Business Game Time

With the US Open coming into the decisive phase, it’s crunch time in Flushing Meadows for the big three players, namely Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. After what we have seen so far this year, the clear favorite to win can be no one else but Djokovic.

The number 1 player in the ATP ranking is in incredible form. In 2011, he only lost two matches (one against Federer, one against Andy Murray) while winning 62. The last time a player had stats like this at this time of the year was John McEnroe back in 1984.

An interesting comparison. If you ask people about McEnroe, most will answer with mentioning his discussions with umpires and his joking on the court. The fact that he was one of the greatest players of all time, a player with a feel for the ball that has probably never been matched in history, will only come second. The same with Djokovic: He is able to play like a genius (coaching legend Nick Bollettieri believes he is “the most complete player of all time”), but he still has the image of the “DjokerNole” (which by the way is also his Twitter handle), a player ready to mock his opponents or do jokes on and off the court at all time.

His style of play, combining technique, agility and feeling, is less straight forward than those of perfectionist Federer or powerful Nadal. However, despite all his performance advantages, his two main rivals are earning a lot more money than the Serbian idol. While Federer ranks  #30 in the Forbes list of celebrities’ gross income (May 2010 to May 2011) and Nadal #58, Djokovic didn’t even make the top 100, for all millions of dollars won at the tournaments he played. The problem: He doesn’t score the big advertising and endorsement deals.

While Federer is a perfect match for brands that stand for reliability and high quality like his sponsors Credit Suisse, Rolex or Mercedes-Benz, cool and powerful Nadal promotes cool and stylish brands such as Giorgio Armani and Bacardi. And while Federer and Nadal are dressed in their own colorful Nike collections, Djokovic looks more like a player from the 1980’s in Wimbledon than from the 2010’s in New York, wearing his old school white Sergio Tacchini clothes (his former sponsor Adidas decided not to extend his endorsement deal two years ago).

Federer and Nadal are more mainstream compatible, so despite their lower performance as compared to Djokovic, they get better returns.

In companies, there are Federer, Nadal and Djokovic types of people, too.

There are the Federers, which are the reliable ones that don’t harm or mock anybody. You can always count on them. Then, there are the powerful, Nadal-type ones, those that always play hard and try to overpower their opposition. And there are the Djokovic-types. Those with a lot of feeling, agility and maybe humor.

But just like Djokovic doesn’t get the expensive endorsement deals Federer and Nadal receive, the latter often don’t receive the same recognition and rewards as the reliable or powerful ones.

That’s a mistake. As a tennis “customer”, I would always prefer watching Djokovic over Nadal or Federer, as he is more likely to develop some “magic” in his play, those moments that make the difference.

In companies, where making a difference is the basis of success, it should be a no-brainer to hire or develop more Djokovic types. It should be but – it isn’t.

The reason is, again, mainstream compatibility.

Still, the mainstream opinion decides. The opinion of the reliable or powerful ones that are taking decisions today. And too often they opt for those that are like themselves.

Hiring a Djokovic or a McEnroe seems like a risk to them, as they don’t know what they can expect in return. But both examples, Djokovic and McEnroe, performed. They outperformed all others. Being unusual doesn’t mean they aren’t serious – that’s a common misunderstanding. Often they work harder than anyone else.

Djokovic looked like the World’s eternal #3 until last year, then he changed his training routine and diet completely, even completely revamped his service technique. The hard work payed off.

And McEnroe, who won his first Grand Slam tournament in 1979, improved further so that by 1984, when winning both Wimbledon and the US Open, he dominated the finals against Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl. Especially the Wimbledon final, a 6-1, 6-1, 6-2 execution of Connors showed the development.

Power players can only improve by becoming more powerful. Reliable ones can only stay reliable. Creative, empathic ones have way more room for development.

Note: Earlier this week, Djokovic communicated that he found a new sponsor: A Swiss luxury watch brand. Federer and Nadal are both also sponsored by watch companies. It seems like Djokovic is catching up in this category, too.

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Filed under: tennis by Johannes Musseleck
on September 9, 2011 at 8:55 am CET
Tagged with: advertising • agility • andy murray • bacardi • credit suisse • difference • djokernole • endorsement • feeling • flushing meadows • forbes • giorgio armani • hard work • hiring • ivan lendl • jimmy connors • john mcenroe • magic • mainstream compatibility • mercedes-benz • mock • new york • nick bollettieri • nike • novak djokovic • perfectionist • power • rafael nadal • recruiting • roger federer • rolex • serbia • sergio tacchini • switzerland • tennis • twitter • us open • watches

Totilas. No, not Tortillas, this has nothing to do with Mexican food. Tortilas is a wonder horse. A legend in dressage riding (to all of you getting a bit nervous now: Don’t be afraid, this will only be a short excursion to dressage, I will come to soccer in a minute…).

The stallion who was born and raised in the Netherlands holds the World Record score in Grand Prix Freestyle dressage, he was a huge hope for the Dutch for the 2012 Olympic games, where they were expecting to be able to beat their rivals Germany with Totilas’ help.

However, in 2010, disaster struck for the Dutch: Totilas’ owner sold the horse to – Germany.

The Dutch equestrian Federation issued the following statement: “With much sadness – and that is a euphemism – we were informed of the sale of Totilas to Paul Schockemöhle”, and Dutch Olympic Champion Anky van Grunsven put it like this: “This is really, really bad for us. A horse like this won’t come again so quickly”. A very emotional topic.
Today at the European Championships, Totilas will have his first international start for Germany, taking place, ironically, in Rotterdam, Holland.

New owner Schockemöhle, himself former Olympic silver medalist (equestrian) comments: I believe the Dutch are sportsmen. In equitation, they are the most mercantile oriented people, and they also sell a lot of horses“.
There typically aren’t any hooligans in dressage,yet fan protests are expected.

Fan protests are something another man who is, like his fellow countryman Schockemöhle, pretty aware of the rules of market, has become used to during the past few years – or let me put it this way – should have become used to: Dietmar Hopp, co-founder of software giant SAP.

In a very unusual approach in German soccer, the billionaire sponsored his local team from Hoffenheim so heavily, that they went up many leagues until finally making it to the German top-flight Bundesliga. To understand why this is so special, you have to understand that in Germany it is not allowed to any private company or individual to own a controlling stake in a professional soccer clubs. The clubs are owned by their members, many of them have a long tradition and fan/ ownership culture.

Hoffenheim has not, but they have the money from their sponsor. Fans from more traditional teams therefore have been criticizing Hopp and his Hoffenheim model for years.

One of these clubs is Borussia Dortmund, who played at Hoffenheim last Saturday. As usual, fan chants were quite aggressive against Hopp, who in the past has not always dealt with this kind of situations in a relaxed manner. But as he’s not into dressage but soccer instead, these loud criticisms (“Dietmar Hopp, son of a b…”) are what can be expected to come from the stands.

However this time, members of the Hoffenheim organization put up some loudspeakers in front of the away fans section and every time anti-Hopp songs started, they played a loud, high-pitch sound to stop Dortmund supporters from singing insulting chants.

Right now, they are in the middle of a media disaster (“Hopp-gate”) because of it, and one Dortmund supporter already sued Hoffenheim as he suffered a tinnitus at the stadium.

Yet there’s also another way of dealing with the commercial side of sports:

A few days ago, Spanish soccer player Javi Poves from Sporting Gijon quit the game at the age of 24. Poves, who mainly played in Gijon’s reserves in the third league but also already appeared in the first team, gave as a reason that “the more you know about football the more you realize it is all about money, it is rotten and kills your enthusiasm“. He feels that the money he got was only coming from the suffering of others and wanted to fight for more equality.

Upcoming weekend, the season in Spain is about to start. Well maybe. The players association threatens with a strike because of payment delays.

These were a couple of examples of where capitalism collided with emotion. They were taken from the world of sports, which is known to be very emotional, and most of the economic models there are based on the emotional involvement of the customers.

In the background of all professional sports, there are professional, economic organizations doing professional, economic things.

What these stories tell us is valid anywhere, not only in sports:

Economy must never disregard the emotional factors.

Customers are emotional, they don’t act rational. So if we come up with a rationally sound offer but don’t connect on the emotional level, we won’t be successful.

Markets behave emotional. And even those areas of the economy that are probably the least emotional one – financial markets – often stumble when market don’t behave in the way their mathematical models thought they would, but based on panic, greed or other emotions.

Emotion creates heat. It’s not just about figures, you will be criticized in fair or unfair, yet emotional, ways for emotional reasons all the time and probably you’ll do the same with others. It’s part of the game. If you can’t take the heat, stay off the kitchen. Just shouting back in a loud, high-pitch sound won’t make things better. On the contrary.

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Filed under: equitation, soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on August 18, 2011 at 12:28 pm CET
Tagged with: anky van grunsven • borussia dortmund • bundesliga • chants • criticism • dietmar hopp • dressage • dutch • emotions rational • equitation • european championships • fan culture • fan protests • financial markets • germany • grand prix freestyle • horse • insulty • javi poves • london 2012 • loudspeaker • market behavior • netherlands • noise • paul schockemöhle • payment delays • player wages • rival • rotterdam • sap • soccer (footbal) • software • spain • sporting gijon • strike • totilas • tsv 1899 hoffenheim • wonder horse • world record

In my very first post here on businessgametime.com nearly two years ago, I wrote about New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick (the topic back then was risk taking and entrepreneurial thinking). Later, when writing about personal branding, I used the example of wide receiver Chad Ochocinco. Now these two are united as the Patriots signed Ochocinco for the upcoming season.

They may seem like an unlikely combination: A coach known for demanding disciplined behavior and a flamboyant player who has nearly 2.5 million Twitter followers and a lot of experience in being fined by the NFL.

Yet there’s something that gives us the feeling it might work out: Both are extremely hard working and focused on success. And both do it their way. Belichick’s record as a coach speaks for itself, and so do Ochocincos tweets at 5 a.m. when he’s getting ready for long training session – even during the lockout period.

But Chad is not the only difficult customer for Belichick: They also hired Albert Haynesworth, who was suspended by his former team, the Washington Redskins, over conflicts with the coaching staff.

Bill Belichick believes that he will be able to find the right way of approaching the two and getting them to produce, just like he successfully did with Randy Moss and Corey Dillon.

Moss, then known for his egoistic behavior, was traded for a fourth-round draft pick, but in the three full years he spent with the Patriots, he had a stellar 3.765 receiving yards.

Dillon was traded for a second-round draft pick prior to the 2004 season in which he rushed for 1.635 yards – plus 292 in postseason – which ended with the Patriots winning the Super Bowl.

Now Haynesworth (traded for a fifth round draft pick) and Ochocinco (traded for a fifth and a sixth round draft pick). Will Belichick have success again? Most probably.

There’s just one coach who doesn’t seem to be afraid of the Patriots: New York Jets’ Rex Ryan, who knocked the Patriots out of the playoffs last season. His reaction to the Patriots trades: “I think we have to find somebody out there to beat New England besides us.”

The confidence might come from the fact tat Ryan also hired a star wide receiver last weekend: Plaxico Burress. Burress just returned from 20 months in prison which he spent for criminal possession of a handgun after shooting himself in the foot in a nightclub. He came as a free agent after the Giants released him from his contract in 2009.

So here’s my 4th short summer thought:

Managing the good is rather easy. You hire them at market value and they perform consistently as you expect it from them.

Managing the outstanding is way more difficult. It takes outstanding managers like Belichick or Ryan. Both rather special characters themselves. However, when you succeed you get outstanding performance at a bargain price, as outstanding performers are desperate to find a place where they are given an opportunity. A place where they are understood. A place where they are challenged.

At this place, great things will happen. Be that in Foxborough, New York or right at where you are.

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Filed under: (american) football by Johannes Musseleck
on August 1, 2011 at 10:13 pm CET
Tagged with: (american) football • albert haynesworth • bill belichick • chad ochocinco • corey dillon • difficult • market price • new england patriots • new york jets • nfl • outstanding • performance • plaxico burress • randy moss • rex ryan • special ones • summer thoughts • super bowl • twitter • washington redskins • wide receiver

Here’s the short summer thought no.3 – the final one on the Tour De France:

Until last week, I have never been to Alpe D’Huez, the mystical climb of the Tour De France. On Friday I finally have. And what an experience it was: Hundreds of thousands of fans from all kinds of nations celebrating together, going wild, yet staying fair and supporting the athletes all the time. From the orange sea of Dutch supporters in corner 7 to the Norwegian community a little up the hill to Luxembourgian supporters close to the finish line, Americans, Australians, Germans, French, Belgian, Swiss, Spanish, you name it.

On our drive back from the French Alps we discussed which sporting event was the best to watch. With the experience of some of the greatest sporting events in store, we concluded that it was not dependant on which sport, which performance level or which outcome it has, but on the atmosphere: The location and most importantly: The people.

Companies tend to forget that: Job description, salary or job title are important factors, but what really motivates and glues people to the company is the atmosphere. And nothing influences the atmosphere as much as how people interact with each other. Like in Alpe D’Huez, it’s fairness, openness and supporting each other what counts.

And like the Tour De France in Alpe D’Huez this comes completely free. But getting there is the challenge.

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Filed under: cycling by Johannes Musseleck
on July 25, 2011 at 9:34 pm CET
Tagged with: atmosphere • cycling • event • experience • french alps • fun • interaction • l'alpe d'huez • mountain stages • people • summer thoughts • tour de france

As promised last week, here’s my next short summer thought, again on the Tour De France:

As the Tour heads to the Alps, one thing is obvious: In flat stages, riders can be winners for a day. But if they really want to create a gap between them and their competitors, they have to be strong in the mountain stages, they have to go uphill. In the steep climbs, those in good shape can create the basis for winning the complete tour. Those that aren’t among the strongest at the most difficult stages will lose so much that they for sure won’t be amongst the winners overall.

I like this analogy.

Succeeding at the easy jobs, getting the low hanging fruits will not give you a sustainable advantage over your competition. Going where it hurts can.

It’s not a guarantee to be successful, but if you don’t it’s a guarantee for not being successful.
Any entrepreneur working Monday to Friday nine to five probably won’t create the next breakthrough startup. Anyone searching for an idea without leaving the comfort zone won’t invent the next big thing.

If we just go with the flow, we will be stuck in the flow. With no advantage over those flowing along with us.

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Filed under: cycling by Johannes Musseleck
on July 18, 2011 at 9:23 pm CET
Tagged with: breakthrough • competition • competitive advantage • creativity • cycling • entrepreneur • french alps • idea • low hanging fruits • mountain stages • summer thoughts • tour de france • uphill

When the Tour De France is on, you know that it’s the time of the year to go on vacation. As hopefully you will do so, I will not bomb you with extensive blog posts during the next couple of weeks, but with just a few short thoughts that you may or may not reflect on when having a cocktail on the beach.

So the Tour De France has started, and last Sunday saw a remarkable ninth stage: A group of five cyclists broke away, one of them Dutch rider Johnny Hoogerland. After passing over a couple of mountains, it was clear that Hoogerland would capture the dotted jersey of the best climber, so he could concentrate on the last few kilometers of the day and the fight for winning the stage. He looked in good shape and was one of the favorites to win, when suddenly a French TV car tried to avoid a tree on the left hand side of the road and cut into rider Juan Antonio Flecha, who then ran into Hoogerland, making the latter fall of his bike into a barbed wire fence. If you haven’t seen the crash, the video is here.

There are tons of escort vehicles at the Tour De France, some from TV and radio, some from the teams, some from tour director and medical service. It makes sense to have them, as they support the tour and enhance the “product”. However, when they harm the cyclists, there’s something going badly wrong.

I just wondered about the escort vehicles we have in our organizations. Those parts of it that are not the “riders”, i.e. those that are not operational in selling, production, etc.
We have so many units that support the business. From finance to strategy, from HR to legal. Yet I have the feeling that they interfere with the “riders” a lot more often then escort vehicles at the Tour De France.

It’s when supporting units make it more complicated to sell for sales. It’s when supporting units come up with ideas that are far from what the market is looking for. It’s when supporting units don’t support but look for support instead.

Hoogerland fought on and even finished the stage. His result was bad as he came in 17 minutes after the other riders, and he was hurt. But he carried on. Just like sales reps carry on and sell again despite being hit by someone who was originally meant to support him.

Things won’t change this way. Not for Hoogerland. Not for you. And results will continue to be worse than they could, and people will be hurt, yet not physically.

Do we really need that many escort vehicles? And how can we make sure that those that are there really support instead of hindering?

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Filed under: cycling by Johannes Musseleck
on July 13, 2011 at 11:48 pm CET
Tagged with: barbed wire fence • cycling • dutch • finance • holland • hr • johnny hoogerland • juan antonio flecha • legal • netherlands • production • sales • staff functions • strategy • summer thoughts • support • tour de france • tv car

Currently, two soccer World Cups are played in parallel. While in Germany, the FIFA Women’s World Cup is on, Mexico hosts the FIFA U-17 World Cup, the tournament of the best teams of players aged 17 and under.

At which of the two tournaments do you think the higher quality soccer is played?

It’s obviously tough to compare, but given that some of the female teams played against male youth teams during their preparation phase, I would, based on the results of these test matches, go as far as to say that the Women’s World Champion would not have a very good chance of winning a match against the male U-17 World Champion. Just to give an example: Germany, the winner of the previous two Women’s World Cups, tested against a couple of U-15 sides of male German league teams – players two years younger than the U-17 and not even a national team – and ever there lost some matches rather clearly.

Does it matter? Of course not. At the Women’s World Cup, teams will not play male U-17 teams, but other female national teams. And those games are a lot tighter than they used to be at previous tournaments, so it’s very interesting to watch. Most encounters are decided my narrow margins and the spectators seem to be well entertained by the event. And while the average attendance at the U-17 tournament is at 15.700 so far, each match at the Women’s World Cup has been seen by nearly 10.000 spectators more than that on average – 25.600.

If we look at soccer and these tournaments as products, that’s an important point: Not only the “objective” quality level of a product or service (if it existed) decides about your success. The perception of the customer and the relative performance compared to your competitors does. To start with, markets can be seen as closed systems, in which you will sell if you can offer your customers a better or comparable perceived value than your competitors at a better or comparable price (you should be able to offer at least one of the “betters”). If you’re a female team and you play better than other female teams you will do fine at the World Cup. If the matches are tight and interesting, people will like it no matter if some teams in other tournaments (if some companies in other market) perform better.

The problem is: It doesn’t stop there. Many companies feel comfortable in their position. Their products or services are slightly better than those of their direct competition, they are selling and they earn some money, maybe each year a little bit less than the year before, but nothing to worry about. Changing things seems like risking this comfortable status quo. That’s why they don’t change. They continue. And continue. And continue. They don’t realize how the market around them evolves. Or they do, but don’t have the guts to questions what they are doing. When finally they fall behind, it’s too late to recover. Continued to death.

Great companies are different. They try to find a male U-15 team to play against in preparation for their tournament/ market. They are not afraid of being humiliated by 14 or 15 year old boys, because it shows them that a lot can be done better. It shows them that they’re nowhere near perfect. And it shows them that others – their competitors – also have access to that information and will use it.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog (thank you!), you will be surprised that I come up with learnings as basic as the following three today, and I’m sure you’ve heard it all before in a comparable form. Yet I feel like it’s worth getting back to basics from time to time, so please allow me to remind us:

1) There’s always someone better than you. Sometimes he’s not in your direct neighborhood, sometime he’s just next to you. But he exists. Don’t ignore it, try to learn from him and let it motivate you to try even harder.

2) Your competitors will improve. They won’t stand still. You have no guarantee they won’t improve faster than you do, so you better hurry up. The only thing that’s for sure is that if you won’t improve, they will get you.

3) If you’re not open to change, you will be changed. But in this case, change for good is not an option.

Final note: I did not intend to discredit female soccer by comparing it to male U-17’s and honestly I hope we finally all got over this male/ female thing. I was just trying to illustrate the fact that no matter how close the performance levels of different competitors in one market are to each other, the aim can always be set a lot higher than that. And by the way: Both tournaments mentioned offer very entertaining and classy sport, so in case you haven’t done so yet: Try to watch some of it.

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Filed under: soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on July 6, 2011 at 4:45 pm CET
Tagged with: attendance • change • comfort zone • competition • female • fifa • fifa u-17 world cup • fifa women’s world cup • germany • improvement • learning • male • mexico • motivation • perception • quality level • relative performance • soccer (football) • u-15 • u-17 • world champion

The unthinkable has happened: River Plate, the proud Club Atlético River Plate from Buenos Aires, Argentina, has been relegated to the second division “Nacional B” after losing a two-leg playoff to Belgrano de Córdoba. It’s the first relegation in the 110 year long history of the club, a history during which they won a record 33 national league titles, two Copas Libertadores and one Intercontinental Cup (1986).

For River Plate, one of the two giant clubs in Argentina (70% of all soccer fans in Argentina either support River Plate or rivals Boca Juniors), this is a disaster. For those of you not too familiar with soccer in Argentina: Just imagine Real Madrid going down to the Segunda División in Spain as a comparison.

The club, nicknamed “Millionarios”- millionaires – since being the first team to spend big money for players in the 1930s, has rasied some of the greatest Argentinian players ever: Alfredo di Stéfano, Mario Kempes or Gabriel Batistuta to name but a few of the endless list. However, for one of them the glory days seem further away than for all others: Daniel Passarella.

Passarella, captain of the Argentinian team that won the World Cup in 1978, is currently president of River Plate. He took over in December 2009, when the team’s performance was already weak both on the pitch and financially, and didn’t manage to turn things around. For many River Plate fans, the former hero is now public enemy no. 1, as they blame him for the relegation.

River Plate fans are generally not quite known for being unemotional, and in the past week they have put up a showcase for catastrophic fan behavior:

On June 22, River Plate lost the first leg at Belgrano 2-0. Just a few minutes into the second half, the match had to be suspended for ca. 20 minutes, after River Plate fans had invaded the pitch, pushing and taunting their team’s players.
One day later, police had to stop a few hundred fans that wanted to “discuss things” with president Passarella.
Two days later, fans tried to occupy the (empty) stadium, but police was able to stop them again.
One more day later, the tension came to a climax. The “El Monumental” stadium was filled to the last seat for the second leg – well actually it was filled even more than that. Estimates are that 12.000 – 20.000 more people than the allowed 40.000 spectators were inside Argentina’s national stadium. But all their shouting wasn’t enough; their team didn’t get the job done. One minute prior to the end of the match, first hooligans came onto the pitch. Seconds later, the referee stopped the match and River Plate were relegated.

What followed were some of the most intense riots ever after a soccer match. The teams were kept in the middle of a huge group of security personnel before being guided out through a tunnel. Fans started to tear down fences and police began to shoot with water cannons into the stands. When leaving the stadium, River hooligans (the main groups calls themselves “Los Borrachos del Tablon” – the drunkards from the stands), demolished everything they could find, like concession stands inside the stadium, and set cars in the stadium parking on fire.

Minutes after the match, smoke was ascending from the stadium and the air was filled with sirens from police cars and ambulances. Fans of visiting team Belgrano were held in their block for more than three hours until the situation had cooled off a little bit. Later on the riots continued downtown where stores on the main road were demolished. Nearly 90 people were injured and the stadium is damaged so severely that it is doubtful if the final of the upcoming Copa América, which was scheduled to take place at the Monumental on July 24, can be played there or will have to be moved to another stadium.

Your customers won’t set your office building on fire in case they will be disappointed with your product or service. They won’t destroy your city. Yet the story of die-hard River Plate fans – probably the most brand loyal customers you can imagine –made me think about the relationship between customer loyalty and disappointment.

I did a quick and dirty research on the topic and found that it seems like this topic is not considered very much in scientific literature yet, where customer loyalty is mainly linked to factors like satisfaction with the product or service, social bond between seller and buyer (most notably in business-to-business settings), trust or information. Only some approaches like “Customer Life Cycle Management” consider the dynamic of customer relationships over time and its significance on situations when disappointment occurs (if you know about more detailed studies into this direction, please leave a comment and let me know).

As I feel there’s something missing, let’s look at this topic with the (admittedly extreme) River Plate example at the back of our head:

First, the history of the relationship plays an important role. If customers have always been satisfied, a disappointment will have a different impact than for customers that have been disappointed a couple of times before. While the latter will probably either stay with you as they are already used to bad performance (no, that’s not due to good marketing, in most cases it’s due to poor performance of your competition, a situation that usually won’t last forever) or silently walk away, disappointing customers that are not used to it may create a much bigger dynamic.

River Plate fans are used to being successful, with their club being the most successful in Argentina ever. For them, the height of drop is bigger than for others. Or did you hear about major riots by fans of Club Atlético Huracán or Quilmes Atlético Club – the two other two clubs that were relegated?

If you satisfied your customers all of the time before, you feel like you’re in a strong position – and obviously they are still your customers, so things could be worse. The issue is that you a) don’t know how forgiving customer would be when disappointed as you lack the experience and b) you have no idea about the drop height.

Expectations are growing with good performance, and many great companies feel the implicitly rising pressure not to fail, as the advent of philosophies trying to avoiding mistakes like e.g. Six Sigma demonstrates.

So will customers that are happy today be forgiving in case you make a mistake? Maybe. River Plate fans were forgiving when single matches were lost, but they weren’t after their team played three bad years in a row (the teams to be relegated are determined by the average points gained by a team during the last three years in Argentina – a rule that usually supports huge teams like River Plate). Maybe not.

The severity of the result for the customer plays an important factor (relegation is a very severe result for River Plate fans) and so does your behavior in situations in which you fail. River Plate fans were disappointed by the crisis management of Daniel Passarella, who e.g. took over the training sessions from the coach during the last week, making things appear even more chaotic).

Which brings us back to the height of drop. Marketing textbooks tell us that a high level of product/brand/service involvement on customer side is great as it creates strong bonds. Social media evangelists tell you the same. And they’re both right. But: River Plate fans are as involved as customers get – and their reaction to failure was as strong as it can get.

While your customers won’t start a physical riot, they have the means to start a “soft riot”: When formerly loyal customers spread their bad experience through social media channels, they are credible and know all the details, so potential damage will be huge.

After the relegation and the riots taking off, president Daniel Passarella stated that he had no plans to resign as his feet were “firmly planted”. When he took over the club, they already had played the worst season ever in team history and debt was already huge. He managed to improve the performance, but not to a sufficient extend. Which brings me to the last learning of the River Plate disaster: When you receive negative emotions from your customers due to a bad performance, don’t wait for fairness. It won’t be fair, but you can’t blame anyone but you. Instead, take action: get into the conversation, take over responsibility, try to reduce the negative effects, reduce the drop height – put simply: Avoid relegation!

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Filed under: soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on June 28, 2011 at 12:20 am CET
Tagged with: 1978 • alfredo di stefano • argentina • b2b • belgrano de cordoba • boca juniors • brand loyaly • buenos aires • business-to-business • club atletico huracan • club atletico river plate • concession stands • copa américa • copa libertadores • customer loyalty • daniel passarella • disappointment • drop height • dynamic • el monumental • expectations • fairness • fifa world cup • gabriel batistuta • height of drop • information • involvement • los borrachos del tablon • mario kempes • millionarios • mistake • nacional b • performance • quilmes atletico club • real madrid • relegation • river plate • satisfaction • severity • soccer (football) • social bond • social media • trust

I just came across an article published in the Financial Times last week on how soccer clubs have been starting to use more and more player performance statistics over the past years when trying to find players to hire. The article (“A football (soccer) revolution” by Simon Kuper) ranges from the first steps taken by managers like Arsène Wenger in the late 1980’s to today’s analysis tools that try to model complex situations during games and create correlations between individual behavior and team success. It feels like computers could be telling clubs which players to trade and how to build up the team without any human intervention.

So will we really be building our sports teams around the needs and requirements of computers in the future? Well, this may sound like pretty unlikely science fiction and probably even the best computers won’t be able to predict when a striker will have a bad day again in the next matches. Interestingly, on the very same day the FT article was published, “Fast Company “published an article that is not related to sports, but has a headline that made me stumble: “5 Tips That Make Your Meetings iPad-Friendly”.

Not enough that computers may tell you how to build soccer teams, now your meetings have to be designed to meet computers’ needs? Not quite. In essence, the article tells you how to use the capabilities of the iPad to make meetings even more productive and gives recommendations like using a stand or which app to use for taking notes – so basically it’s a lot more harmless than the headline suggested. But it made me reflect about the situation in our companies:

The basic idea is that computers and software support the business, strategy and processes. So software programmers collect requirements from those in the business, design according to these business requirements, develop and test with the business to make sure the software doesn’t disrupt the business. That’s pretty much like Manchester City using software to identify a midfielder with an 80% pass accuracy to support their existing midfield.

Nearly all relationships between companies and software work like this. Companies e.g. offering business process management software or ERP systems earn a fortune with this traditional model.

However, what if it was the other way around? What if we would go for the extreme model of computers telling clubs which capabilities they lack and which players to buy – or in our context: What if we not only designed our meetings for iPads, but our business for software? Jumping too far? Well, maybe.

But let’s look at it from this angle: The evolution of software development as a discipline has been a lot faster than the development of economic theory over the past couple of years. It’s been mainly driven by the goal to be more efficient and effective and some of the brightest minds in the world have been involved. Therefore, most probably some of the approaches and solutions found in software development are quite clever and creative.

So why not learn from it? Just like soccer coaches try to learn from software what is really relevant to be successful, I tried to come up with some things managers in business can learn from software and software development.

This list is in no particular order and clearly not extensive. I just put together a couple of points, hoping to inspire some of us to think further and maybe come up with more ideas on how to improve management approaches by learning from software trends.

- Frontend vs. Backend thinking

While traditional business strategy is still often relying on ideas like the Porter U-curve, telling companies that they can be either quality or cost leader, in computing we differentiate between frontend and backend. While the back-end is where processes have to be performed as quick, effective, reliable and cheap as possible, the frontend has to be as user-(customer-) friendly as possible.
We not only need to think about where to best put up the line between frontend and backend – this also calls for a completely new job description: Who can serve as the middleware in our companies? People that understand backend processes (production, supply chain, etc.) and customers and their requirements (frontend) at the same time. They will become the success factor for companies that are trying to bridge the gap between being cost-efficient and quality/value leaders at the same time.

- Versioning

We are used to having software in different versions and improvements added instantly whenever a group of them are ready to go. In business we are not. When defining the setup of organizations, we are always looking for the big bang. Everything has to be well defined and durable, and organizational structures will stay intact for years – often until the top manager changes.
And people like it. They want to know where they belong and what their responsibility is. Yet this doesn’t allow for improvement to be added on the fly. So often when we realize that our setup has a weakness, we wait until the weaknesses add up to a big problem. That’s not very effective.
If we could develop organizations into being flexible and comfortable with more organizational changes, we could have something like beta versions of organizational setups. Something we think might be quite good but we want to test first, always being ready to change things.

- Distributed Systems

Despite having the technology in place to have people working together which are not in the same geographical or organizational location, we tend to create local organizations in one place. And even if we decide to set up a “project organization”, project members are moved into one place or virtual organization to guarantee for focus and intact command lines. In contrast, in distributed computing tasks are moved to the node in the network which is best suited to perform a job, maybe because it has better data available or capabilities that are more suitable for the job. This creates a better availability of the best resources and allows for scaling the system up in case more resources are required. If we wanted to transfer the idea to our companies, we would have to a) allow for nodes to fail, i.e. for project members to not deliver the expected results, which means be more flexible than most companies today, and b) have trust in the project members – also something not all companies are strong in today.

- Search Engines

In the internet, the most important players are not those creating content anymore, but those driving traffic to the relevant content. That’s why Google and Facebook are the highest valued internet companies these days.
Why don’t we have search engines in our companies? And I’m not talking software this time. How about human search engines? People that crawl the company just like the Google engine does, in this case by wandering around, talking to others to understand what they are doing and how. People that host social exchange just like Facebook does by bringing the right people together. People that answer searches – “I know someone who could help you”. While many argue that knowledge management in companies has failed, as computers can’t perfectly manage the complexity, how about a human approach?
Even today, there are people who try, people that connect others. But these people are usually those that are heavily loaded with work anyway and have very limited resources. Full-time company-internal scouts won’t create a positive business case instantly, as the value they create probably can’t be easily measured. But how would you measure the value Google creates? Yet, we all agree it is enormous.

- Agile Development

While traditional software development collected requirements and built software based on those requirements (waterfall approach), agile development uses teams with members from different functions that jointly develop software from scratch in multiple iterations, learning and improving from iteration to iteration.
Interestingly, this approach is not existing in software development only, but in other business contexts, too: The basic idea is identical with the idea of design thinking as promoted by design companies like IDEO for developing all kinds of products or services – not (only) software.
Definitely worth having a closer look at.

These are just a few ideas, and there can be lots more. Just think about how we could translate e.g. open source approaches or object oriented programming to the business context.
So what are your ideas? How could we learn from software development just like soccer coaches today learn from analytical tools? At the end of the day it’s all about building a strong and capable team that beats the competition – in both contexts.

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Filed under: soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on June 22, 2011 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: agile development • agility • backend • business process management • computers • connect • correlations • cost leadership • design thinking • distributed systems • erp systems • facebook • fast company • financial times • flexibility • frontend • google • ideo • ipad • iteration • manchester city • michael e. porter • middleware • organizational setup • performance statistics • processes • project organization • quality leadership • resources • responsibility • search engines • simon kuper • soccer (football) • software • software development • strategy • trust • u curve • versioning • virtual organization • waterfall approach

What a great series the NBA Finals have been. I actually have covered both teams here before: The Miami Heat prior to the season when discussing the “War for Talent” and Mavericks owner Mark Cuban when speaking about the importance of “playing”, but this series gave so much interesting insights and ideas that I tried to put together 10 learnings from it that can easily be transferred to the business world and to our work environment. You’re invited to share your views or add your findings as comments.

1. Work ethics

Being great is not only a question of being talented, but of working hard, too. Dalles super star Dirk Nowitzki is known to be one of the hardest workers in the league. Every year, he only takes a few weeks off, and spends the rest of the off season practicing the basics. When he was sick during the finals, he didn’t use the fever as an excuse; he just carried on and worked harder than ever.

Opponent Chris Bosh had it right after the final game: “He has worked very hard, for a very long time and he deserves it. I think we can take a page out of their book and really just pay attention to people’s work ethic and how much time they put into the game. Obviously, what we did wasn’t enough.”

2. Sense of purpose

The Mavs were a team of veterans, but not of veterans which have already won a lot before. Jason Kidd, 38, lost two NBA Finals, Jason Terry, 33 and Dirk Nowitzki, 32, lost one bitterly against the Miami Heat five years ago. And the franchise never won the trophy before, either.

This whole Mavericks team had just one point on the agenda: To finally win the title. When Nowitzki had a bad first half in the final game, Terry took him aside and told him to continue pushing, using the words “remember ’06!”.

It made them tough to beat. When Miami already felt like they had won game two, Dallas came back from a 15 point deficit in the final 7 minutes and 14 seconds.

When everybody shares a common sense of purpose, a common vision, a common goal, great things can happen. It can build people up when they are down, it gives stamina and believe.

3. Don’t only hire the mainstream

13 years ago, everybody called Don Nelson crazy for drafting a tall, skinny, goofy German called Dirk.

He saw the talent, not the image. Well done.

4. Humbleness

Many leaders are loud and in your face. Great leaders don’t have to, especially in situations in which they could afford to.

Mark Cuban is not known for being a quiet and humble man. He is very outspoken and always aggressively protecting his team. However, during the playoffs while his team was outperforming opponent after component, he was not giving interviews. Finally after the game, when many were expecting him to get back to the loud mode, he asked to present the trophy not to him, the current team owner, but to the founder and first owner of the Mavericks, Donald Carter, instead. In an interview minutes later, he even defended LeBron James and said that a lot of the criticism he received wasn’t justified. Humbleness beats schadenfreude.

5. Mentoring is not for the weak

Seconds after Dirk left the field with tears in his eyes, cameras caught another German with wet eyes in the stands. Holger Geschwindner has often been referred to as Nowitzki’s shooting coach. In reality, he’s a lot more than that. He discovered Nowitzki as a kid and coached him technically and mentally ever since. He’s the one #41 trusts, the one he goes to when in bad form or doubt, the one offering unmasked feedback all the time. A real mentor. Someone who made a world class athlete even stronger.

Using a mentor is not a sign of weakness. It’s a step that can bring people to the next level.

6. Be yourself

Chris Bosh: “There’s nothing extra. There’s nothing super. (Dirk) was just himself. And in these situations, I think when you’re yourself and you play your basketball, the best things always happen.”

Not only valid for playing basketball.

7. Broadness beats stars

Miami relied on their three super stars, while the Mavericks were a lot broader. In the final game, the Mavericks’ bench players scored 43 points compared to 20 points by Miami. Dallas could afford to have a player in a slump like Nowitzki in the first half of that game, and one of their stars, Caron Butler, wasn’t even able to play at all in the finals. Miami could not compensate for those situations in which James, Bosh or Wade did not perform at their limit.

We tend to overload the most talented people in our teams, in our organizations, with work and expectations instead of developing broadness to make sure the “stars” can deliver when it is needed. While LeBron James looked tired towards the end of each game, Kidd and Nowitzki, despite being a couple of years older, were able to heat up as others carried them earlier in the games.

8. If you promise a lot, you better deliver

Less than a year ago, any discussion on the NBA was all about LeBron James. Making a prime time TV show out of his announcement to go to Miami was seen as over the top by many. And many waited to see him fall. What he did – especially in the fourth quarters of the finals.

The louder you are, the more you promise to those watching, to the market and to your customers, the more pressure to deliver you put onto yourself. This is something to consider. Showing self-confidence and promising a lot surely has positive effects, and James’ contract in Miami obvisously isn’t too bad, but you should be aware that it can have an impact on your ability to really make things happen the way you expect it from you – and others expect it from you. It’s a thin line.

9. Have trust in your guys

Mark Cuban had many options to trade Dirk Nowitzki. He didn’t. He didn’t bring in Kobe Bryant to replace Dirk when he could have. Instead, he told Dirk that he would stick with him and that he trusted him. Nowitzki paid back. Even before the season, when the trade market was heating up with e.g. LeBron James going to Miami, Nowitzki – then a free agent – signed for Dallas again, trusting Cuban he would build a great team around his leader.

Give trust and get trust back. So simple. So effective.

10. Team work

Finally, a quote from basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson:

“This series proves that a team is much bigger than individuals”.

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Filed under: basketball by Johannes Musseleck
on June 13, 2011 at 11:41 pm CET
Tagged with: basketball • be yourself • broadness • chris bosh • common goal • common vision • dallas mavericks • deliver • dirk nowitzki • don nelson • donald carter • draft • dwyane wade • earvin "magic" johnson • expectations • free agent • holger geschwindner • humbleness • image • improvement • jason kidd • jason terry • lebron james • mark cuban • mavs • mentoring • miami heat • nba • next level • pressure • promises • schadenfreude • self-confidence • sense of purpose • stars • talent • team work • trust • weakness • work ethics