Sports and Business: "Refuse to Lose"

I am sports mad – I always have been. As a young man I played representative rugby at school and in the Army. I sat on bench for the County under-18s. My consolation at not making the starting fifteen is that the position was occupied by one Richard Hill who went on to captain England. I ran cross country for the County at schoolboy level. I played football for the Academy first eleven when I was at Sandhurst and I played Rugby, cricket and football for my regiment, I captained the regimental cross-country team and I was the regimental 800 metres champion. I only list this achievement to illustrate that I have a small insight into the psychology of the sportsman.

I discovered my passion for business in my late twenties at about the time my serious sporting days were beginning to wind down. I don’t think there was any connection between the decline of one and the rise of the other. However I do think there is a remarkable analogy between successful sportsmen and successful businessmen and this is something I want to explore in my blog over the coming weeks and months.

I have enjoyed this year’s Wimbledon as much as any of recent years. I especially enjoy watching Rafael Nadal play. I would love to know what goes on in his head when he is playing. Whatever it is, he has built a mindset that I describe as “Refuse to lose”. How often do we see him chase down shots that other players would give up on and concede the point? Often he still loses the point but sometimes he doesn’t – he rescues a point from a seemingly impossible position and turns a certain lost point to his favour. The key here is that unless he tries he won’t know whether he will win it and he is willing to try anything and everything.

This translates almost perfectly into the world of business and particularly into the world of sales. In my experience there are two types of salesman – there are those who give up on an opportunity as soon as it starts to get difficult. They only seem to want to work on low hanging fruit. And then there are the Rafael Nadal’s – people who keep fighting even when the odds seem stacked against them. Like Nadal they will lose plenty of these seemingly lost causes, but they will also win some and everyone they win is one more customer for the company that you would not have achieved from the low hanging fruit pickers.

As an example I remember a situation in my days at Transmit International, my first business start up. We had been through a formal tender process with the London offices of a leading Swiss investment bank. We were already an incumbent supplier to part of the bank and we knew they were very happy with what we did so felt we were well placed. So we were very surprised and a little confused to receive a letter out of the blue announcing that the bank had selected another company. Now many people would have accepted an official letter as the end of the matter – but we didn’t. We pulled some strings with our existing contacts and after a number of phone calls we managed to get an audience with the Managing Director of the division concerned. We met him and laid out our case that we felt we had been treated very unfairly and surely the low risk option was to use us as a known quantity rather than try someone completely untested. To cut a long story short, the decision was reversed and we were awarded the new contract. It was always a long shot, but on this occassion it worked.

So when things don’t seem to be going your way, remember Rafael Nadal sprinting to the far boundaries of Centre Court chasing down a ball that to most players would be dead. If you apply the same “Refuse to lose” mentality to your sales campaigns the worst that can happen is that you will be no worse off than if you hadn’t tried. But occasionally you will win business that you would otherwise have lost and in doing so you will also make yourself a very valuable asset to your sales team.

There is no place for unethical practice in business

Someone asked me recently in a profiling questionnaire if I thought there was any place for ethics in business. My answer was immediate and almost involuntary. I said that I thought that there was no place in business for unethical practice.

Nowhere is this being more graphically illustrated at the moment than in the case of Rebekah Brooks, the embattled Chief Executive of News International. Brooks was The Editor of the News of the World (NOTW) when a private investigator, allegedly working on its behalf, hacked into the mobile voicemail of Millie Dowler when she was missing and a full scale police search for her was underway. The discovery that voice mail on Millie’s mobile phone was being accessed gave the impression that she was still using her mobile phone. We now know the dreadful truth was that Millie was dead and the activity was a private investigator without scruples or morals working to find a story for the NOTW.

Brooks yesterday told News International staff it was "inconceivable" that she knew of or sanctioned the hacking of Milly's mobile phone. But this is not a defense – it is utterly irrelevant. I don’t think anyone is accusing her of personally organising this action. But as the Editor of the paper she can’t distance herself from it by pleading ignorance. That is as weak a position as it is possibe to take. She was in charge, she was responsible for setting the culture at the NOTW and I am afraid it stretches credibility that she didn’t know that this kind of behaviour was prevalent. If she didn’t know about it she should have done – she was the boss.  It may not have directly been her fault but it most certainly was her responsibility.

So it is time for Rebekah Brooks to show some moral courage and set an example to her staff. She has allowed her organisation to behave in the most despicably unethical way and she has no option but to resign. Her attempts to distance herself from the act beggar belief. She was in charge; there is no distance between her and the tactics of her staff. Every day she clings on to her job is another day when she is making the very clear statement that she condones unethical behaviour. Far better to hold her head high, stand up for stong ethical business practice, admit responsibility (if not fault), be accountable and resign than to be forced from office by a public campaign that shows no signs of relenting.