Bonding and Business

NFL playoff season is upon us and millions of us will be coaching from our armchairs or favorite establishment as we cheer on our favorite uniform and life’s focus turns to pigskin, but a lot more than football is going on.

Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist and professor at Stanford University, shares data and a humorous look at guys and how we communicate and interact. His insight sheds light onto more serious topics such as; culture, leadership, and collaboration.

Go Packers!


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Kneale Mann | Leadership Strategist, consultant, writer, speaker, executive coach facilitating performance growth with leaders, management, and teams.

TED | Philip Zimbardo

Have You Found Your Fans?

Earl "Curly" Lambeau was an employee of the Indian Packing Company and got the idea to start a football team. Curly needed some bucks to get gear so he asked his boss for help.

His employer agreed to give him $500. The only condition was that he incorporated the meat packing company’s name in the team name.


Curly was general manager and head coach for the next thirty years and is a member of the NFL Hall of Fame.

Launched on August 11, 1919, the Green Bay Packers have a record twelve championships and remain the only non-profit community owned American professional sports franchise. For years, NFL rules stated that each team must be owned by one individual. In the case of the Green Bay Packers, the entire city of Green Bay, Wisconsin owns the team.

When the Packers are playing at Lambeau Field, the city of Green Bay is a ghost town. Residents are either at the game or watching it. The franchise is as much a part of the community as any person or major company.

Line Up and Wait.

If you want tickets to a game, line up, for a very long time. If you want season tickets, you have about a forty year wait and you have to prove you are a permanent resident of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

The Green Bay Packers are celebrating their 91st anniversary. The team has not won the championship in 79 seasons since 1919.

Content Context Community.

Fans happily wear a wedge of cheese on their heads - a tradition that began when fans in rival Illinois attempted to insult Wisconsinites. Instead of turning the name calling in to something ugly, they embraced it and the sight of cheeseheads at Lambeau is as common as beer.

Buzz phrases such as “brand evangelist” come to mind but in this case, Curly Lambeau simply wanted to start a football team and asked his boss for some cash to pay for some gear. And nine decades later, Packers’ fans will virtually defend the green and gold with their lives.

What can you learn from the Packers to apply to your business?
Have you found your fans or still looking to sell a few tickets?

@knealemann
strategy. marketing. social media.

photo credit: goinglikesixty | wikipedia

Clock Management

Minutes To Go - Time Out.

It’s amazing what can happen in the last minute of a sporting event. This is when the coaches on either side of a basketball game seem to call endless time-outs. It’s when we expect heroics during the last ditch effort from the quarterback.


One team pulls their goalie for an extra attacker and often it works to tie the game and send it in to overtime.

You are reviewing your presentation in the hotel room before hitting the showers. The same presentation you have been working on for days, if not weeks. And you just want to have one more look at it.

Why do we do that? Why do we wait?

Why don’t we manage the clock better when we have hours, days, weeks, even months to prepare? Why does the coach not call a time-out and get his team pumped for a 90-second touchdown drive in the third quarter?

Why doesn’t a coach pull the goalie in the second period to see if it can boost her team? Why don’t we trust our abilities in the presentation and have a calm breakfast before heading to the client’s office?

Because we are human.

Think back to school and how many times you crammed for exams or did the project on the Sunday night before the deadline. We do it to ourselves and cause additional unneeded stress. Or is it the juice we need to get the job done right?

Can Convenience Help?

I can remember when I first started banking online. A bill would come in the mail and I would immediately pay it. In the “olden days”, I would have to find a stamp and write a check to the company. Inevitably, I would be writing it a day or two before the deadline hoping the mail service had a monumental day and got it to the payee in record time.

So if we know that most of us operate like this, how do we increase our chances as business partners and colleagues? What can we do to help each other manage the clock better?

@knealemann

Gridiron and Wall St.

I wake up most Sunday mornings hoping to turn off the world and sink into potato mode on the couch to watch several NFL games. My friends who don’t care for football wonder how anyone can just sit and watch a game where grown men don armor and smash into each other while chasing an oval-shaped sphere.

The average NFL stadium holds 70,000 people, it’s only used eight times a year, and the average game features the ball-in-play for about 15 minutes.

The cost of an NFL franchise is close to $1 Billion. There are travel and staffing costs, player and television contracts, coaching and scouting networks, merchandising rights and if you’re lucky – once or maybe twice in your history, you will win a Super Bowl.

But why are 32 teams fighting for the silver ring every year? Because the work involved in getting there is worth every ounce of sweat and toil. Because there are enough rich people on the planet who think it’s cool to own an NFL team. Because football fans would watch two low-end teams battle any day of the week.

It’s not about winning; it’s about the chance to win. It’s not about championships; it’s about the possibility of championships.

Why do you get up every work day and try again? Do you have competition within your business category? Are there others offering similar services to you? Are there companies that are doing some things better than yours? Why not give up? Why do you keep fighting and trying to improve? Why do you keep reaching for that championship?

Wayne Gretzky was asked after his Edmonton Oilers won their 5th Stanley Cup, why he keeps trying to improve. His response: “Because winning never gets tired.”

So excuse me while I couch it for a while and get inspiration from the gridiron. I just happen to like the dress code better than the one on Wall St.

km