With the Rugby World Cup in September 2023 and the 2024 Olympic Games to be hosted in Paris, sports are top of mind in the French capital
We took this opportunity to sit down with Christophe Inzirillo, senior fellow at ESCP Business School, to discuss how the values, know-how and skills from the world of sports could influence our companies.
Senior Fellow ESCP Business School
Though it represents a relatively small economic sector — 2% of global GDP — sport plays a major role internationally that goes beyond the economy. It is one of the most powerful cultural forces in the world. Above all, it provides fertile ground for learning about and analysing the sources of performance, as well as our relationship to health, the notion of a team, and rules. It is a mirror of our society.
This intellectual, perceptual, and perhaps even technological transfer from high-level sport to the corporate world is the central focus of Christophe Inzirillo’s work and has inspired the notion of fair-play management, which he discusses in the Executive Education white paper, How can sport inspire managers to stimulate collective intelligence? What follows is a summary of this conversation.
The rules of the game may evolve, weather conditions may vary, and spectators’ expectations may change. Teams must constantly reassess their strategies and approaches in order to succeed in this changing environment.
It’s time for sports to have a greater influence on our companies
Up until now, the intersection of sports and companies has been limited. They are seen as two separate worlds, or else sport is used for marketing and communication purposes, through event sponsorship, for example.
However, much like a company in the telecommunications industry can draw the best practices of the healthcare industry to improve their performance, so can companies learn valuable lessons from the sports world that go beyond well-being.
To this point, Christophe Inzirillo advocates for the “technology transfer of know-how, from high-level sport to sport for health, to companies”. He believes that “this area of activity is a powerful source of future innovation for companies.“
Overlooking these sources of inspiration would be a missed opportunity for companies. There are many specific benefits: for example, greater professionalism among managers with consideration for employees’ health, a different way of thinking about the role of training and practice, working on how to handle defeat, greater appreciation for the task of arbitration within organisations, applying the science of physical and mental training and gaining an understanding of the high-performance lifecycle.
Embracing the rules of the game to increase performance
Whether official or unwritten, companies are subject to a wide variety of rules relating to safety, ethics, finance, behaviour, production processes, human resource management and other aspects. This is especially true today amid increasing compliance requirements.
“In sport, an undunerstanding of rules contributes to performance. It’s therefore particularly useful for companies to draw on this idea and adapt it to their own challenges,” argues Christophe Inzirillo.
When rules are seen as constraints or obstacles to creativity, this generates a negative rules culture that can hinder performance and result in deviant, transgressive or even dangerous behaviour, especially when it comes to safety. In the world of sports, on the other hand, a good understanding of the rules contributes to performance. Without rules, there is no performance.
This can be extended to processes. Here too, without rules and processes, there is no performance. Yet, these rules must allow for some flexibility and agility. Sport has always allowed for this, by updating rules, of course, but most importantly, by giving the referee a critical role: ensuring compliance with rules without hindering play and respecting the spirit of the rules and sportsmanship. Think of “play on” in football.
In sport, an understanding of rules contributes to performance. It’s therefore particularly useful for companies to draw on this idea and adapt it to their own challenges.
Adopting fair-play management for the win
Inspired by the world of sport and the work of the sociologist Anthony Giddens, who has extensively studied rules in society, Christophe Inzirillo advocates for fair-play management. Fair-play management seeks to provide a fair, productive, healthy and enjoyable work environment.
Fair, since it allows participants to work together while respecting the integrity of each individual. Productive over time, since it leads to initiatives while respecting the strategy that has been internalised.
Healthy, since it enhances the health of people, teams, and ultimately, the organisation itself. And enjoyable since it seeks to bring a renewed sense of enjoyment and engagement to this discipline.
This approach to management responds to issues faced by managers, who sometimes struggle to not only manage all of the company’s rules, guidelines and processes but also — and especially— to regulate each employee’s behaviour in relation to these rules.
This is all the more difficult since, to be truly effective, a manager must at once enforce these rules and promote autonomy and initiative, which requires a certain level of flexibility. According to Christophe Inzirillo, “fair-play management is based on a key principle — instead of creating intelligent rules, we should share intelligence of the rules, an enriched rule culture — based on four sports-inspired management models: the coach, captain, referee, and teammate.”
To read more about the four sports-inspired management models, download the white paper.
When the rules of the game evolve, we adapt
Sport offers a valuable resource for transferring skills and know-how to enhance management practices. Sport teaches us the importance of perseverance, continuous training and constant improvement to achieve ambitious goals, whatever the sector of activity. It also teaches us how to succeed within a given framework of rules, even if the rules might change.
As Christophe Inzirillo has said, “The rules of the game may evolve, weather conditions may vary, and spectators’ expectations may change. Teams must constantly reassess their strategies and approaches in order to succeed in this changing environment. To that end, our future research will focus more specifically on relationships with environmental “resources”, in line with what nature sports can implement and conceptualise.“