The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers QUOTES

1 " The moment you put a deadline on your dream, it becomes a goal. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

2 " And yet, winning is like a welcome drink going down your throat, like a beautiful embrace. It is brilliant while it lasts but it isn't forever. The high eventually melts away and the journey of life begins afresh. The truly remarkable among us visit these highs periodically; winning then becomes a journey, a graph where each point is crucial but is in reality merely part of a larger curve. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

3 " An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

4 " What matters isn't how well you play when you're playing well. What mattersis how well you play when you're playing badly.'

- Martina Navratilova "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

5 " When the times are good, stretch them. But when the times are bad, stick to the basics and be honest with yourself. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

6 " A talented individual without the right attitude can’t be a long-term sustainable winner. A person with great attitude but with limited talent could still be a great champion member of the team. A combination of these two will make the person a real winner. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

7 " The world has come closer and yet people have grown apart. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

8 " Success has to be repeatable because that is what makes you a champion. This implies knowing why you are winning. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

9 " fact when the going is good everyone does well, but when the going is tough that’s when you separate the men from the boys, as with the cricketers who do wonderfully well on the subcontinent but fail on bouncy wickets, with the reverse being just as true. This is as true in the stock market as it is in sport. Warren Buffet said, ‘Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.’3 Of the hundreds of companies that sprung up during the internet boom, the solid IT companies survived and flourished despite the stock market crash (around the turn of the century), while several ‘get rich quick’ dotcoms bit the dust, their fancy ESOPs reduced to mere scraps of paper. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

10 " The next day they had Australia down at 145 for 6 and Adam Gilchrist was at the press conference. ‘We’re in a bit of a hole and need to figure out how to win from here,’ he said, and in that moment, you could see the difference between the two sides. The underdogs, through years of defeat, were unaware that they were in a winning position. Opportunity had knocked on their door, they didn’t recognize it, because they weren’t ready for it. The champions, on the other hand were always moving ahead, they were focussing on victory. It came as no surprise when Australia won, despite the fact that they had defeat staring them in the face on more than one occasion during the course of the match. Bangladesh was left wondering whether it could have been a turning point in their cricketing history! This is why it is often said that to be a champion, you need big match temperament. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

11 " We often talk about the ‘third year’ in international sport being critical. When a newcomer comes along you don’t always know what he can do, or what bag of tricks he possesses. By the second year you have sorted him out and he now faces a situation, new to him, where he has to confront failure and find a way around it, ideally by developing new skills or by becoming more consistent. The better players succeed in year three while the flash-in-the-pan kind wither away, unable to come to terms with the heightened challenge. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

12 " It’s a peculiar paradox. To know how to win, you must win frequently. As Aristotle said, ‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit’. You cannot be lackadaisical all your life and suddenly seek discipline in the middle of a big innings or before a big game. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

13 " Often, when the goal is daunting and the journey arduous, there is a sense of having achieved the goal, even if it’s really only a milestone. You see that with students who work so hard to make it to the IITs and IIMs and experience burnout once they get there. Sadly, they mistake a milestone for a goal and they feel that their destination has already arrived. It is true of young Indian cricketers who sometimes experience such joy and relief at being selected that they are not ready for what follows. Even companies are known to become complacent once they become market leaders. It’s easier for the number two and three to remain motivated since there is still an unfulfilled feeling and a higher sense of purpose. That is why managing success is always more difficult than achieving it and staying number one is more difficult than becoming number one. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

14 " Success is in the Context of Time, Space and Scale Pyaasa was a haunting film but unlikely to appeal to a generation that doesn’t think too much of black-and-white photography, poetry and romantic losers. Bjorn Borg could never win Wimbledon with his old wooden Donnay racket in today’s era where over-sized rackets generate such tremendous speed and power. Batsmen who were told to ‘give the first hour to the bowlers’ in a Test match would discover there are only twenty minutes left thereafter in a T20 game. Alternately, sloggers who routinely clobber the ball over cow corner may not have managed too many against the four-pronged West Indies pace bowling attack. Eventually, it is about giving the consumers what they want and those requirements may have changed. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

15 " A calm mind is not about doing nothing’, says Ajinkya Rahane. ‘It’s about keeping yourself busy, particularly if you are going through a tough phase. It prevents your mind from being flooded with negative thoughts.’14 Rahane found that ‘switching off’ after about fifteen minutes of introspection post a match made him more relaxed; very important for someone as intense and analytical as him. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

16 " A young man like Michael Clarke, sharing the dressing room with the likes of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Ricky Ponting, Mathew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist would have learnt how to win and how to close matches, as part of his grooming in international cricket. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

17 " Self-belief is an essential aspect of development and if you are not winning, you’ll never acquire it. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

18 " Winning Teams Execute Plans to Perfection Teams like these, that can dominate, are often excellent at converting their plans into action. They do the small things better than the opposition can, or wants to. It is incredible how many matches are won by teams that do the simple things, the one per cent things, better. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

19 " achievable. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

20 " If you have grown up in a family with few means at its disposal, you will still eat the last corner slice of bread or vigorously shake the bottle of ketchup to extract the last drop even if you can easily afford another one. If you are a family-driven company, you cannot suddenly become a professionally-managed company, as Kumaramangalam Birla discovered when, as a young man, he took over the companies his charismatic father Aditya Birla had managed. "

― , The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers