Note:  This post originally appeared on Balihoo's old blog on 11/12/09 by Kevin Donaldson

In the past couple days I have came across two interesting articles using American football analogies representing typical startup challenges.  One yesterday from Dan Martell entitled Startups: Its ok to change your mind/product, A second post just two days prior by Entrepreneur/Angel Andy Liu on his blog Inspired Startup entitled Dink to Success.  I often use the concept of sports when talking about Agile software development and more generally when discussing business agility so I thought I would add some additional thoughts into the mix.  These certainly apply to the marketing software tools and marketing planning systems we build here at Balihoo. 

First, lets talk about why are sports such as football are great inspiration to startups? – I think it works well because there is a mix of competition, pain and exhilaration in the sport, which is very similar to what you get in a startup environment.  Interestingly, this can be a useful way to help recruit and/or determine the types of people that you want on your startup team.  I don’t mean that you should seek out athletes, but the analogy can help prospects understand what they are signing up for, and help weed out candidates that are not interested in playing the game.  Some people like the idea of being in a startup. but can they play on the field, or are they really just an armchair athlete?

Once you have your team – how can you make your players most effective? The articles listed use the sport of football; however, I actually believe that while football works in some ways the sport of rugby might be a superior analogy in many respects.  Both games have similar objectives but with some key differences. 

 

Here are a few examples:

Pads and Helmets:  Unlike American football there are no pads or helmets in rugby.  Having this type of safety gear can create the impression of indestructibility.  Just put your head down and go.  Without pads and helmets for protection it might drive a different type of behavior – is there a smoother way for us to move the ball forward?  Plus, if you make the comparison that pads/helmet = cash you are likely lucky to have a jersey:)

Defined Plays - the good:  Executing a defined play can be a good analogy in a startup if used in the right context.  For example in most Agile software shops teams will ‘huddle’ each morning to set out a plan for the day and then resets again the next day based on the results of the previous days play.  Another good use of this model relates to frequent resets and huddles on business strategy.  However the longer the duration between huddles the more this analogy starts to breaks down.

Defined Plays – the bad:  At a macro/business level I think this analogy can actually decrease agility.  Plays in football are executed in a very defined process.  If anything goes wrong, play execution fails most of the time.  It typically results in zero movement forward or sometimes a loss of yards.  On the other hand, Rugby is more about continuous sustained play with real time adjustments.  The team is not told what play to execute or has the benefit of a stoppage in play to make a static decision.  The rules of the game create a style of play that can appear very chaotic from the outside. (remind you of your startup business environment?)  However, team members practice around a basic framework or set of patterns, and when on the field – the team self organizes, and adjusts real time as the environment changes. 

The Speed of Play: Think about American football.  4 quarter hour segments of play time.   Then think about actual game duration in terms of actual time from start to finish.  There is a lot of time where there is no play.  Now think about Ruby.  The style of play is much faster – there is a lot more opportunity for real time ‘practice’ – fail, retry fail retry.  It happens so fast in the game play that you hardly have time to consider or even think about it as a failed play.  Its just a natural part of the game progression.  This coupled with real time learning on the field creates a very well practiced, fail fast and adapt, agile team operating under minimal constraints.     

One of the article above talks about dinking the ball down the field with small short plays.  Yes – good analogy and a potential strategy to get the ball across the line – as long as the team you are playing against is using the same rules.   Now think about about business.  To me, it is much more like rugby with very few rules about how the different teams move the ball.  If your team plays well under the rules of American football what happens when you are put in an environment with the same objective (moving the ball down the field to the end zone) but remove the constraints on how movement takes place and play doesn’t stop?  Think like a rugby team!

Tags:  marketing software tools, marketing planning systems, agile software development