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Lessons From The Playground
Book Cover of Lessons from the Playground
Context on why this book intrigued me:
There are shared memories from the world of sport which sometimes shape entire generations. India’s 1983 Cricket World Cup win is one such memory.
For me and many in my generation however it’s the 1998 football world cup final match of France vs Brazil that’s imprinted on the mind. France won – but many of us expected Brazil to win. This was the era of Ronaldo- the bald and buck-toothed Brazillian player long before the world had ever heard of Cristiano Ronaldo.
I still remember how Brazil lost to France. Ronaldo looked confused and ran up and down, unable to do much. And somehow, no other Brazillian took the initiative either. We later read how Ronaldo had suffered a medical emergency and almost died on the field.
For me as a kid that was a lesson not just in sport but in life. I learnt the value and importance of seizing the initiative. Watching this match taught me the importance of being willing to go beyond one’s designated role and stick one’s neck out to try and make one’s team win even when plans unravel.
Over the years, in my mind’s eye I have watched that match and many other sporting moments again and again. I relive those moments while listening to instructions at work and in social groups. There are sporting moments I replay while listening to narratives of how and why some person, company or product won big.
With my mind wired like that I’ve often wondered how awesome it would be if a business book illustrated it’s pages with word sketches of sporting moments. How wonderful it would be, if we could learn lessons about business and about life – from sports.
This, my friends is what this management book – Lessons from the Playground tries to do.
The Book:
The printed paperback edition we reviewed was an inch thick and in size between 0.5 cm to 1 cm smaller than an A5 sheet of paper. I loved this book’s vibrant color photos of sports persons and of the sporting moments it describes.
Size Comparison of A4 Sheet with Book IMG_20190820_223825
The Book has Vibrant Full Colour Photos of some of the Sporting Moments it describes – IMG_20190820_223104
There are 24 chapters and each chapter has examples from the world of sport and business with particular emphasis on idiosyncrasies as well as general lessons from players, teams and companies from across the world.
These 24 chapters are divided into 4 sections titled People, Platforms, Processes and Pinnacles – followed by a concluding section titled “Post Match Wrap Up”.
Athletes and teams it talks of include Pele, Ali , Michael Jordan, Sachin Tendulkar, Federer, Martina Navratilova, Michael Phelps, Roger Bannister and others.
It touches upon lessons from a range of sports and sporting events. The sports it draws examples from range from Cricket to Tennis to Field Hockey to Soccer to Running and Swimming. Sporting competitions it touches on include the Olympics and Cricket World Cup to Professional Tennis, Golf and more.
As a tech entrepreneur I wondered whether it would touch upon the technology industry and whether this book’s examples would be all “old economy”. I also wondered about the level of detail this book would get into with sporting examples and whether the level of detail would be balanced with a larger picture of how a specific example fits into the larger scheme of things.
On both of these fronts, my doubts were unfounded – because this book does an awesome job. A book like this needs a level of detail to be useful and for most people whether practicing managers, engineers or leaders – this book has the right balance of detail versus abstraction to make everyone happy. and while there is no way to satisfy people who “want only the top level view” this book
On the topic of details versus abstraction, a case in point is the chapter titled “Process and Teamwork”. This chapter used the example of Barcelona Club soccer team. The chapter talked of the team, with it’s game-play of tiki-taka short passes and extensive teamwork. And how this team repeatedly came under the “results scanner” – till they honed their game-play into a winning formula.
While describing Barcelona team, the author draws parallels between this soccer team and Apple Computer’s evolution into the company we see today as Apple. The parallels drawn touch upon the disastrous stint of former Apple CEO John Sculley – the Pepsico VP who fired Apple’s founder Steve Jobs to the time when Steve came back. It draws on the example of Club Barca to touch upon how Steve Jobs not just made Apple profitable but also led Apple to redeem it’s culture and spirit. This spirit of Apple since the late 1990s, the book mentions is what impelled Apple to ship some of its most iconic products of the past 2 decades. The chapter wraps up contrasting Apple’s thought leadership with the mind-sets and approach of Indian companies in this space.
I personally came away with my mind implanted with the seeds of many ideas that would stick for a long long time.
Concluding Thoughts / verdict about the book:
This book is definitely worth buying.
In the world of Indian Management books that’s littered with books ranging from the academic which stick to syllabus to the boring to books that totally gloss over details- this book is refreshing and doubly creative both in the examples it gives and in the way it relates sports to the corporate world.
My only suggestion to the reader is to come into this book with a level of energy and attention. Given that this book takes some pretty exciting scenarios from sport and uses its descriptions to illustrate some pretty heavy management concepts – this is not a book to be casually swallowed but rather a book to be chewed, digested and to be reflected upon!
Saying this, because even with all my current praise and all my initial interest in this book – I tried keeping this book as bedside reading and to my chagrin even 6-8 months after getting this book I had not gotten very far.
But the moment I treated this book as a priority and came to it fully awake and energized to consume this book’s lessons – I found it to be fairly engrossing and entertaining reading which I subsequently totally enjoyed as I chomped through this volume on “Lessons from the Playground” !
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