Advice Line | Bob Lewis | InfoWorld | Lessons from Lambeau | January 13, 2008 08:54 AM

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Lessons from Lambeau

January 13, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Lessons from Lambeau

Maybe this is a bit of a stretch.

It's easy to over-use sports metaphors when writing about business. Among their many limitations: Sports is unambiguous. You either win or you lose. When you (for example) deploy a new IT application, assessing the success of the effort is just a wee bit more ambiguous than that.

Second limitation: Sports is defined by how well you make split-second decisions. Business is defined in large part by how well you avoid making split-second decisions.

On the other hand, my wife has a cousin who plays for the Green Bay Packers, and after yesterday's 42 to 20 victory over the Seahawks, it's hard to resist the temptation.

So I won't.

Some thoughts that might be relevant to running IT:

The NFL asserts ludicrous intellectual property rights. During the game, an announcer said something to the effect that any commentary of any kind about the game is a violation. I didn't hear anything about this being limited to commercial use, so be careful what you say about the game to friends over a beer.

The intellectual property situation in this country has been problematic ever since Warner Brothers tried to warn off the Marx Brothers for unauthorized use of "Casablanca" in a movie title - a bad move by the way: Groucho's ridicule is a model of how to handle this sort of thing. If you haven't already read it, here's a link to the letter he wrote in response.

It isn't improving. Not to pick on Warner Brothers; the company never learns. You might recall its attorneys sent hundreds of cease-and-desist letters to children who had the temerity to think the 1st Amendment protected their right to put up Harry Potter fan sites on the web.

In like fashion, I might be violating the NFL's asserted intellectual property rights right now. According to its website:

We (or our affiliates) and our member professional football clubs own all rights in the product names, company names, trade names, logos, product packaging and designs ("Trademarks") of the National Football League and such member clubs, and third parties own all Trademarks in their respective products or services, whether or not appearing in large print or with the trademark symbol. Unauthorized use of any such Trademarks, including reproduction, imitation, dilution or confusing or misleading uses, is prohibited under the trademark laws of the United States and other countries. You are expressly prohibited from using or misusing any Trademarks, except as provided in this Agreement, and nothing otherwise stated or implied in the Service confers on you any license or right to do so.

So as an act of civil disobedience: Green Bay Packers. Seattle Seahawks. Great game.

That's two unauthorized uses of NFL trademarks and one unauthorized description of the game. I guess the NFL will have to sue me.

How is this relevant to you? The right claimed by various software companies and purveyors of all sorts of adware and spyware to install software on your company's computers without letting you know in advance is a direct descendant of this nonsense. The simple notion of property rights has been twisted around to an unrecognizable extent.

There's nothing you can do about it, other than to be alert to even seemingly farfetched risks. I just felt like going off on a pointless rant. Sorry. The next two bullets are more relevant:

Never mind his physical skills - I watched Brett Favre between plays. Quarterbacks don't have to be leaders. That's optional. Favre spent his time between plays encouraging players, talking with them, keeping them loose and focused ... making sure his team was 100% in the game. You could see it in his body language and the body language of everyone he talked to.

This was a big deal when they were down 14 to nothing.

On the other hand, his physical skills mattered a lot, as did the physical skills of his players, for all the obvious reasons. What his leadership accomplished was to make sure his players heads were pointed in the right direction so that they would put their physical skills to the best use possible.

The most important point: Early in the game, Ryan Grant lost the ball. Twice. Both fumbles turned into Seahawk touchdowns.

American business wisdom says we need to hold people accountable - that there have to be consequences for mistakes. American business wisdom is ... wait, there's a word for this and it will come to me ... oh, now I have it ... stupid.

Had the Packers operated according to this so-called wisdom they would have removed Grant from the game, and possibly from the team.

Instead they gave him the ball a lot and he rushed for more than 200 yards and three touchdowns in very difficult conditions.

Somewhere, there just might be a lesson in this for IT leaders, in spite of it being something that happened in professional sports.

Assuming the NFL doesn't sue me for this unauthorized commentary I'll be back to more standard fare in my next post.

- Bob

Posted by Bob Lewis on January 13, 2008 08:54 AM

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I read thru the letter from Groucho and it was very entertaining. Unfortunately, "A Night in Casablanca" is perhaps the Marx Brothers worst movies.

Posted by: JB at January 15, 2008 12:34 PM

Okay, so you didn't say you were a cheesehead, but you wrote about the Packers, MY team, in a national forum. Good enough. For those who watched the game and soaked up the commentary, what we heard was that Favre's *experience* was the factor that allowed him to put Grant's execution in perspective. So what you've pointed out, now, by cintrast, is that what goes by cover of "wisdom" in business is probably not just stupidity (willful ignorance) but probably actual dumbness (unwillful ignorance)! We could talk about cowardice but that's too complicated.

Posted by: Malcolm Ryder at January 15, 2008 09:18 PM

Hey Bob,
Why don't you write a separate sports blog then I can unsubscribe from it.
I've mentioned before that metaphors about American football or American baseball mean nothing to me. I'm happy for you that your team won; it makes that expensive branded merchandise so much more admired. Look forward to your next relevant column.
Ant

Posted by: Ant at January 16, 2008 01:39 AM

Bob -- Enjoyed the sports analogies, metaphors, similes, and aphorisms. Unlike some, you seem able to see the relevant lessons (such as Grant) in the sports stories -- and after all, one of the main reasons I watch sports is for the stories of human endeavor, even more than the scores.

Here's hoping that your readers don't get hung up on the use of sports in a business column, and instead get the point in the Grant example, and in the Favre example.

Thanks for writing.

Posted by: Bruce at January 16, 2008 11:24 AM

Bob, loved the analogies! Keep up the good work - it makes for a great read. And good luck to your wife's cousin! GO PACK GO!

Hey Ant, try to become a more diverse individual and attempt to see things from other points of view. In other words, grow up and get the proverbial IT stick out of your butt.

Bob, forgive me if I offended anyone.

Posted by: Ant Rant at January 16, 2008 12:30 PM

Apparently, one poster cannot stand anything written about football or sports, thus he gets to miss any lessons to be learned from that area of human experience. There's probably several columns right there. It is very easy to see the effect of leadership on a sports team. Oftentimes, the removal or addition of a key player (not always quarterback) will suddenly provide (or remove) a source of inspiration. The team still consists of almost the exact membership as before, but acts completely different. Nothing in there to be learned about managing other people.

Posted by: MikeM at January 17, 2008 09:10 AM

Ant -

Simply replace NFL with Barclays Premier League, Green Bay Packers with Manchester United, Seattle Seahawks with Liverpool, Brett Favre with Gary Neville, quarterback with captain, Ryan Grant with Ben Foster, touchdowns with goals... I think you get the point. Nothing in Bob's discussion requires a knowledge of the particulars of American football. Had he picked random names out of the phone book and invented a sport, you still could have understood the point he is making.

(Oh, and replace "42 to 20" with "2 to 0".)

...doug

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