SXSW – What Can We Learn From Sports Metaphors?

Posted by on Mar 23, 2010 in Personal, Social Media | 2 comments

Well…SXSW is now almost a week behind me and I must say, I do miss Austin and being around so many enthusiastic, creative and intelligent people.  While I was very busy with meetings and events at the show, I didn’t have much time to go to any sessions. I was able to find some down time during the last day of the conference and thought I would check out the final session of the day – “Hitting Bombs: Better Social Business Through Sports Metaphors.” I mean how could I resist – panelists included Tim Walker, Aaron Strout, Kyle Flaherty. With a group like that, you know it will be a good session.

And I was right.

The premise of the session was that in business, we all use metaphors of one kind or the other to drive home a point. The problem with doing that is in most cases, those metaphors – no matter how cool or relevant they seem to you, might mean absolutely nothing to the person you are speaking to. It’s important to remember, if using metaphors to explain a concept or topic, that you first make sure the person you are speaking to knows what they hell you are talking about or it will go right over their heads.

Tim, Aaron and Kyle all shared their personal sports metaphors and explained how they related to business and then opened up the floor to the audience to share their own sports metaphors.

Tim shared with us his bowling metaphor and how a professional bowler, in order to succeed, needs to consistently bowl a strike or spare in every frame. Deviate from that pattern and that bowler will drop down and ultimately lose the game. In business, to be successful, you must push out consistent, quality content. Tim used David Armano and Chris Brogan’s blogs as examples of this consistent quality and recommended that others observe and emulate them.

Kyle Flaherty’s metaphor – “Break Four Minutes” was a mystery to me at first and apparently was to him until his boss at the time explained what that meant. The break four minutes analogy was in reference to Roger Bannister, who in 1954 was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes – he did it in 3’59.4. Up until Bannister came along everyone thought it was impossible to run a four-minute mile. Once he broke that barrier, 16 other people attempted and achieved what was once thought to be physically impossible.  In business, and more specifically in sales, once someone goes and “Breaks four minutes” then others will soon follow suit.

At the time, I didn’t have any sports metaphors to share, but have since come up with one that I am sure many are familar with.

“Be The Ball Danny”

This, of course, is from Chevy Chase in Caddyshack.

How does this sports metaphor relate to business? Well….you see “There is a force in the universe that makes things happen. All you have to do it get in touch with it and stop thinking. Let things happen and be the ball.”

Just be the ball…