It was three a.m and I was still in the office.
Deliberately working on my perfect PowerPoint slides.
I was still in the office because my team and
I had this big presentation to an important client the next day.
And we want to get it just perfect.
However, our presentation was just in six hours and with every hour that
passed I actually wondered if what I was still doing was beneficial or,
quite frankly detrimental, to our ability to deliver to the client the next day.
And don't get me wrong like, I'm a type A.
I was gonna get this presentation perfect.
But I also understood that spending an extra hour in the office that night
meant an, less, one hour's sleep less.
And as I was battling through this idea of trade offs,
I realized I had been in that situation on numerous occasions before,
but that wasn't in the office, it was on the tennis court.
Before I came to the GSB I worked as a management consultant.
But prior to that, I was a tennis player.
And while sports and business may seem worlds apart for
you, there are surprisingly many parallels and
today I would like to explore three of them with you.
The three that represent the most important lessons,
I have gotten out of sports.
So the first lesson is about preparation.
And for that, let's all imagine we are world class tennis players.
Everyone.
So, you are playing at Wimbledon semi finals, your serve has been like
completely off this whole game, but with this last point you go up to the line,
you serve, and it's an ace, and you won.
You just won semi-finalist of Wimbledon.
You'll go off to the net, you thank your opponent, you do the press conference.
It's always the same questions, the same answers.
So you're gonna see something along the lines,
it was a very tough match, my opponent played great.
I'm very happy to be in the finals.
>> [LAUGH] >> Okay, but now what?
You have 24 hours until probably the biggest day of your life,
finals of the world's oldest tournament.
What do you do?
Well then we tell you even if that serve felt a little bit off today,
you're not going to practice.
Your body is already exhausted.
I'm about to fall off.
So what you need to do is actually get your body and your mind ready for
another five hour battle, by jogging, stretching, Ice bath, massage.
You're likely to go over your strategy with your coach, maybe visualize,
if that's something, if that's what works for you, but that's it.
Now let's think about it in terms of business.
We also have those big days in our lives, don't we?
A board presentation, a client meeting, final round interview, and yes, I get it.
We're not athletes, but fundamentally, we're all human beings,
and it's very interesting to me that we tend to think that the more we work,
the more energy we have, the less we sleep, the fresher our brain is.
Right?
I'll tell you on that day or actually rather say night at three a.m
in the morning, I intuitively knew that what I was doing was wrong.
That staying out that one night was really not going to move the needle.
But this temptation to have this excuse to be able to say,
we've worked as hard as we could because we worked until the very last minute,
aas hard to resist.
But the truth is whether it's sports or business,
one cannot deliver truly great performance by cramming on a final night.
Because the preparation for a big day starts long before.
So next time, you have this big day coming up,
prepare as much as you can until the day before and
give yourself some rest, get a good night's sleep, and don't get me wrong.
This is not about work life balance, this is not about being soft on yourself,
it's about being strategic and maximizing your chances of performing on the big day.
Okay, so story number two is about responding to things we don't control.
So let me give you a quick story from my college career.
It was my sophomore year, the first game of the season.
So everyone is in the stands and you can feel that excitement.
And as I'm hitting the ball, I feel this shooting pain in my wrist.
No treatment helps over next few days and
the next thing I know, I'm in cast and out for half of the season.
And this, just doesn't feel fair.
It doesn't feel right.
At that time in my life, tennis wasn't everything, but it almost was.
I remember I drove back and, from the hospital, my coach sat me down and
he said Claude's, there are things you don't control, such as your injury.
But it is up to you to respond to that situation.
The team will need you at the end of the season.
But you need to be ready.
Now, being ready meant I needed to do conditioning and running everyday.
There's one thing I hated about tennis, that's it.
>> [LAUGH].
>> So, not only I, did I need to something I hated the most,
I actually had no guarantees it was gonna help.
Because quite frankly, we didn't know what was gonna happen down the line,
if I was gonna be able to play.
So I'll tell you it felt tempting to forfeit.
To give up the season due to injury.
But it didn't.
And so I started running, biking,
day in, day out, they soon removed my cast and I got back on the court.
I lost my first match after coming back.
But at the end of the season,
when it mattered, I helped the team win the conference tournament and
I clinched our win to qualify to Sweet 16, equivalent of players for Super Bowl.
Looking back, those were,
that was the best season we've had as a team in my four years at William and Mary.
And more important than the results were the lessons,
intangible lessons, they learn about team dynamics.
Because not being able to play gave me insights into team dynamics
I wouldn't otherwise be able to observe.
Let me tell you a secret,
varsity tennis team really not that different from McKinsey project team.
>> [LAUGH].
>> So, athletes don't control injuries.
But, we as business professionals also don't control everything.
That project you didn't really want to be staffed on, guess what, you're doing it.
You know that client that no one wants to work with?
You're assigned to him.
Or that job promotion that you really wanted, but you didn't get it.
And at those times, it may feel tempting to forfeit, to give up.
But it is up to you to make most of that situation.
So when you face that situation, I'd love for you to remember words of John Wooden,
probably the most famous coach in the history of college sports who said,
when things go bad for reasons we don't control, it is very tempting to first
blame and then embrace fate as a reason for our failure.
But this is not what effective leaders do.
Okay so my last story is about getting a support team.
So let's now all go back to Wimbledon.
You are playing that final.
So you are already like on the central court and you are warming up and
as you are warming up, you glance over to your box, and you see your coach there,
your trainer, your hitting partner, along with your friends and family.
And you realize how lucky you are.
You are here because you've worked really hard.
But you're also here because of their hard work and their support.
Now, is this really that much different from business?
I'll argue no, our ability to succeed in a business place will depend on
our hard work but also on the strength of our support team.
Yet for some reason, when we talk about coaching in athletics,
it's normally obvious, but
it gets more uncomfortable when we talk about it in the world of business.
I remember a few months ago, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company came to our class and
he talked about working with coaches and counselors.
When we reflected back on his presentation you know,
some of us expressed admiration for him sharing the story.
But some people were outwardly uneasy.
I remember one person saying you know,
if I knew that my coach was seeing or my boss was seeing a coach or a counselor,
I'm not sure if I wanted to work for him if I would have faith for him.
And that was so interesting to me.
Because in sports, exactly opposite.
It's not only normal, it is actually crucial to your success.
The CEO ended his talk by saying, if you could get help, why wouldn't you?
If you could become a better leader.
Why wouldn't you?
Today I've talked to you about parallels between worlds of sports and
worlds of business.
I've told you how tennis players go about winning their game.
And if I were to summarize my whole talk in just one word.
It would be ownership.
Own your preparation, own your response, and own your support system.
I hope some of these lessons resonated with you, and
will help you win your own game.
Thank you.
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