From the Ballfield to the Boardroom: Management Lessons from Sports

No one can deny that sports and business are two of the most potent forces in our culture today. Sport, play, and the terms and phrases that define them, are engrained in our collective psyche, influencing the ways in which we conduct business-as a game, with rules of engagement, tournaments of competition, the shame that accompanies defeat, and the bragging rights that accrue to the victor. The parallels are ubiquitous; as the NFL’s Bill Parcells stated in a Harvard Business Review article, my guess is that the challenges I’ve faced are not all that different from the ones that executives deal with every day. People are people, and the keys to motivating them and getting them to perform to their full potential are pretty much the same whether they’re playing on a football field or working in an office.

From the Ballfield to the Boardroom draws from Brian Goff’s expertise as a managerial economist to shed new light on the sports-business connection. Using dozens of examples from across the spectrum of professional and college sports, he analyzes the ways in which key decisions are made on the playing fields and locker rooms and applies these lessons to the corporate context. From the distinctive leadership styles of legendary coaches Tom Landry, Vince Lombardi, John Wooden, and Bobby Knight, among others, to such culturally significant developments as the racial integration of Major League Baseball and the meteoric rise of NASCAR, Goff draws from the world of sports to provide a solid foundation in the managerial arts, including: assessing risk and uncertainty, conducting market and competitive analysis, wooing customers, fostering an innovative culture, managing information and communication flows, and resolving labor disputes. The result is an incisive look at the sport of business, with practical insights for successful management at all levels of your organization.

Brian Goff is Distinguished University Professor, Department of Economics, Ford College of Business, Western Kentucky University, where he has served on the faculty since 1986 and teaches undergraduate, masters, and MBA courses. He is the coauthor of several books, including Spoiled Rotten and The National Collegiate Athletic Association, and dozens of articles on economic and public policy in such publications as American Economic Review, Economic Inquiry, Public Choice, and Social Science Quarterly.