Businesses Need to Start Benchmarking Sports Teams

September 29, 2021 | by Keith Yeater

Toyota and Danaher are just a couple of companies that are held up as examples of world-class operating systems and best-in-class lean organizations. While there is much to learn from these companies, I contend business can learn as much by benchmarking good sports teams. In fact, most average sports teams have exceeded some of the best run companies in the implementation and establishment of a lean or continuous improvement culture.   

You are probably thinking this is crazy. There can’t be any parallels between sports and business.  Hopefully, over the next few paragraphs, I can help you see it the way I do, and maybe you will be able to apply some of these thoughts in your organization. Let’s start with strategy. Just like in business, it is important that a team starts with configuring the type of strategy they want or need to play. In football, for example, a team must decide if they will be a run-first or pass-first type of offense, or a 4-3 or 3-4 defense. (I know for those not into American football this makes little sense.  But trust me it is about what type of team you need).  Once the strategy is determined, the General Managers and Coaches can start to build the team that fits the strategy they are deploying. Isn’t this true in business as well? If we are in a growth mode, we need the right sales and marketing team to support the growth. If we need to really focus on operational performance, then our operations team must be suited to drive operational performance.   

I have often heard in sports, “It’s about the Janes and Joes, not X’s and O’s,” meaning it’s about the talent or capabilities of the people not just the direction of the leaders.  Talent matters in all cases. Sports teams with the best talent are typically able to overcome most adversities that arise in competition. Why wouldn’t the same be true in business? We in business should always be striving to attract and retain the very best talent suited for our organization’s strategy. Does this mean, like in sports when someone better is available, we should cut or fire our existing team members? Of course not, we need to work with our existing team members to bring out their best. We need to “coach” them up if they are willing to be coached.   

This idea of coaching leads to my next point: Sports teams spend several hours each day training and preparing for the next competition. They work on conditioning their bodies to perform at peak. They watch films to understand what must be improved and what they can do better. Finally, they practice running the plays, so it becomes muscle memory for the action. Think about your business. How many times have you said or heard excuses like, “we can’t afford to take people off the line to provide training,” or “they have done this for years, so they know what to do”? Do you think Tom Brady (arguably the greatest quarterback of all time) still practices?  He has been playing quarterback his entire life, so he doesn’t need to practice, right? Wrong.  If we are not training, educating, or challenging all our team members in business, we are losing the opportunity to capitalize on our key resources—our people. 

Nowadays, sports rely heavily on data. Have you seen the movie Money Ball? It explains how data has been used to change the game of baseball. Coaches, team leaders and key decisionmakers use statistics to help a team field the best players to win. Data has become critically important to help sports teams win games and championships. Teams use this data to predict what the opponent is going to do in any given scenario, like which pitch to throw to a particular batter. In business, how often do we ignore or forget to look at the data and miss out on having it help us predict how a process is going to perform? Typically, we gather lots of information and data but don’t act upon it. Can you imagine if a baseball manager knows a particular batter hits the fast ball with regularity and misses the curve ball with equal probability, but then with a game on the line, he tells the pitcher to throw the fast ball? Of course not. Too often, however, we try to run our businesses without looking at the data. With this lack of insight, we set ourselves up for failure. For instance, I was recently working with a business that was accepting sales orders inside of lead-time, knowing they could not meet the dates. They were out of build capacity, and the supply base was significantly delinquent in the supply of critical parts.  What benefit is there to the customers or internal team members when both are set up for failure?   

Even with all the data and best game plan, things will go awry.  Famous heavy-weight boxer Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The same is true in business. Those punches come in a variety of ways. In sports, the coach must make in-game adjustments based on what the competition is doing. Similarly, in business, the leaders of the organization must recognize the punches and help the organization adjust plans, strategies, and approaches to be successful. No truer example of this was demonstrated than when COVID first impacted businesses in the US.  Businesses closed while people tried to figure out what should be done. Leadership teams quickly strategized to allow employees to work from home, and they increased sanitation measures and installed protective shields to allow people to work onsite while maintaining proper social distancing and so on.  Leaders used data to understand the root causes of their circumstances and adjusted their game plans. 

My final comparison involves visual management, or what we know in sports as “keeping score”. In baseball, the scoreboard provides players, coaches, and fans all the information to instantly know the key elements of the game including winning or losing. In business, the visual management and control system (VMCS) should be just as effective. In a business’s case, however, the VMCS should help the operators, supervisors and managers adjust their gameplan based on the interrupters (punches) of the day. When effectively and actively made part of the culture, a business will quickly outperform its competition that isn’t using this process. Just imagine a baseball team—one with the scoreboard and one without. Who will react to game situations better?   

While many of the analogies here are quite simple in nature, I hope they illustrate the point that a business can learn from sports. Sports have figured out the lean system, and in business, we should take heed and “lean” into the lean system with equal vigor using proven tools and techniques. Just like a coach whose job depends on winning, we can equally deploy the same mindset as business leaders.

About Competitive Business Solutions (CBS) 

Competitive Business Solutions consultants are masters of world-class operating and lean sigma principles. Creative problem-solvers throughout the improvement process—from initial discovery and strategic solution development to implementation and knowledge transfer—CBS consultants take pride in their client relationships, working side-by-side with every member of onsite teams to identify performance issues quickly and effectively, with significant and sustainable business improvement as a result.