You’ll make more money, and have fewer problems.

I think that’s worth a lot.