Business Lessons from the Revolution

Previously I have written about business lessons we could take away from the success of the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox. This year, the New England Revolution are having a great season and provide an opportunity for business lessons as well. 1 - Front office - its starts from the top. You have no doubt heard this before, you need great leadership to be successful in sports as well as in business. What is great leadership? Looks at what the Krafts have done with the Patriots and the Revolution. Bring in a great coach, provide him the resources he needs, give him time and support, and leave him alone. (Hear that George Steinbrenner!) 2 - Great coach - Steve Nicol. A great player for Liverpool and England in his day, he has the Revolutions playing great soccer. He has good assistance from Paul Mariner (a great scorer for England). They compliment each other well. The defense the Rev play starts at the top with pressure on the back line and continues through the middle to the Revs own backline and goalie. 3 - Team work - The Revolution got hit with a number of injuries during the 2004 season and that forced them to develop some of their younger players. Call ups to national teams (USA and Trinidad & Tobago) for World Cup qualifiers lead to additional opportunities during this season. The Revs now have a fairly deep bench. And equally important, everyone knows their place and that their turn and playing time will come. So the locker room is a comfortable place as opposed to a team like DC United, probably equally talented but distracted with teen sensation Freddy Adu complaining about playing time. DC instead of returning to defend their championship are now going home early. 4 - Individual play- You can name almost every one of the Revs and they have had their time in the spotlight. Sure Taylor Twellman won the Golden Boot with his performance this season but the goal distribution was really spread around. The game yesterday, where the Revs were down 2-0 in the aggregate score came back to win 3-2 with three different players stepping up to score goals. A real team effort! 5 - Never give up - despite being down 2-0 with only 30 minutes to go, the Revs kept charging forward. The got the first goal on a great effort and that cracked wall that the Metro Stars had created. The second goal came off a corner kick, and the third (winning goal) came off great efforts from Dempsey (nice leading pass) and Smith (great speed and execution). Check out the video highlights available on the MLSnet.com web site. Nothing really unique about these lessons. They come together nicely for the Revolution. What would it take for you to put them into action at your workplace?