Business Insight Zone

For all I know, he even thought of it himself, without reading my series of posts on sports metaphors.

(That’s a joke, folks.)

Actually, in his current New York Times column, “The Sporting Mind,” Brooks gives an interesting overview of how some academics view American sports — and especially how the American sporting ethos partakes of older Greek, Roman, and Victorian ideals of athleticism. A tidbit:

[Prof. Michael Allen] Gillespie argues that the American sports ethos is a fusion of these three traditions. American sport teaches that effort leads to victory, a useful lesson in a work-oriented society. Sport also helps Americans navigate the tension between team loyalty and individual glory. We behave like the British [in our emphasis upon team play], but think like the Greeks [in terms of courageous individual effort], A. Bartlett Giamatti, a former baseball commissioner, once observed.

Brooks’s own sociological observation — about the solidarity of Wisconsin fans attending a Badger football game — feels a bit tacked-on, though I think the underlying point is sound: for all of its problematic aspects, American sport still does serve some purpose as a force that brings people together across social divisions of race and class.

The Business Application

It’s worth pondering how each of the three sporting ideals that Brooks discusses play out in American business:

• Greek: Many companies and business thinkers emphasize the importance of personal contributions to business success. The courage and endurance prized by the Greeks are (a) called upon again and again as companies ask employees to give their all, and (b) lauded by successful businesspeople as the bases of their own success. One problem with this ideal is that some individuals place themselves far above the organization, insisting upon disproprotionate rewards for themselves even when group effort was the real source of success.
• Roman: There is a distinct element of spectacle in American business, both in how stories play out in the business press (Lehman crashes! What will the Fed do next?!), and in how some companies actually behave, internally and externally.
• Victorian: Any manager who has ever said, “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team’ ” was appealing to this tradition. (Anyone who ever muttered “But there is a ‘me’ in there” was exposing the weakness of that old chestnut.) And many business books have been written about what it takes to get an entire work team / department / company pulling in the same direction toward collective goals.

What do you think? Does this three-part sporting model fit with your understanding of American business — and of your own company?

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(Thanks to C. V. Harquail for tipping me off to Brooks’s column.)

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Photo of Camp Randall Stadium at the Univ. of Wisconsin by Royal Broil.

Category: Management, The business of sports