Normally we would run a four-minute mile to avoid any book that draws business lessons from sports. “Business as sport” is the second most common cliché in management, right on the heels of anything comparing business to a military battlefield. Westerbeek and Smith's contribution, however, is both intelligent and readable; it confronts the well-worn analogies that we've all heard, and neatly surmounts them.
The broad premise is that business is not a sport; nevertheless, business people, especially leaders, may learn some refreshing lessons about competition, failure, and innovation from players, teams, and coaches. These lessons may be simple or profound, and it doesn't matter which sport you observe. The book examines basketball, cricket, tennis, weightlifting, boxing, soccer, football; Formula One, the World Cup, and the Olympics; players, coaches, and teams. It starts with Michael Schumacher, the Formula One champion whose triumph relied on the tightly knit team backing him up, and ends with Masaru Hanada, a Japanese sumo star whose career-capping goal was to play NFL football. (Hanada didn't succeed, “but none could question his tenacity or focus.”)
Interspersed with such vignettes are practical discussions about the role of leadership, power and status, relationships, teamwork, moral dilemmas, and leadership development. We also enjoy the quotations that pepper the book, such as one attributed to race driver Mario Andretti: “If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.”
Both authors are at La Trobe University in Melbourne. Westerbeek teaches sports marketing and heads the School of Sport, Tourism, and Hospitality Management, while Smith teaches sports management and is research director in the School of Sport, Tourism, and Hospitality Management.