The most popular business analogies are a little ridiculous
If you must use sports analogies to define your product, your business, or even your industry, make sure you’re playing the right sport.
American football is like good ol’ waterfall project management. Every play is a Gantt chart in action. Everyone has to be in the right place at the right time or the entire play falls apart. Sure, there may be some scrambling and improvising, maybe even some heroic moves or hail Mary passes, but for the most part it amounts to tons of coordinated effort on the field (literally) and not a lot of progress.
Gantt charts are just detailed maps of all the ways your plans will fall apart. As the saying goes, “man plans, and god laughs”: Gantt charts are like your tight five on the cosmic stage.
Baseball is a team of experts, with every player a knowledge silo. Everyone is an expert at their thing and nobody else can do their job but them. And they certainly won’t do other jobs. People optimize their work for the most efficient handoff, and then it’s up to the next person. And if you make an error, it gets brought up every time the ball heads your way.
What we see with football and baseball is big bets with low scores. Touchdowns and home runs are great when you get them, but from a business perspective, are they really worth it?
The sport of successful, balanced product teams is basketball. Everyone is ready to handle change at every moment. You can play your zone, play man-to-man (problematic as the language may be), and be ready to turn on your heel from offense to defense and back. The game is played in short iterations — not big plays — delivering incremental points again and again.
If basketball isn’t your thing, soccer works very well (“football” to the world outside the U.S.). The same principles of basketball apply to soccer, especially as different countries have different styles of play. My only problem with this analogy is the outcome: low scores or even no goals at all.
I’m not really into sports, but I love a good analogy! How do you describe your team and your business in ways people can understand? What would be more effective and inclusive? Tell us in the comments.
