How Harboring Skills From Your Favorite Sports Team Could Actually Help Your Business

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ou can love the Patriots, or hate the Patriots. You can also learn from the Patriots and how their Leadership practices foster success. Here are 3 observations of that system at work.

A Sharp Focus on Fundamentals.

No one likes running sprints. No one likes getting accounting right either. But conditioning matters, as do the accuracy of numbers. Both are predicates for performance and both determine your starting point. Teams with excellent conditioning win a lot of games. Companies with excellent controller-ship make a lot of money. Fundamentals matter as much as vision, strategy and mission.

Mighty Ambitions.

Speaking of missions, the best missions are heavy on aspirations and light on excuses. They demand our best. Certainly that's true with the Patriots. Every season starts with an expectation that the team should head to the Super Bowl. By itself, this mighty ambition sets the tone for excellence and demands the most from the players, coaches and support staff, before the first whistle is blown. Imagine demanding that from your department, team or company: asking everyone and everything to be the best in class, as a starting point. How challenging is that! At the minimum it moves the average to perform better. At best, it sets new standards. Both improve overall performance (just by being mightily ambitious!).