Football season is here again and so is my pet dislike – holding up sports teams as models for business teams to copy.  It’s ridiculous for business teams to strive to be like sports teams.  And it can be dangerous.  Here’s why.

Sports teams are trained for only one sport.  Team members know exactly which sport they’re playing, how to play it and which rules apply.  How simple.

Sports teams wear uniforms so that you can easily spot the competition.  They are introduced as your competition before each game.  How polite.

Competing teams agree to respect the umpire.  Sports umpires tend to be very visible, very loud and very strict.  How reassuring.

Best of all, sports teams face only one competitor at a time, at a date and place agreed on well in advance.  How convenient.

In business you do not have these luxuries.  That’s why I think sports teams should study how business teams do it.

Pay more to play more

Well, maybe not always.  Better that sports teams don’t copy how business teams often confuse ends with means.  Business teams become so good at doing the same one thing cheaply that they assume efficiency is an end in itself.

No!  Efficiency is a means.

Ask old Mister Henry Ford.  He once annoyed his fellow industrialists by doubling the pay of his manual workers.

History has shown that Henry Ford was no fool when it came to producing high volumes at low cost.  Yet, according to modern business practices, he was a total fool for willingly increasing his labor costs.  What was he thinking!

I’m afraid that is the point.  He was thinking.  He realized that there was no point in building so many cars if so few people could afford them.  He simply wanted his workers to be able to buy the cars they were making.

Poor old Mister Ford.  He could not rely on a bail out or a cash-for-clunkers hand out.  He had to make his own success... by paying his workers more.

Of course, today we know better.

Efficiently costing more

But then again, maybe we don’t know better.  Many people think that the point of efficiency is to reduce cost, but few realize that efficiency can cost too much.  Efficiency costs too much when society pays the price.

For example, efficiency gives us canned elevator music instead of soaring symphonies; bland warehouses instead of green parks; polluted streets instead of side-walk cafes.  You get the picture.

Inefficiency can be a bit wasteful, but it’s a small price to pay for beauty.  And for honest jobs.  Don’t forget that the mad scramble for efficiency has given us downsizing, rightsizing and outsourcing, all meaning the same thing - you're fired.

If we allow ‘relentless efficiency’ to continue unchecked, our society will become inane, uninteresting and uninspiring.  As consumers, we have the power to prevent that.  It’s called choice.

But be careful not to be fickle in your choosing.  Being consistent at work matters because it enables others to anticipate how you will act.  Consistency is always doing the same thing in the same situation.  It is the basis of trust.

And of foolishness. 

Surely, if you are consistently unwilling to adapt when the situation has changed, then you are being foolishly stubborn (if not stubbornly foolish).  And we all know that foolishly stubborn creates nonsense at work.