Swock!

I am not exactly a jock, but I do enjoy sports, especially ones that are essentially business in disguise.
There are three of these that interest me the most: golf, tennis, and jousting.

We have been told, mostly by players themselves, that golf is one of the most challenging of mental games, that it tests one’s powers of concentration like nothing else. CEO’s, in particular, cannot get enough of it. Others maintain that golf is primarily a social activity, claiming that more business deals are closed on the green than in the conference room. Both may be true, but I see another value in golf. There is really nothing quite so satisfying as the sound of a club head smacking the face of a ball and blasting it two or three hundred yards down the fairway. It’s almost as fulfilling as a successful product launch, a million hits on the website, or firing somebody who really has to go.

Tennis. Management guru Peter Drucker likened doubles tennis to teamwork, a game in which he said “every member adapts to the other.” But no one cares about doubles. Singles is where it’s at and the really great thing there is the technology, especially the racket. Once again, you’ve got the thwack of string against helpless ball and the tremendous feeling of power as it distorts into an oval shape and spins away from you. You: boss. Ball: the issue you would like to fix, once and for all.

Jousting. Well, it is just beginning to take hold as the business sport of choice around the world. But the appeal is so obvious and simple: armor. Who ― male or female ― doesn’t look great in a helmet, cuirasse, and steel codpiece? Add a horse and you can gain what my friend George Stalk would call an unfair competitive advantage.

Of course, the best thing about all sports, and why businesspeople like them even more than business itself, is the beauty of keeping score. Who wins and who loses is indisputable, black and white, all in the final addition. In business, there’s always the nagging suspicion that the numbers are somehow lying, because they often are.