Sport is often described as war without bullets. Managing a business too, is often compared to war as players jostle with one another with the ferocity of combatants in battle, for market share of their products.
Many a training programme on management development makes more than a passing reference to Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’. It should surprise no one that sporting encounters are so structured as to resemble the rules of the market place. Sounds incredible? Not really. Take the recently concluded Wimbledon tennis championship.
Djokovic lived up to his billing as the Number One player in the world of men’s tennis by winning the championship. ‘So what is new?’ one might be tempted to ask. True, the result went exactly as per script if bookies’ odds ahead of the match were anything to go by. But there was another aspect to the match that should engage the attention of any student of management.
In the first set, which lasted a full 13 games, the maximum allowed under the rules of professional tennis after players are tied at six games apiece, Federer won 37 points in all. That is exactly the same number of points that Djokovic won and yet, the first set was awarded to Djokovic. If that was not astonishing in itself, the story of the second set certainly is.
Same points, different outcomes
The second set saw Federer win 51 points stretched over 13 games as in the first. Now, Djokovic too, won the same number of points. The only difference being that, this time, the set went in favour of Federer. It was a similar story in the third round match that Federer played against the Australian, Sam Groth. Federer won 42 points over 13 games of the third set while the latter won two fewer at 40. But who do you think won the third set as per official records of that match? Sam Groth.
Sporting contests typically involve speed, power, skill, subtlety, and excellent coordination of limbs and eyes. Each scoring point brings out, at best, one or may be two of any of these attributes. A Mitchell Johnson yorker delivered at 150 kmph may land at the base of the stumps to rule the batsman out bowled in a game of cricket.
Similarly, a Sam Groth serve delivered at 160 mph (260kmph) brooks no reply from the player on the other side of the net. But you can’t decide on the relative merits of competing players on the strength of just that one delivery/point. Whether it is cricket or tennis or any other sport, intuitively, one is able to see that the victor must be decided over a series of match-ups, or ‘points,’ where there is scope for all these attributes to be brought into play by the contestants to his/her advantage in the final outcome.
The X Factor
Having said that, it would have been perfectly easy for whoever it was that had thought up the game of tennis to have decreed that the game be played over 286 points in all (the actual number that Djokovic and Federer played at the Wimbledon finals) and the winner declared on the basis of the player winning the greater number of points. No doubt, that would have still given the match to Djokovic, as he had outscored Federer by 10 points. But a larger point needs to be made as well.
A straitjacketed approach to deciding the winner would only make it monotonous, robbing, as it does, the contest of that ‘X Factor’ that makes sporting encounters such a compelling experience for the spectators at the ground and audience watching it on TV. What is this ‘X factor’? It is the element of surprise in the final outcome between two evenly matched contestants.
How is this element of surprise to be secured in a sporting contest? Only by enabling the contestants to wipe the slate of performance at least partially, should they falter at any stage of the encounter. This is typically done by breaking the contest into smaller modules and the scores of each module being recorded to decide the eventual winner.
Brutal aspect
Thus, in badminton, the contest between two players is first broken up into smaller modules called ‘games’, where the contestant who succeeds in being the first to score 11 points is declared the winner of that module. The process is repeated three or five times. The contestant who wins a majority of such modular encounters (three or five games, as the case may be) is declared the winner of the match.
It is easy to see that an exceptionally poor performance by a contestant in one game, where he might have lost 11-0, still allows him to contest on a level footing with his opponent in the remaining games. If he can offset his abysmal performance in the first game by a level of performance that is only just marginally superior (difference of two points) to that of his opponent in the remaining two or four games, he would still be declared the winner.
He could be running neck to neck with his opponent at 9 all in each of these games. But if he manages to bring in that something extra over the next two points and win them, he would pocket the game at 11-9. If he could repeat the process in subsequent games, he wins the contest as well.
In other words, the contest is not about winning the maximum number of points but rather about winning the key moments in a contest. In table tennis, it is even more brutal. At 29 all, the one who scores the next point is declared the winner.
Trendspotters
So it is in the world of business. The changing environment alters consumer needs for new products by altering the features of existing products. Successful companies are those that first spot these trends and grab the opportunity for commercial success. Everyone is familiar with the story of JVC (subsidiary of Panasonic) and how it had routed Sony in the market for video cassette players/recorders.
Its decision to opt for a slightly inferior recording / picture quality but compensating it with extended duration recording (two hours as opposed Sony’s one hour) was the business equivalent of grabbing the ‘key moment’. Once video rental libraries found it convenient to stock films in a single cassette, there was no turning the clock back. The moment for Sony was gone.
This is not to say that Sony hadn’t had its share of ‘grabbing the moments’ in the market place. It had great success with the ‘Walkman’ and for a while in HDTV sets as well. Apple is another iconic example of meandering along before suddenly finding itself in a zone when it came up with iPod and followed it up iPhone.
Luck and hard work
Success, whether in the sporting arena or in business does require certain core attributes. For sportsmen it lies in such aspects as a certain work ethic, discipline, practice, etc. Legendary golfer Gary Player is credited with the quote: “The harder I practice; the luckier I get”. Businesses too, put in place systems and processes that give them the best chance of success in the market place.
Nevertheless, there is a place for what I would call, the ‘X Factor’ that transcends all the traditional secrets to success. Giving oneself the best chance for grabbing those special moments is not the same thing as actually achieving it. If that were indeed the case, Ivan Lendl would have won the Wimbledon and Pete Sampras might have tasted success at Roland Garros. That was not to be. But that doesn’t make either of them less of a tennis player.
It is the same with the hundreds of listed companies in the stock market. They may not quite have the iconic status of an Apple or a Google. But they haven’t done too badly by their investors who have reposed faith in them.