How Football Can Inspire Product Organizations

“The team huddles together one last time. The coach gives a rousing speech. The game plan is laid out, and each player knows exactly what they have to do. But the real test begins as the game kicks off.

The players must work together to execute their first move. Despite their best effort, the attempt is met with failure: the opposing team surprises with an unexpected play and the team is forced to change their plans.

Now they must hope for a little luck and collaborate flawlessly. They push forward, building up an attack after an attack, determined to find a way. Time is running out and the pressure is on.

Then suddenly an opening appears: perfect insight, perfect build up, perfect execution and the team is able to seize the opportunity. The opponent is outplayed and the team emerges victorious.”

While this might sound like football, this is also product development.

Pressure to deliver, changing tactics as the situation unfolds and working hard as a team towards those elusive goals — football and product development have a lot in common.

While football teams try to win championships by scoring goals, product teams aim to win markets by building solutions users need.

The game rules might be different, but football can serve as a source of inspiration for anyone looking to improve teamwork, planning, agility and goal setting in the product organization.

Even a star player can’t score alone

If you would put Messi alone on the field against France, would he win? What if he had 2 other players with him? Even the most talented individuals are unlikely to score against a fully functional team.

The team not only has to be complete, it also has to include different skills and roles working in perfect unity. One person may end up scoring, but behind him are the efforts of 10 other people setting the play up.

In product organization too it may look like it’s a small fraction of people in the spotlight, but there is vast amounts of teamwork behind every success.

Fragments alone won’t make a whole

Could you imagine a game if midfielders never pass the ball, goalie is trying to score, attacker is running in the wrong direction and coach is giving directions only to the star player?

Some misalignments in teamwork are common — not each pass is successful in professional football either — but the more bits of the system malfunction, the harder it is to play a coherent game with a successful outcome.

Leadership, product managers, designers, engineers, researchers, analysts, marketers and customer facing teams need not only to align the objectives of the work, but also the ways of working: how different functions operate, do handovers and collaborate.

If individual functions work in silos without cooperation, balls get lost, attacks fail and defense crumbles.

Building ability to adapt instead of detailed plans

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” — Mike Tyson

Great teams go out on the field with a game plan, but they don’t try to plan everything ahead.

Imagine the head coach of Argentina announcing minutes before the game that they will be scoring 3 goals: on minutes 16, 42 and 76. They have every move planned out so no one can score against them. And that’s how they win.

Sometimes product teams (are expected to) do that: outline and predict each step and outcome of those steps in advance. And then be surprised and feel like failures if things don’t work out.

Just like football teams know to expect the unexpected plays, injuries and red cards, product teams should not be surprised when the market or product strategy evolves, available resources shift or customer feedback isn’t only praise.

It is impossible to know ahead how the game will exactly unfold and the coach can not be there on the field making all the moves. Great teams are prepared for changes: trained to make decisions on the go and adapt tactics as the circumstances become clearer.

Success is not guaranteed, but with the right preparation…

​​In the FIFA World Cup 2022, Morocco was the first African nation to get into the semi-finals. Morocco’s success may have been the best underdog story of the tournament, but it was not a result of luck, but strategy and preparation.

Some of the most critical work happens before the games: team building, learning various plays, studying opponents and strategizing.

With thousands of game plays possible and practiced, developing a strategy means making a deliberate choice between different options considering the current strengths of the team and the weaknesses of the opponents.

Morocco’s strength and strategy was their defense and until the semi-finals no one was able to push through — not even Spain, one of the eight national teams to have ever been crowned a world champion. Winning is not guaranteed even for the winners.

For product organizations it is the same: continuous learning, teambuilding and strategizing matters every time the teams go out to deliver — no matter how they have done in the past. One goal does not make a champion, but good preparation can improve the chances even against a stronger competitor.

Most goals are preceded with failed attempts

Even with great players, teamwork, strategy and preparation in place, a team may have to take several shots at a goal before they score. In the 2018 World Cup finals, France took 8 shots, but successfully scored only 4. That means even the world champions missed half of the shots they took.

The same is true for the product teams: the first solution to a problem might not be enough. That is why smart product organizations leave room in their plans and try again until they succeed or time runs out. Missing shots does not make a bad team, it is part of the game.

One more thing about numbers: In the same World Cup final that France won 4–2, they possessed the ball only 39% of the time and got more yellow cards than their opponent. Let’s keep in mind in product as well that leading metrics are indicators that don’t tell the full story of performance, only some parts of it.

Inspiration can come from anywhere

It is difficult to build a successful product without building an effective product organization.

Even though football’s game rules are different from product development, there are things to learn from the sport about teamwork, planning, agility and goal setting.

1. Not expecting a star player to deliver alone — Even the most talented people will not succeed unless they are backed up by a team.
2. Integrating individual functions into one coherent team — Different parts of the team need not only to align on the objectives but also how they work together.
3. Building ability to adapt instead of making detailed plans — It is impossible to predict how games will go. Great teams are trained to adapt tactics as the circumstances become clearer.
4. Preparing to improve the chances of success — Winning is not guaranteed, but good preparation increases the odds.
5. Not being surprised by failures — even the best teams may need multiple attempts at a goal before they successfully score.

Football is not only an interesting game, it is a source of inspiration.

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What are some other similarities you’ve noticed between football and product development?