Play to Win or Don’t Play at All: What I Learned from the 2011 Boston Red Sox

Here in Red Sox Nation, most people have dried their tears, put away their beer koozies, swapped out their red and white for their yellow and black, and told their seven-year-old children to buck up; they don’t know what real suffering is.

To the post-2004 generation, “Wait ’til next year” isn’t a phrase fraught with generational despair and chronic disappointment. It’s now something we say if the Pats should lose in the playoffs or the Bruins fail to bring home the Stanley Cup. We’ve so recently drunk the champagne, it’s no big deal. (The Celtics, meanwhile, are AWOL with the rest of the NBA.)

Still, the September slide of 2011, presided over by the same management team and some of the same players who brought us a World Championship in 2004 (while also coming from a 3-0 ALCS deficit to sweep the next four games from the Yankees) and another in 2007, was painful to watch. What the heck happened?

In an excellent piece of reporting, the Boston Globe’s Bob Hohler connects the dots that led to the downward trajectory.

To sum up, hubris, laziness, indifference, lost focus, lack of leadership, and too much beer and fried chicken. (While beer and chicken may have been rocket fuel for Wade Boggs, they apparently were more like Sterno for Lackey, Lester, and Beckett.) All this and a $161 million payroll to boot.

Sweet.

It’s easy, not to mention fun, to hurl insults at a group of grown men being paid fairy tale money to play a game they are expected to play better than most anyone. It’s easy, and even more fun, to deride their arrogant disrespect for the game and us, the fans.

Not so fun, is to turn the questions back on ourselves and our own professional practices.
> Do we get cocky?
> Do we get lazy?
> Do we ever lose focus?
> Do we always provide the leadership necessary to inspire our best work and that of colleagues?
> Do we ever bring in beer and fried chicken when crudités and iced tea would have been more appropriate?

If you’re lucky enough to be signed to an $82.5 million contract, you’re probably not reading this blog looking for tips on best business practices (If you are, can I interest you in hiring a PR firm?), but you probably are in the business world. People are always applying sports metaphors to life and I admit it’s depressing to listen to some facilitator with markers and flip charts drone on about “playing to win” and giving “110%.” It’s more depressing, however, to lose a contract or a job because of complacency, indifference, or laziness.

So, let the 2011 Red Sox be a wakeup call. Step away from the fried chicken, put down the beer, look in the mirror and ask, “Is it next year?”

Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC

Image by Andrew Malone

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Branding & Positioning, Crisis Communication & Management, Latest News, Media Relations, Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


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