In Golf and Business, a Team of Teams Approach Pays Off
Business and golf. The two have been — pardon the pun — linked for as long as relationships have played a part in organizational success.
There's no shortage of parallels between golfers and executives — both need to align strategy with execution to claim victory. Both need to visualize success and assess their surroundings, be it on a course or in the market, before making a move. And both must weigh short term reward against long term risk to finish as desired.
One similarity that often gets overlooked is the importance of embracing a team mentality. As odd as it may sound — golf, after all, is one of the most individualistic sports around — golf is incredibly reliant on a team approach. And we're not just talking about the popular Ryder Cup format that pits Team USA versus Team Europe.
For many PGA TOUR professionals, they count a caddie, swing coach, nutritionist, personal trainer, agent, product sponsors and others as part of their team to make it all work.
How they perform on the tee box is based mostly on their own grit and determination, but make no mistake — without a supporting cast, they would have to work exponentially harder to be as successful as he is.
The point is — partnerships matter. As important as the team approach is for any professional golfer, it's equally important — if not more so — in business.
Given the pace of change in today's business and technology landscape, it's rather impossible to expect one person or group of people to execute it all.
Innovation is a team sport. Transformational projects require not just the right people, but the right mix of people.
Consider our work with Little Caesars, one of the largest pizza chains in the world.
Little Caesars' stakeholders understood their customers were growing more digitally-savvy by the day, using a variety of channels — both digital and physical — to get what they want. WWT and Little Caesars worked collaboratively to completely transform their kitchen with a cloud-native point of sale system that increased operational efficiency, enabled advanced analytics to drive business performance and fostered employee satisfaction.
We aligned our team with the culture and values Little Caesars, selecting the right combination of personalities to make sure the collaboration that happens between our teams was both productive and enjoyable.
The outcome? A point of sale app that made it easy for Little Caesars employees to make the right decisions at the right time.
The transformational undertaking required skills and expertise across a variety of technology and industry areas — digital strategy, user strategy and design, app development, big data and analytics, AI and machine learning, security, enterprise architecture, cloud computing and cloud consulting, and agile transformation, among other areas.
Much like a professional golfer, Little Caesars is responsible for how it performs in the kitchen, but without the help of valuable partners like WWT it would have to work exponentially harder to deliver on Little Caesars' patented Hot-N-Ready promise.
Just like in golf, a team of teams approach leverages the skills and expertise of various people and groups to help more quickly drive toward positive outcomes.