Few valuable lessons from the game of Football for the world of corporate - writes Swati Nema - mother of Aditya Nema . Aditya is one of our budding student.
Football is the game of passion, strength, grit and many similar adjectives. I had read and heard these adjectives but never witnessed them until my tryst with the game occurred when my ten year old kid made a declaration that he is ‘serious ‘about his decision of becoming a football player. As this providential event coincided with my entry into a startup I was able to understand and derive few lessons from this game which are quite pertinent and handy for corporates.
Strategy and Planning
Understanding the strength and weakness of the team, converting them into advantages and devising a strategy is one aspect of the game which is quite applicable to a company venturing into any area .The most noteworthy aspect of this game is its dynamism. A startup has a very special lesson to learn from this game in terms of the agility, flexibility and rapid changes which demands constant adjustments in the strategy or game plan. This is quite analogous to changes in technology and market conditions. An enterprise not only needs to assess the future opportunities in the market, but also needs to adapt and tweak its plans time to time to adjust to dynamic conditions in the sector it is operating.
Team work
Team work is an integral and most significant factor for success of any organization, unfortunately it has become such a cliché nowadays that most team building activities have reduced to team outings or team dinners. The most important lesson which a corporate can learn from this game is the impact of of timey communication among team players (and that between players and coaches) can change the course of game in no time, and a lack of it or lack of understanding leads to gross failures. The linkage of success or failure of the game to the involvement, dedication and accountability of each and every player is more evident in football than in any other game. Incorporation of similar kind of involvement of employees and timely communication all across could surely reflect in success of any organization.
Time management
‘Work fills the time available; this law of Parkinson’s has proven correct time and again in most enterprises. The impact of reducing the amount of time spent in postponing or stretching a task is enormous. This fact is quite explicit in this game of football where the entire game is executed in a very crisp time frame. A few minutes lost in indecisiveness or losing control of the self and the entire game is out of hand. Tracking the time in terms of productive hours and not in terms of working hours is what this game teaches us in the aspect of time management Football has several other unexplored aspects in terms of teaching which can be understood and applied to leadership, goal setting, perseverance and many such life skills. Hopefully I am able to elicit more lessons from my journey through this game.