<b>Kanika Datta:</b> Business by any other game

Would you consider Tom Brady, captain of the New England Patriots, a business guru? Or Virat Kohli, for that matter?
 
Jack and Suzy Welch, the prolific husband-and-wife team that discovered a new career dispensing inane management advice, have not pronounced on the latter (they’ve probably never heard of him) but they have anointed thus the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls.
 
The connection they see is in Mr Brady’s explanation for his team’s stunning win over the Atlanta Falcons from 25 points down, an achievement that is deemed near-impossible in American football. “That’s the way you play until the end,” he had said. 

 

Cut to Jack and Suzy’s effusions: “He was talking about endurance. About sticking with a challenge when it’s difficult and daunting in extremis. About not surrendering — even when the odds feel impossible. About never losing the hope that if you keep trying — switching things up, refining your plays, overcoming your weaknesses — there is always a chance you can still win.
 
“So true, Tom. But we would add: That is business, people. That is how competition works, and how careers work.”               
 
Well, yes, but do we really need Mr Brady’s performance to reiterate a well-worn point? Come to think of it, how come it didn’t occur to Team Jack and Suzy to mention the undeniably superb team performance that went into New England Patriot’s amazing comeback? “It’s teamwork, people. That’s how businesses work, and how careers work,” they could have written just as easily.

 
Okay, so maybe the former chief executive officer (CEO) of General Electric and former editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review, shrewd professionals that they are, were cashing in on a “positive” trending story. Nothing wrong there. What they did unwittingly underline is the innate silliness of the Life Coach business. Like spiritual gurus in India, they enjoy a fast-growing demand in these turbulent times and, like the former, they look for glib answers.
 
Champion sportsmen make for easy inspirational material. But any life coach who cared to examine the issue with the minimum rigour would know that the connection is inherently illusory. Consider, for instance, that no one has yet spoken of Mr Kohli’s impressive and multiple feats in similar terms. Maybe that’s because Mr Kohli’s own explanation for his current spell of brilliance is an inconvenient truth. He says he has few friends and, therefore, fewer distractions, hardly the stuff you can realistically parley into stock spiel about “Achieving Your Goals”.   

 
The bigger problem is that sports is a short-term enterprise. A game lasts a few hours, an athlete’s peak career rarely more than 10 years. There is a world of difference between extreme commitment for abbreviated periods of time within a familiar environment (a known playing field) and the long slog of sustaining a business or career in real life with all its unpredictability.
 
Manchester United’s star manager Alex Ferguson remains an in-demand invitee to corporate dos to dispense management advice — he wrote a book on leadership after he retired. His uniquely profane and abrasive style is certainly impossible to emulate but was geared to an inherently different endeavour. That probably explains why Sir Alex did not leave a lasting legacy at United after 27 years in charge — unlike Neutron Jack after two decades as GE’s CEO.

 
Sportspeople can afford to lead wild lives after they retire in their 30s or 40s, many do — recall the wreckage of Diego Maradona’s post-retirement life (who knows how many friends Mr Kohli will make when his cricketing days are over!). Successful businesses and real-life careers require tenacity and discipline of quite a different order.
 
War is the next big analogy in the inspirational management armoury, no doubt because business is still mainly a guy thing and men like to think of themselves as warriors and generals (preferably the latter) plotting strategies and tactics to counter the competition. I have lost count of the number of offices that call their conference rooms “war rooms”. Books have been written on management lessons from Napoleon and Alexander, on what military units can teach businesses and variations thereof.

 
Here, too, the link is illusory. War is about destruction; business is about creation. Winning in battle means someone else loses; no realistic CEO would think this way (except, it seems, Donald Trump). The facetious link the Welches have drawn between business and Mr Brady’s performance suggests that, more than ever in this troubled era of uber-globalisation, those in the inspirational business urgently need to think of more insightful ways to convey their message.