Key Takeaway: This book will help you understand the importance of business strategy in winning.  It is one of the best business book of 2013 and I rate it 5 out of 5 stars. Get it, study it, apply it and Win.  

If you want have a good conversation with business executives ---  whether you are a salesman, consultant, mid level manager or even an individual contributor --- you need business acumen otherwise you will quickly lose credibility with them.  The antidote to losing your credibility with C-level types is to read "Playing To Win" by A. G. Lafley and Roger Martin. 

The business executives expect you to understand them in the way they think and approach their business, which means you have to know and talk  strategy with them.  As business executives they know that in order to win, a company needs to develop a solid strategy, execute flawlessly and deliver excellent customer experience. If they do this well, their companies will thrive and, if not, they will quickly become irrelevant. 

This book will help you understand how to have a productive conversations with business executives because you will know how important strategy is to them in gaining competitive advantage.  The book dissects it from the very top,  which is that strategy is all about winning and then goes deeper on why, what and how of a strategy which will not only give you gravitas when you talk to business executives but also learn how to apply it to your unique situation. 

Again, the main idea of this book is that you are in business for one thing: "You play to win the game."  The authors define a business strategy simply as a set of choices a company makes to win. 

The book is based mainly on what the authors learned at Proctor & Gamble  when A;G. Lafley was the CEO.  Working with the leading business and management thought leaders,  a strategy consisted of coordinating and integrating the following five choices:

1. What is a company's winning aspiration?
2. Where should the company play?
   
3. How should the company play to win?
   
4. What are company's  core capabilities?
   
5. What are company's management systems that has to be leveraged?
   

The authors explain on how these choices were used with various examples, including  Olay, innovation in outsourcing, integration of Gillette and others and various techniques used to reach a strategic decision.

This is not a book you read, but study before, during and after so you get the most out of it and start creating your own playbook on strategy that is applicable to your specific situation.  

I highly recommend this book since it is a distillation of years of research, experience, collaboration and results where the authors clearly take you inside the corporate "war room" where they consider various options before making a decision and then walk the readers through the results of the strategic decision.  

Though picking top 10 business books is tough since there are so many good business books written, but I feel this book definitely belongs in everyone's top 10 business books list for 2013.  

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Jay Oza is a founder and principal innovation development consultant at 5ToolGroup, a company that specializes in helping startups and established firms bring innovation to market within 90 days through our unique 5Tool Methodology that integrates sales, marketing, partnerships, customer development and agile/lean methodology to enable frugal or ("Jugaad") innovation.  We believe that to succeed today, you have to continuously look for ways to do lot more with lot less. This is the only way to win today! 

Quick Takeaway: A startup CEO, like a Presidential candidate, has to focus on the big picture and only get involved in a particular situation when he alone can help move things forward.


In my blog “What a Startup CEO Can Learn from a Presidential Candidate," I compared being a candidate running for the President of the United States to that of a CEO of a startup company.  Although they are in different fields---one in politics and the other in business---there are quite a few similarities between the two, such as they both start out leading a small team, work tirelessly for several years,  and, with few lucky breaks, hope to win big---one being the President of the United States and the other taking his company to an initial public offering  (IPO) like Google and Facebook. Both have to thread a needle to get to the top,

But to achieve success, both leaders not only have to develop a winning strategy, execute flawlessly, adapt quickly and handle adversities, but also become adept at communicating a vision, persuade others and get them to act.  In order for people to trust a leader in any field, the leader has to sell himself as the one who can help them realize the shared vision.

However, once the leader starts his journey, he has to be very careful of not falling into a trap of being an everyman.  He has to act and appear like a leader to make himself look big and his organization and purpose even bigger.  As Lee Atwater once said, "perception is reality."  This so true in both politics as well as in business. 

To get a better understanding of leadership in action, I take a look at the differences in style of campaigning in the 1960 Democratic primary between between then Senator John F. Kennedy and Senator Hubert Humphrey, as described in the book by Theodore H. White titled, “The Making of the President: 1960”.  Both candidates wanted the Democratic nomination.  Kennedy focused on the big picture (already acting like he were a President) during the campaign,  whereas  Humphrey presented himself as an everyman.  This is not a bad strategy if you are running for a local office or even Congress, but not for the President of the United States.  People generally elect a candidate for the President whom they perceive as someone that exudes leadership by focusing on the big issues facing the country, not the one who is consumed with their local issues.

A startup CEO needs to follow the Kennedy style, that is to act like a CEO with the big picture in mind, and let others in his organization focus on specific areas based on their expertise.  This is especially true when it comes to sales. Sales is the lifeblood of a company.  If the CEO gets too involved, he risks rendering the salespeople in his organization ineffective since the customers will only want to interact with the CEO. They will view the CEO as their defacto sales rep on the account.  

In a business to business (B2B) sales opportunities a CEO has to be very careful of not getting involved wit the details since these deals are very complex; there is so much involved in winning a B2B sales deal such as the complexity of the solution, understanding the needs of the customers, politics, decision making process, timing and budget.   With so many moving parts, a CEO can easily get bogged down and get easily distracted from his main responsibility, which is to run and grow his company.  Furthermore, the CEO risks spreading himself too thin and make the company look smaller. Consequently, CEOs' can put the company at a big disadvantage when targeting an established company for business where they would be competing against much stronger competitors.   Therefore, it is incumbent upon the CEO to hire a competent, experienced sales professional who is comfortable driving sales in a startup environment.  The CEO should have the confidence in his salespeople, so that the CEO will only get involved in a sales opportunity under the direction of a competent salespeople to advance the sales process.

A startup today typically has between 6 to 9 months to succeed.  If it doesn’t gain traction in that timeframe, it will most likely become a zombie company and eventually be shut down.

The zombie state is also known to afflict  lot of presidential campaigns in that they also have a very short time frame (before and during the primaries)  to gain traction to avoid becoming a zombie campaign and also shut down.  The other thing a presidential campaign must avoid is to adopt a defensive strategy early on  like Rudolph Giuliani (ex mayor of New York City) did in 2008 when he was running for the GOP nomination.  His strategy was to not compete till the Florida primary. However,  by the time the Florida primary came around, his campaign was in a zombie state and died there.  To win, you have  to compete hard, smart and early.  If you don’t do that, you start losing time, focus, energy, money and, most important,  momentum.

During any arduous endeavor, there  comes a time  where a key decision has to be made early that either will result in a win or a loss. Here is what the Kennedy campaign did early during the primary season in 1960 to win West Virginia that a CEO of startup can learn from when his sales team faces a critical situation on a sales deal early on during the startup phase.

After winning the Wisconsin primary the Kennedy team was very confident that if they win the West Virginia primary they will garner support from other power brokers around the country to forestall a floor fight at the Democratic convention since they would have the necessary  761 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. They could not risk the nomination going to the convention floor where anything could happen.   

Problem

The Kennedy team was confident of an easy win based on early polling in West Virginia where Kennedy was beating Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota by a comfortable margin of 70 to 30 in the largest county (Kanawha county) of West Virginia.  But this turned upside down three weeks before the West Virginia primary as Humphrey was now winning with the margin of 60 to 40.  When the Kennedy headquarters inquired, from their the West Virginia advisers explained that the reason for the turnaround was that people now know that Kennedy is Catholic in a state where 95% of the population is Protestant and only 5% Catholic.

Solution

Kennedy Team, led by Lawrence O’Brien, Director of John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign and future NBA commissioner, and Robert F. Kennedy, campaign manager, quickly organized  a small staff and volunteers on the ground in West Virginia.  They developed a plan to cover the state by reaching out to all the local political leaders to get a sense of where their candidate stood and get the pulse of people’s mood on the ground.  

When they discovered that the religion issue was hurting John F. Kennedy’s prospect of winning in West Virginia, they determined that this is something Kennedy  needed to address directly. To put this issue behind them, they developed a strategy where Kennedy would address this issue once and do it in a form of a sit down interview with Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.  

In the interview, Kennedy explained that, if elected President, he would be taking an oath to the Constitution by placing his hand on the Bible.  If he broke the oath, he would not only face impeachment, but it would be a sin against God. To keep the message simple for the voters, Kennedy pitched the whole religion issue as a choice between tolerance versus intolerance.  By voting for him they would be voting for tolerance and by not voting for him, they would be voting for intolerance.  

Outcome

The strategy worked and Kennedy won the West Virginia primary and went on to easily win the most of the remaining primaries and secured the Democratic nomination at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles.  

The lesson CEOs can take away from Kennedy’s example is to hire well and then get out of their way and let them do their jobs.  Kennedy let O’Brien run the campaign operation in West Virginia, since, being on the ground and working with local advisers,  he had the best information on what should be done.  O’Brien only involved Kennedy  when there was no one besides the candidate who could neutralize the thorny religion issue. The Kennedy team did not become unsettled and have the candidate fly all over the state to address the religion issue to persuade people. That strategy. during the primary, would have made Kennedy campaign appear rattled by the religion controversy and also make Kennedy not look presidential.  It probably would have hurt the Kennedy brand of being calm and under control.  In addition, the media would have focused on their being panicked by the religion issue which would have hurt their image.

Kennedy team decided to address the religion issue once, do it well and do it with maximum publicity.   Kennedy did exactly as his team suggested and removed a potential obstacle that could have easily derailed his campaign early. With the right strategy driven from the ground by a competent operator, he did not have to worry about securing sufficient delegates to avoid a floor fight for the Democratic nomination. He had Lawrence O’Brien on his team whose judgment he trusted and won.

What did the Kennedy team do that a startup CEO can take away?

1. The team was led by Lawrence O’Brien in West Virginia who assessed that the situation there did not look good for their candidate.

2. The Kennedy team  went with Plan A which was to cover the state with Kennedy operatives and volunteers to get the message out.

3. When Plan A did not change the polls, they quickly developed Plan B where President Kennedy had to  directly address the religion issue to the voters..

4. The Kennedy team decided to address the religion issue once, do it right and gain maximum publicity so they don’t have to revisit the issue again. 

5. Kennedy team developed a simple message that would resonate with the voters: Frame the issue as tolerance versus intolerance.

6. Kennedy prepared and handled it masterfully and the polls started to swing towards Kennedy and started gaining momentum.

7. Kennedy won the West Virginia primary with a strong organization executing on the ground and the candidate coming in to address the religion issue that was hurting his chances in West Virginia and securing the Democratic nomination.

8. The main lesson to takeaway for a CEO or a politician: Fight hard, fight smart, fight early and fight together as a team.

In the next blog titled, "How to Apply A Lesson from John F. Kennedy for Startup CEOs"  I look at a specific example on how 5ToolGroup helped a startup that had an excellent technology but had difficulty generating sales.  In less than three months,  we helped them close two deals by letting the CEO focus on product development and secure additional funding. As a result of this effort,  we not only turned around a company that was struggling, but in the process helped increase the market valuation of the company. 

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Key Take Away: Everyone wants to sit at the cool kids' table, right from high school to the real world so you have to learn to take it  from them to get the invitation.


This is the famous line from the fraternity initiation scene in the movie “Animal House,” where a pledge (played by actor Kevin Bacon) gets a paddle treatment as he yells out in pain, “thank you sir, may I have another?”

Isn’t this what we see with government when it comes to Wall Street? They simply assume the position.  

If you don’t agree with this analogy then how do you explain the “Black Monday” market crash in 1987, Savings and Loan (S&L) crisis, the Dot-com bubble crash,  Enron scandal, the financial crisis of 2007 - 2008, the “London Whale” trading scandal by J.P. Morgan, and now it seems we are soon likely to pop another bubble, resulting from Fed’s printing of money, which they call quantitative easing (QE)..

But why these government officials don’t seem to learn anything?  The answer is very obvious. They all want to be part of the cool kids' fraternity. (I talked about this in a blog about why the SEC went easy on Bernie Madoff). They all want what Tony Montana prescribed in the movie "Scarface" when he says, first you make money, then you get power and then you can have the women.  That's how you got to make your moves in America.  It is that simple. This is everyone's fantasy but some will do whatever it takes to realize it.

Next time there is another scandal, the government officials once again will make some noise and when no one is looking go to the fancy offices on Wall Street,  drop their pants and assume the position for a paddle treatment by Wall Street “frat” brothers.  If they can handle the pain then they are likely to be picked to join one of the Wall Street’s exclusive frat house.  These are billion dollar frat houses.  So they don’t have toga party and get drunk on beer; they have fly all over the world and drink expensive champagnes with their mistresses. You can have all the credentials such as an Ivy league degrees, a stint at McKinsey, belong to several volunteer organizations and toil away working for some government agency.  But unless you learn how to assume the position and suffer through saying "Thank you sir, may I have another?" you are going to live in obscurity and low pay.  Who wants to do that when you have paid your dues working for some dopey government bureaucrat or a conniving legislator who you believe is simply there because  he has mastered the art and science of raising money for his next election? 

Meanwhile where does that leave all of us schlubs.  We essentially subject ourselves to the same paddle treatment when we vote for politicians who keep promising that they are going to clean up the close ties that exist  between Washington D.C. and Wall Street when they get elected.  We all fall for it every time.  Once they are in office, they all line up to get into the Wall Street fraternity and quickly learn how to “pledge.”

We all crave to belong to some cool guy’s fraternity and will subject to a paddle treatment no matter how painful it is.  So the only thing you need to know to succeed in life is the phrase, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”  It may hurt a little but it will have been worthwhile since once you are in the frat house, you are in looking out to see all those who are lining up to assume the position.  That’s power.  Girls are no problem after that.  Tony Montana, an immigrant from Cuba in the movie "Scarface" quickly figured this out about America.  


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Questions

Do you see any similarities between the two positions?

Do you think running for a President is like a start-up endeavor?

Do you think a presidential candidate has to look and act presidential to get people to vote?

Do you think a start-up CEO also has to look and act like a CEO to be taken seriously?


Would appreciate if you could leave a comment, tweet or both.  Thanks.
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Jay Oza is a founder and principal innovation development consultant at 5ToolGroup, a company that specializes in helping startups and established firms bring innovation to market within 90 days through our unique 5Tool Methodology that integrates sales, marketing, partnerships, customer development and agile/lean methodology to enable frugal or ("Jugaad") innovation.  We believe that to succeed today, you have to continuously look for ways to do lot more with lot less. This is the only way to win today! 

Quick Takeaway: Being a startup CEO is similar to  being a candidate for the Presidency in that they both have to enable growth quickly, focus on the big picture and be a leader. 

Being a CEO of a business to business (B2B) startup or any business is a tough endeavor   The CEO’s main job is to make his company grow quickly by keeping investors  happy, managing the employees so they remain motivated and delighting customers so they don’t bolt. It is a hard job for a startup CEO to stay focused on these three important aspects of his job.  

Startups have a very short time (no more than a year today) to make it or risk becoming a zombie company. Hence, a CEO can't afford to get distracted with anything that does not grow the company, especially  getting too deep into the weeds on any one thing that will take his focus away from growing the business. One of the most common mistake startup CEOs make that often results in failure of his company is how they get deeply involved in B2B sales.  

A startup's success rests on generating sales quickly.  Many CEOs want to be very closely involved with this function since sales is the lifeblood of a company and CEOs want to be part of this since they are the only (and probably the best)  salespeople in the company.  But this important business function is something CEOs should not be leading since sales, especially B2B sales,  is very complex and is likely to divert their attention from running their companies. This function should be handled by a dedicated salesperson, so this individual  can focus exclusively in generating revenue. If the position does not exist, it should be created with a competent, experienced, knowledgeable  sales hire who has proven track record with selling in a startup environment. This is the most important hire in a startup company.  Think of him as your star quarterback. As it is commonly said in NFL, a coach is only as good as his star quarterback. You have to find the quarterback for your company who can win consistently. 

CEOs role in a start-up company is that of a leader, visionary and a chief strategist. He has to believe that he can  make the company successful, investors money, employees feel secure about their future with the company and customers happy.   This is very similar to what a presidential candidate goes through when he decides to enter the presidential race in that he has to have the vision to make things better for Americans and the world a safer place to live and conduct business. Though the scale is much different,  the mindset is very similar of both a presidential candidate and a startup CEO.  

To understand what makes a presidential candidate successful was best captured by Theodore H. White in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, “The Making of The President: 1960” when he wrote about the presidential campaign of 1960.  Prior to this book, no one had ever analyzed a presidential campaign the way White did and there is plenty in the book  a startup CEO can take away.  

A Presidential candidate starts a campaign like it is a startup with few people who, working together as a team,  have an opportunity to be in a powerful position to make a difference, as White writes:

“Yet of all paradoxes, the one that summons attention most sharply is that which most distinctively sets American politics off from that of other nations --- that so few men can set in motion so vast a mass of freely participating citizens.”

When you look at companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and others,  they all started very small and today have such a large customer base which gives them tremendous power and influence in the world. But is this any different from a recent presidential candidate who went from being a community organizer to  Illinois state senator to US senator to the President of the United States? 

Once a candidate enters the race, he has to quickly learn the art of campaigning.  Similarly, a CEO has to learn the art of dealing with the people outside the company, such as media, analysts, partners and customers.  In politics, White makes the following observation of how a candidate should conduct himself while campaigning for the presidency during a primary (which could map to how a startup CEO should conduct himself in the early stage of the growth):

“And the art of the primary, for the candidate, is to appear as intimate and close as the local Congressman yet maintain a separation of dignity that makes him seem like a President also.  It is an extremely difficult art, usually performed in short snatches of stump talking of five or ten minutes each, of talk at union halls.  One set speech, one handful of phrases, must cover all occasions.  In a primary a candidate must not waste the great utterances of state that should be used later in the grander electoral campaign if he is successful.”

When John F. Kennedy was running against Hubert Humphrey in the Democratic primary, White contrasted the campaigning style of Hubert Humphrey to that of John F. Kennedy.  White makes the following observation of Humphrey’s campaigning style during the Wisconsin primary:

“Humphrey solved his problem partly by a too-folksy folksiness, partly by a series of talks on substance, detail and issue, a series that proved that he knew more about Negro problems in Negro wards, dairy problems in dairy country, union problems in union country, than did even the local Congressman. He stuck to issues, always a mistake in a primary campaign.   And it was as a man running for Congress, not for the Presidency, that he was accepted.”

White makes the following observation of Kennedy’s campaigning style: 

“Kennedy solved his problem on two levels. The first was his own personal appearance, his incessant storm-driven campaigning, in which, over and over again, he presented himself as young Lochinvar running against big bosses ... that the President alone can shape, create, revive and protect the nation ...The second level was organization.”

We all know how this turned out.  

A lesson to a startup CEO is that he must focus on the big picture (i.e, how to make the company grow) and let his organization deal with the rest and get an update to make sure everything is going smoothly. If the CEO is not artful in dealing with the outside world, he can end up wasting time, lose focus and hurt his appearance as an effective leader who can solve important problems.  An important lesson a CEO can take away from John F. Kennedy is that you have to make your self look big and the campaign even bigger on its optimistic vision for the future.  CEO also has to do the same and make himself big and his company bigger in how they can solve customer problems so they can grow their business.  Don't try to be everything to everybody.  If you do that, then you will not be a CEO for long or, worse, your company may cease to exist.

In my blog "Winning Lesson a Startup CEO Can Learn from President John F. Kennedy," I present how President Kennedy's team used the candidate in a targeted way in the West Virginia primary to win and go on to secure the Democratic nomination.

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Questions

1. Do you see any similarities (besides the importance) between the two positions on how they deal with the outside world?
2. Do you think running for a President is like being a start-up enterpris?
3. Do you think it is important that a presidential candidate look and act like a President  to get people to vote for him?
4. Do you think a start-up CEO has to look and act like a CEO to be taken seriously and be effective?

What do you think?  I want to know.  Thanks.
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Jay Oza is a founder and principal innovation development consultant at 5ToolGroup, a company that specializes in helping startups and established firms bring innovation to market within 90 days through our unique 5Tool Methodology that integrates sales, marketing, partnerships, customer development and agile/lean methodology to enable frugal or ("Jugaad") innovation.  We believe that to succeed today, you have to continuously look for ways to do lot more with lot less. This is the only way to win today! 

Quick Takeaway: If you follow football and understand the game, then you know agile software development and devops; if your organization can do these two well, you can win the "Super Bowl" in business too. 

A company today is either thriving, surviving, or dying. Companies that are thriving have figured out one thing that is so critical to their success: software.

To win in business today, we all know that you need an excellent culture, strategy, people, process and technology.  Most companies have all of these or can obtain it quickly, so they have to win with a level playing field.  

So how do you win?  Again, software; software rules.

To win, it comes down to who has the best software development and deployment process that can react quickly to changing customers’ needs  faster, cheaper, better and smarter than their competitors.  Whoever can do this continuously wins the “Super Bowl” of business, which is market domination and increased market capitalization. These are the only measures of excellence in business.as viewed by the Wall Street and investors.

We focus on software being important to just businesses, but let's face it, even the President of the United States is only as effective today as how well his technical team is in developing and deploying software quickly. President Obama found this out the hard way; he got on top of the mountain with getting his landmark health care legislation ("Affordable Care Act") passed through the Congress, but ran into deep trouble on the other side of mountain (getting down) with getting it to work so people can use it to purchase affordable health insurance.  The software problems made Obama and the government look very incompetent and gave his opposition a chance to derail the legislation.  President Obama would agree---after the debacle---that he has learned a very valuable lesson: Even a powerful man in the world in only as powerful as how well his software development team produces software. 

Marc Andreessen, entrepreneur, investor and co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz,  said in a WSJ article  titled, "Why software is eating the world," that “we are in a middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift where software companies are poised to take over swathes of economy.”

The companies that are dominating with software today are Google, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Amazon and others.  What separates these companies from others is how they can design, develop and deploy software so fast before their competitors can copy it; they stay ahead of their competitors by being on offense and keeping their competitors on defense.  Everyone can see what one is doing and can copy it quickly.  We are living in a copycat economy, so to remain on top, you have to be very good at innovating.

When I tried to explain agile software development and deveops to a CEO, I had to use lot of jargon that confused him, so I asked myself what example I can use that would explain the way these companies develop software, test it, deploy it and learn from the customer experience quickly and iterate?

Football. 

That's right, football teams in the NFL have to do it faster than companies, otherwise they can't compete in a very  competitive league in which they play.  They are all playing to win the game, as Herman Edwards, ex coach of the New York Jets,  famously once said in a news conference.

What companies have to do to compete and win is no different in the National Football League (NFL). The teams that dominate in the NFL are the New England Patriots, Baltimore Ravens, New York Giants, San Francisco Forty Niners and few others.  One can learn a lot about agile software development and devops by studying how these NFL teams do it year after year.  

Just like companies, NFL teams have no real advantages.  NFL likes to keep the playing field level with all kinds of rules. Teams have no advantage in ownership -- all the owners are filthy rich;  teams get equal share from the lucrative TV contracts; teams don’t have advantage in stadium since the dimensions are the same; teams don’t get any advantage with personnel -- they have to add players through draft picks, on open market or through a trade; teams don’t get any advantage with spending more since they all have to be under a salary cap set by the NFL.  Thus, you have to win in a league which promotes parity to keep fan interested, entertained and excited.

Football and business have one thing in common in that there are no secrets.  Your only advantage is to innovate to get a short-term advantage and  capitalize on it quickly before your competitors react, copy and try to neutralize your advantage.  The only thing businesses and football teams control is to stay slightly ahead of their competitors. That is the only winning advantage you have today.  Hence, it is brutal and getting more brutal in both business and football.

In football, it is even more transparent.  Every team has access to all the films of the game so your advantage is even shorter than in business.  You have to keep the opponent guessing on a play, drive, quarter and a game.  This means you have to continuously innovate with agile play development and effectively use “playops,” putting plays into operation effectively during the game.  This is the only way a team has a chance to win in the NFL today.  This is what businesses are also facing every day.

How do teams in the NFL win under these constraints? 

They have to do it with “software,” which in football means offensive plays.  This is the only short term advantage they get in how they design plays, how well the practice them, how well they execute them and review them afterwards to improve upon them.  This is their success to winning which companies can learn a lot about how to win in a brutally competitive business environment.

Football is an offensive league that has to constantly innovate and most of the innovation in football has taken place on offense with coaches like Paul Brown, Bill Walsh and Bill Belichick.  

How is football similar to agile software development and devops?

All NFL teams start the preseason with the objective of winning the Super Bowl.  They all develop a strategy to win by making sure that they have the right coaches and players.  In addition they design and practice plenty of offensive plays that will end up in their playbook for the season, which maps to product backlog in scrum, a popular agile software development methodology.

Let’s see who are the key people that make this possible.

A product owner is the coach of the team, who works with the GM, coaches and players to design plays and makes sure he has the right people  who can understand the plays, work effectively in his system and execute them in the game.
The scrum master is the quarterback who is responsible for making sure that all the players know what they are doing and is responsible for calling and running the plays.
The scrum members are position players like wide receivers, tight ends, running backs and linemen who are responsible for playing their role in executing the plays  the plays so they can be deployed quickly in a game in real time.

In scrum, they have releases.  In football, a release can be mapped to a game.  Each game will require the team to get together to include plays for that week based on the opponent they are facing. Next, they have to practice those plays, tweak them as necessary (based on how their opponent plays defense) and put in the game’s playbook.    

One of the thing that makes football so interesting to study for business is that just because you have well designed plays is half the game. Those plays have to be deployed in drives (sprints) in real time.  How effective a team manages its drives with well-executed plays  will determine its success.  This is not much different than devops in software development and deployment. You have to take plays you have developed and deploy it during the game since that is where you are going to find out whether they work or not.  You get an immediate feedback on play’s success or failure.  Just like in business, you have to keep iterating in football till you get the plays right, so you have to constantly make adjustments and deploy them either during the same game or in future games.  You have to remember that your competition is watching every move you make.  They are watching you very closely.  

To keep track of your progress, there is a scoreboard (burndown chart in scrum) which everyone can see to indicate how much time is left before the game is over.  In software this would be the completion of a release.  Note, in football you are developing, testing and deploying it in real time.  The game kind maps to devops in software speak since there is no other way to find out unless you get to test it against a competition.  This is no different in business.  You have to get the product out of the lab and see how the market reacts to it so you can make quick changes to it as required.

At the end of the game, a team can meet for review (commonly referred to as sprint retrospective in scrum) to assess what worked and what did not work and try to improve for the next game (release).  During the review (referred to as the sprint review in scrum) a team looks at the whole thing on where they are and what they need to do the rest of the way to get to the Super Bowl.  The sprint retrospective equivalent in football focuses on things to work on for the next game whereas sprint review equivalent in football focuses on what you need to do to get to the Super Bowl.

During the season a team plays 16 games, which would be equivalent to 16 releases and then if it makes it into the  playoffs, which would be two or  three more releases to get to the Super Bowl.  

Now obviously, a team wants to win a Super Bowl to be considered the best team for the year, but making it into the playoffs and Super Bowl is a tremendous achievement, signifying that a team has all the necessary components to come back next season and be in a good position to win the Super Bowl.

Competition is brutal in the NFL as is  in business.  Teams in the NFL have learned that to win, you have to be on offense. To be on offense means you have to design creative plays, practice them, deploy them and learn from them quickly and keep doing this till you make the playoffs and make it to the Super Bowl.

Successful companies have learned to do this and keep on designing, developing and deploying software quickly.  The method that allows them to be like an NFL team is agile software development and  devops.   Companies like NFL know that to win, you have to be on offense and that is the only way you can control your ability to dominate the market and increase shareholder value..

So as you can see if you follow football closely, you now know why agile software development and devops is the only way you can compete and win. If you are not doing it better than others, then you are not going to be thriving, but surviving and soon dying if you can’t turn it around quickly.  

Mapping of Agile/DevOps Terms to Football

Cool Product -- Winning the Super Bowl
Product Backlog -- Playbook of a team containing all the plays they practiced during the preseason
Release Backlog -- Playbook for the game taken from the larger playbook since you can only practice limited number of plays and master
Sprints -- Drives
Tasks  -- Plays
Burndown Chart -- Scoreboard with score and time remaining till the game is over
Burndown Velocity -- How much time left and what a team has to do to win the game before the time runs out
Daily Scrum -- team getting together to discuss before the game, during the game, in between ball possession and halftime
Sprint Retrospective -- Post game meeting to review what worked and needs to improve
DevOps -- real-time deployment and adjustment to plays in a drive based on the opponent’s defense and the score of the game 

Agile software development + devops -- Agile play development + “playops” 
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Questions

Do you think football is a good metaphor for agile software development and devops?
Do you think software is a way to win in business today?
Can business learn anything useful from football?
How much of an advantage can company realistically expect today before others copy it?

Will you please share this with others?  Thanks.
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Jay Oza is a founder and principal innovation development consultant at 5ToolGroup, a company that specializes in helping startups and established firms bring innovation to market within 90 days through our unique 5Tool Methodology that integrates sales, marketing, partnerships, customer development and agile/lean methodology to enable frugal or ("Jugaad") innovation.  We believe that to succeed today, you have to continuously look for ways to do lot more with lot less. This is the only way to win today!    

Key takeaway: For women to get to leadership roles, you need two things: something like a Rooney Rule that exists in the NFL and girls have to be taught from the early age to be a leader.


The book "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg is the talk of the day, so I thought I should provide my view take this book. The reason being that I have a stake here; I have a wife who works as a VP for a major financial services firm and a daughter who is currently attending college. I want to make sure they have a chance to reach a leadership position to which they aspire.  

Though most of the discussion around this book have included women, I agree with Nilofer Merchant when she states in her HBR blog that men should read this book and participate in the discussion.  The reason men should read this is that today we are going to have to beat 100%, not 50% of the population, unlike Warren Buffett who points out as pointed out in the HBR article titled, "Now is our time,"  that part of his success had lot to do with his having to compete with only 50% of the population. 

Getting to leadership position has proven to be difficult for many women.  Sandberg argues in her book that a big reason why women are not rising in numbers to leadership positions --  even though they have the talent, education and experience -- has to do with women -- they are not going after those positions.  In a sense she blames the women for not knowing how to play the leadership game. 

According to Sandberg’s interview on 60 Minutes,  women are not stepping up to become leaders.  She believes that they are holding themselves back. She adds that women want typically want everything to be perfect before they feel they are ready and,  even when they are ready, they are more likely to wait for someone to pick  them instead of  picking themselves up and going for it.

The statistics support Sandberg’s argument in that women make up only 4% of the  CEO position among the Fortune 500 companies.  Though improving, women are not well represented in Congress.  Facts clearly bear out that women are not fairly represented at the top levels of many of the leadership positions across the industries, government and other organizations.

One area to look for a possible solution is the National Football League when it established the Rooney Rule.

NFL faced a similar  problem when there were very few African Americans in the front office leadership roles and head coaching position.  Some blamed it on racism; others blamed it on the old boys club that shut out many talented African American candidates due to their lack of access, awareness and relationship.  

Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, saw a problem and established a rule (now referred to as the Rooney Rule) where African American candidates must be interviewed by a team when a senior level position in the front office of a team or a head coaching position becomes available.  This rule, though not perfect,  has helped African Americans being considered for leadership positions that in the past they would only would have read about it after the hire was made.  

The rule helped African Americans get access which is all they needed, since they had the knowledge, talent and experience.  Even when an African American candidate did not get hired, he at the least was developing his network, increasing his profile and gaining exposure, thus providing him with valuable experience for future openings in the NFL.  This rule has been attributed to more African Americans being hired as GM and as head coaches in the NFL.  

Perhaps corporations should also adopt this kind of a rule where a woman need to be considered for a C-level position when it opens up.  Who better than Sheryl Sandberg to propose something bold like the Rooney Rule for women in the corporate world? That would be bold and would put a spotlight on an open C-level position.

People don’t like to change the way things are and putting spotlight on the lack of fairness will  get plenty of attention that will slowly enable change to take place.  It is unlikely to happen on its own.  Men in leadership role may be sympathetic to women but are not likely to act unless the PR becomes negative for the company.   Dan Rooney put a spotlight on the NFL’s unfair hiring practices and was able to slowly change it by his own action and encouraging others to do the same and today the league is better for it.    

Another reason why  “leaning in” is not that easy for women is that many are not conditioned from early childhood to be a leader.

There used to be complaints that it was racism that kept  kept African Americans from taking up golf, since there were just handful of African American golfers playing on the PGA tour.   However, no one talked about racism after Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997.  People, in fact,  were boasting that Tiger’s victory will open up the floodgates of African American golfers making it to the PGA tour and even winning major championships.

That was in 1997.  Today after 17 years there is not a single African American golfer playing on the PGA tour besides Tiger Woods. Even with all the programs that have been set up such as the First Tee, OMYGA, and others and still we hardly see any African American golfers becoming professionals. This is not to say that they are not great athletes since they dominate in two of the most popular sports: football and basketball.  So what was behind Tiger's great success?

Tiger Woods’ success was the result of his father working with him from early childhood to make him a champion. This even applies to the Williams sister in tennis.  There are just handful of African American women (besides the Williams sisters) who are playing tennis professionally.  Leadership has to be taught to girls when they are young; it should not take place after they enter the workforce.  It may be little late by then.

I do agree with the book that women need to get better at developing their network, finding good mentors and taking risks, but I also think that culture is slowing women’s progress and a Rooney-like Rule for corporations would help since it would give women access, exposure, experience and increase their profile so they will at least get a shot at leadership positions. Also it is important that girls are taught very early to be leaders so being a leader is natural to them when they grow up. They don't have to learn how to be a leader when they get to mid level positions.  Leadership is a learned skill that takes a long time to master.  One thing women need to take away from the book is that you got to play to win.  Right now, many women are not getting a chance or choosing not to play;  therefore,  they have no shot at winning in the leadership game. 

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Questions

Why is it taking so long for women to be well represented in the leadership position?

Do you think Sheryl Sandberg offers any real solution that will work?

Do you think a "Rooney-like" Rule is needed or even work in the corporate enviroenment?

Do you think men want to really change the status quo or are they threatened by women moving into leadership positions?

 
If you found this blog useful then can you please do me a favor by either commenting or tweeting this blog post.  
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Jay Oza is a founder and principal innovation development consultant at 5ToolGroup, a company that specializes in helping startups and established firms bring innovation to market within 90 days through our unique 5Tool Methodology that integrates sales, marketing, partnerships, customer development and agile/lean methodology to enable frugal or ("Jugaad") innovation.  We believe that to succeed today, you have to continuously look for ways to do lot more with lot less. This is the only way to win today!     

Since this is a practical book reading will not result in you getting better.  You will need to develop a strategy.  I would recommend you read this book cover to cover the first time and then pick a  chapter or section  and put some of the tips and techniques into practice before moving on to another chapter or section.   Without a game plan, this book can get overwhelming quickly and you are likely to give up, which would be a shame since there is lot of useful stuff in this book.

I recommend this book since anyone reading this book will come away picking up few good tips and techniques that they can put into practice immediately. The book is very honest and straightforward as Jason talks about practicing what he presents  in the book and gives us several examples of how his clients have made improvement through his coaching.  Jason also is very realistic in that getting better according to his approach is a lifelong effort and not a one day thing.  But you have to start.  Reading a book is a start but we have to put it into practice.  

We all need a life coach who can see things that could make us better and push us harder towards the goal we have set out for ourselves.  This book serves that purpose in helping us identify what we are doing and how we are doing it and  challenges us to work towards improving what we are doing with Jason's proven techniques.. And  if we follow many of the tips and techniques Jason presents,  then our best can also get better.  

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