“I swear sports and music are so synonymous. ‘Cause we want to be them. And they want to be us.” – Drake

The same can be said about sports strategy and business strategy. Simply put, sports teams can learn a lot from successful businesses, and vice versa.

In both cultures, the winning teams have talented people executing a vision and holding each other accountable along the way. It takes effective communication of the vision, consistent effort, and individual sacrifices to fully reach team or company potential.

These similarities permeate the landscape of businesses large and small.  In CultureShoc’s EOS® clients, we see competitive, talented and focused leaders that thrive with the structure, process, and facilitated open/honest discussion. They build their company visions and vow accountability to the plan, which they, in turn, expect of their team members.

Compete on Culture clients have a consistent appetite for continuous improvement that is fed with every team building event, annual meeting, or internal training session. Topics discussed include accountability, communication, transparency, complacency, and more.

A recent session with the John Carroll University Wrestling team furthers this point.  The month of August brings students back onto college campuses, and while Fall sports are already in progress with training & informal practices.

On the first day of the 2019 Fall Semester, I stood in front of approximately 35 collegiate wrestlers, from freshmen to seniors, to discuss being intentional about planning for their individual and team success. This was their opportunity to sit down and plan the next year of their lives based on what they want for themselves. We discussed short-term and long-term wrestling goals, personal core values, personal aspirations, academic goals, and worked our way back to the current semester as the attendees filled out their visioning documents.

The result of the 90-minute session was a plan for each participant that boiled down their personal, academic, and athletic intentions for the next semester and beyond. Each wrestler was additionally tasked with determining a Fall Semester “Rock” (i.e. goal) to be recorded and followed up on weekly to stay accountable to their plan.

As each individual improves, and participants hold each other accountable, the team gets a little bit better as well.  Small yet consistent effort over time is one of the foundations of both successful teams and companies. With these pronounced similarities between both, we look forward to continuing to use business strategies that positively impact the lives of athletes in many more CultureShoc sessions!