I thought that I had placed a review about this book by Clive Gilson on Amazon but it appears not, anyway this is a great book that takes a critical analysis of the World’s Best Sporting Organisations, comes up with a theory and shows how it can be applied to Sport and Business. Nowadays they are both joined at the hip.
Some of the Sporting Organisation have now dipped a bit, the Aussie team for example have just been beaten by an English team and Williams Formula One have had a dip in form of late but both will be bouncing back and it won?t be just the bowlers.
The English team have I think read this book, studied the men from Oz and applied the theory, certainly the English Premier Football club Bolton have had help from Clive Gilson?s work and you can see that although they are still a relatively small club with limited resources when compared with Man United they are performing exceptionally well and competing in Europe.
The theory in essence is simple you need a couple of key inspirational players in your team who you can use to pass on not only your direction and inspiration but there?s as well. They are like key inspirational managers who drive from within the company ethos, they motivate they inspire not only the other players but everyone who works for the club. The clubs have excellent communication networks, Williams always hold post race reviews after each race to learn and understand what occurred.
Everyone from the star players to the cleaners knows and understands their role in the organisiation and how they are a key cog in its success. They go out into the community and spread the word. Everyone in the club has a belief that they are a part in the success.
When things get tough as they do from time to time then everyone pulls together even more, there is a great sense of trust, an open an honest assessment of what is happening and how each person can contribute to driving the dream forward. There is an inner belief.
I know from my experience with Warrington Athletic Club that our senior team went through this process and we developed a very strong team, we turned up at races to win and believed that we could as a team. Every last runner competed for every place, especially me as I was often competing for the last counter spot. I knew that the higher up the field I could finish the higher the better the team result would be. Our top guys would finish in the top positions it was up to the rest of us to do out best, our results were equally as important if not more so. The whole thing was infectious and we had some great races against some great clubs and with this belief we did very well.
Training session became inspirational because we were running with some great runners who were attracted initially not by the fact that we were the best but because we showed that potential as a team, we worked well together and did we have some great training sessions. Everyone?s performance rose as an consequence something that as individuals we just couldn?t have done by ourselves. Full marks of course to our Coach Burt Quennel (BQ)l who brought his wealth of experience and of course our long suffering families they supported us through thick and thin.
Now how is that applied to business, well simple you obviously need a manager/director with the vision and understand who can either develop or bring in those inspirational players or team leaders. Those team leaders then inspire those around them, the culture of the organistaion is worked on so that the vision is outlined and everyone understand how important their individual roles are and that they CAN make a contribution to anything when ever they want. Some of William?s best ideas have come from staff who know nothing about a technical issue but just say what if you do this or why is that being done that way etc.
Hopefully this gives you a good idea of the theory but the trick is how to put it into practice you have to work on getting the ingredients and mixture right for your organization. If you do then you will be successful, how long for is up to you and your team.
Here is me with the book at the Williams Conference Centre.
[ 14.10.2005, 04:41: Message edited by: Geoff Settle ]
