Crisp fall days, the roar of the crowd, the aroma of the tailgate barbeques in the parking lot. If you can’t tell already, I am a سایت رومابت ورود fanatic. I love the game, from my days playing in high school, to watching my favorite teams, to coaching and watching my two sons, I love everything about football.
So it’s little wonder that I see so many similarities between the way a great football team runs, and a great business. Football is the greatest team game, and successful businesses aren’t successful without great teamwork. Let’s look at five ways you can get your business working like the most successful football teams.
No football team, whether college or professional, gets anywhere on the field without first assembling a roster of top talent. Isaac Cheifetz, in “Hiring Secrets of the NFL”, points out that on every NFL football team, management has to know what the “true musts” of each position are. These are usually a variety of skills and behaviors. For instance, a quarterback must have great composure, awareness, and be calm under pressure. Likewise in the business world, an all-star salesperson must have great tenacity, communication skill, and professionalism.
Let’s compare the way top college and pro football teams select the talent for their roster with how your business select its talent. Professional football teams especially, put their prospective employees through exhaustive analysis and measurement in every way. They don’t just measure physical attributes, or experience but spend hours and hours interviewing candidates, their former coaches, teammates and other people with relevant input on their past behavior and performance.
How much time do you put into selecting new employees for your business? I’m sure you’re interviewing, and checking qualifications. But are you really going deep into what makes them any better or worse than other candidates. How extensive are your interviews? What assessment tools do you use to confirm your interview findings? How do you measure fit with your culture and environment?
Several years ago, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conducted a study on the habits of most hiring managers. They found that in large majority, over 65%, hiring decisions happened in the first 4.3 minutes of an interview. They also found that only 11% of these hires ever lasted more than 6 months with the company. Not a great track record.
Football is the greatest teamwork game. No other game that I’ve played before has been so dependent on every single player on the field. Each has to do their role exceptionally to have success. Not even the most physically gifted running back or quarterback can do well with an offensive line that takes too many plays off, or just doesn’t feel like working today.
I’ve had the good fortune of being able to coach youth football for many years, starting with kids as young as eight years old. It never fails that after the first game, the two or three players that actually moved the ball into the end zone for a touchdown immediately feel they suddenly did it all themselves. That doesn’t fly to well on my teams and they soon realize that they didn’t get there alone. Touchdowns happen because of all eleven men on the field (twelve if you play Canadian football).
How similar are our businesses? Do the salespeople who close the big sales really get there all by themselves? What about the great work being done by marketing, or the outstanding customer service representatives. And don’t forget about the production departments or engineers that create and produce the quality materials that generate great word of mouth for the sales team.