Every four years, football fever grips the world for about a month, and this year’s FIFA World Cup 2018 is no different. While most of us are following the games closely, I want to share a few insights that businesses and professionals can learn from the event. And it is not about football in general but specific to the World Cup.

It is a given that businesses are meant to create a sense of purpose and promote fair play. However, today, in a world wracked by scams, accounting frauds, and questionable leadership conduct gaps, let us look at the ongoing FIFA World Cup that boasts of teams giving their best in an open and transparent manner.

1. 3-S – Stamina, Speed, Strength:

The World Cup and the game of football have slowly moved away from skill alone. Stamina, Speed and Strength – I call it the 3-S factor – determines the winner in every match. Likewise, to stay in contention for top honours, businesses need to build stamina that will help them play intensely against a good opposition.

Similarly, in a world of disruption led by tech innovations, speed is essential to winning. In the marketplace, the speed or agility with which organisations adapt to new consumer demands, behavioural trends or product obsoleteness is key today. Lastly, strength that helps bulldoze the opponent by sheer size  – just not physical but mental as well – is equally important.

In today’s world, we see examples of start-ups being able to take on mighty players through the heft of their funding power, the ability to hit back and stay on course. Amazon is a wonderful example that even biggies like Walmart have not been able to dislodge.

2. Selflessness over Stars (Team spirit):

After three decades of working in organisations across the globe, I often experience, selflessness and team spirit taking a back seat for corporate ‘stars’, whose self-beneficial actions lead to short terminism in the corporate world, often hurting the brand.

Be it Messi, Ronaldo or Neymar Jr., the stars fade away to become players of the national team that takes pride for its country. Though they play for some of the best soccer clubs around the world, the World Cup sees such stars give way to team spirit with the sole aim of making their country’s flag fly high every four years.

Leadership teams and managers in corporations, irrespective of their division, subsidiary or hierarchy, should create a sense of team spirit for the cause of winning in the market. The sole aim of every World Cup team is to bring back glory to their homeland.

Similarly, employees need to work as a team to let their employers win in the customer battlefield. When individual employees or leaders become bigger than the organisation, not only does the latter suffer, it also creates a sense of loss of ownership and pride among team members and employees.

3. 3-Ps – Practice & Perseverance leads to Performance:

Every morning we are bombarded with news about success stories, crazy valuations and entrepreneurs become billionaires ‘overnight’. I have seen a lot of us, especially youngsters, getting carried away with this illusion that success and wealth are created overnight.

For the World Cup, each team works hard for four years before they can again have a shot at the title. Forty-eight months of practice and perseverance translates into a World Cup performance for the qualifying teams.

Even in business, superior performance is an outcome of practice and perseverance. No business or brand is built overnight; it takes years of hard work, tenacity and consumer understanding to build a successful company.

For example, the so-called start-ups like Amazon (23-years-old), Facebook (13-years-old), Alibaba (18-years-old) or Flipkart (11-years-old) spent more than a decade to build a business of scale. Youngsters and professionals should realise that even a start-up is a decade-long journey of practising and correcting mistakes, fine-tuning strategy and improving every day to perform and compete with the best in the world.

In today’s world of uncertainty and global recession, the 3-P guide to becomes successful in business is more relevant than ever. Every organisation should build a defendable consumer proposition or product and keep working on it till it comes out a winner. Giving up is not an option as you get a chance every four years to win the Cup. I am sure that in business many such opportunities are available to the deserving.

4.  Let the best team win:

Recent events have shown that the corporate world is becoming less large-hearted. Be it hitting the competition below the belt, corporate espionage or even simple bad-mouthing, it is time we learnt from the true spirit of the World Cup – let the best team win.

Even after being fierce competitors in the field, once the tournament ends, everybody cheers for the winner. The losing team walks hand in hand with the winning team, having given their best efforts.

As professionals and businesses, we should play it fair and tight in the market and come out as winners. Otherwise, we should be large-hearted enough to acknowledge a better performer, learn from our mistakes and go to the market again to win the game for the consumer wallet. Every organisation has great leaders and human beings. So, remaining bitter after the match is over serves no purpose. Let us learn to acknowledge and cheer a better performer, even if it is our competitor.

5. Humanity is One:

The FIFA World Cup 2018 has 32 country teams with the host country getting an automatic entry. Across the world, football fans, irrespective of nationality, owe allegiance to these 32 teams for the one month of the tournament. Favourites like Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Germany, France, England and others have a fan following around the world. Their nationality or colour or creed doesn’t matter – the World Cup is a religion that every citizen of the world embraces purely for the spirit and love of the game.

In today’s world of trade barriers, cartel-led dumping and economic trade wars, leave aside horror stories of geopolitical violence like terrorism, illegal immigrants, racism, etc. the world needs to come together for a noble cause of peace and humanity. Irrespective of country or religion allegiance, corporations and business leaders should play a larger role to encourage better equity, justice and a more democratic and sustainable world.

As die-hard soccer fans, we come together every four years to support our World Cup team. Similarly, as die-hard followers of humanity, we need to create a feeling of oneness irrespective of our differences, however, small or big they may be. It reminds me of Gandhi’s quote, “All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family.”

May the best team win and do cheer hard to support your favourite team!