Take a fresh look at your lifestyle.

Business Lessons Learned From Rugby

In Australia, the most popular rugby code is rugby league. In the rest of the world, the most popular code is rugby union. There’s great debate amongst sport fans about which code is superior as they have many differences. However, there is one thing that they both have in common: the scrum. They both use a scrum for different purposes. In union, the scrum is a little more functional than league but they both emphasise the need for teamwork. To the uninformed viewer, a scrum might look to be a mess; in many contexts, the word “scrum” evokes images of chaos. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Scrum Is Teamwork

In a scrum, there are many different positions that have to work in concert to achieve a single objective. In rugby, the goal is get to the ball and advance it down the field. These principles transfer directly to business. If you want to develop a product and introduce it into the marketplace, your employees all need to form a scrum to achieve the goal. In sport, a front line of forwards provides the protection. The backs provide the force to push the scrum forward. A teammate feeds the ball into the scrum and the hooker has to hook it back to the scrum half. Every part of the operation is crucially important for its success. If the forwards do not provide a stable platform, the scrum collapses. If the backs do not provide enough force, the scrum gets overrun. If the scrum half does not direct the team properly, it will be aimless. The same is true in business. Scrum-on was built on these same principles; you can visit them at scrum-on.com.au.

Market Introduction

There are several elements to bringing a product to market. It’s a delicate matter of timing and teamwork. You need the innovators who will introduce the ideas. They are the thinkers who are somehow able to see what the market will need before even the market knows what it might need. The business leaders act as forwards. They are the ones who provide the stability through leadership and capital injection. They bring the money and the connections needed to produce the product. The engineers, scientists, and researchers are similar to the backs; they provide the forward momentum that drives the entire team forward towards its goal. Finally, a good management team represents the scrum half. The management staff will direct the business in the direction that it needs to go.

As with a scrum in rugby, a business cannot bring a product to market if everybody is not all on the same page. They all have different jobs to do but no job is any less or more important than the other. Teamwork, on the field or in the office, is absolutely vital to a successful market introduction. The Scrum-On process is a testament to that teamwork. Some businesses have a difficult time introducing the Scrum technique; with the help of the innovators who developed the process, you can implement it successfully.

Comments are closed.