I just think it’s so obvious that you know, a business is a team, by it’s very nature it’s a team – it might only have three players in it, if it’s a very small company, or it might have eleven, or fifteen, or it might have three hundred. But if you’ve got element of that team that aren’t working then the team is not, is not functioning to its maximum effect, its kind of stating the obvious you know if you’re a football coach or whatever it might be, we’re here at Lords, cricket coach. You know you need the batsmen have got to score the runs, and the bowler’s got to take the wickets if one of them doesn’t do that, you don’t win, you’re not as successful as you would like to be. Every company has batmen and bowlers and fielders and all that sort of stuff, and when all those elements work together, that’s when the company’s functioning smoothly, that’s when its going to be at it’s optimum level. I kinda think, you know, you can use as many sporting analogies as you want, but actually you almost can’t use too many, because that’s the reality of the business world, its competitive, it’s about winning and losing, if you lose you shed jobs, ultimately you close down, if you win you take on jobs, you make money, people are happier. It, you know, its its, business actually, it’s not as black and white as the results being in the paper on Monday morning, but it’s black and white in terms of the bottom line at the end of the financial year, and so I think there are very obvious analogies to make, and I think, you know, I think that’s obviously why a lot of people who move from the sporting sector to the business sector, can actually be very useful additions to companies workforce because they get that, they understand the need, that people working together actually produce a better end product.
John Inverdale, Sports Broadcaster
Interview via Harvey Thorneycroft