Try to imagine that our top-team starts to play a game and another one and another one, but no one there to give feedback, develop the individuals in the team, adjust the direction during the break or coach and lead the team to a higher performing team…. difficult to imagine that any top playing team would be in that situation. After my previous posts I guess you know what’s coming now…. indeed, we do face similar situations in day-to-day business.

Oh yes , the average companies do have managers, plenty, responsible for budgets, strategy, purchases and so on, and indeed once every while (monthly?) they look at the results of their team….. 20 games (days @ work) playing without a coach, at least 19 missed opportunities to give immediate feedback…and 19 missed opportunities to steer the team’s direction during the game before the result is there; using ’the break’ in order to improve the performance day by day as from day 1, but still expecting high performing teams? Seems rather optimistic I believe.

Similar to TOP performing sports organizations we do need managers as we do need coaches (and good players of course). Is it a matter of money that we believe we can’t afford it? My answer for those believers that business can’t afford coaches next to managers would be that teams without a coach will not survive at the top (if they would get there at all!) because the competition will improve faster and next to it consider the costs of non-(top)performance.

Coaching is not one-time thing it is an ‘continuously’ required activity, knowing that if you stand still your competition will take over and become better than you are today. Let’s take higher frequent opportunities to steer and coach our teams, they need it and they deserve it, because goals are made by the players as will products and services be delivered by the teams, not by the managers…. And isn’t it about ‘scoring goals’ ?!