12 things I learned training with an elite sports team that could change your business world

It was November when I realised.

There was an inkling at the back of my mind across the Summer, but our November all-hands call drove it home.

2024 had been a really challenging year.

The leading indicator - I still had 17 of my 25 days holiday to take by the end of November, with just 8 days left to take them.

This isn't a badge of honour, far from it - it's a function of a couple of dynamics in my world.?

The first, that I'm CEO of a high-growth company that needs a couple of stories of scaffolding putting up each time we scale to the next level.? As CEO, this is part of my role - to clear the pathway for seamless scaling.?

I sometimes refer to my skillset in doing this as minesweeping, because my Grandad worked on a Mine Sweeper ship in WWII - clearing the way for frigates and cargo ships.

But scaffolding works too.

Either way, it was a full on year.? But, come November, I'd put in place a serious Board and SLT to share the challenge.

The second dynamic is that 12 months earlier, I'd bought a project of a house as a counterbalance for a busy work life.

Turns out, a 160 year-old listed building is less of a counterbalance and more of a further weight on your shoulders.? So, instead of it being a distraction, I trudged through the year with a Yak's yoke of big house projects, taking odd days of holiday but forgoing a big one.

I quickly looked at my calendar after that November meeting and realised that I may squeeze in a short weekend before Christmas, but realistically, any big holiday would be in January.? Late in December, we headed to Singapore and Malaysia for a great break, before I headed back to work for 5 days.? But just 5 days, because for the following week of January I'd had the invite of a lifetime...

"Would you like to join Warrington Wolves on their pre-season training camp in Tenerife?"

I mean, as a lifelong supporter and somebody who's DNA is basically 20% Rugby League, I couldn't have invented a better experience.? I know people say "I had to pinch myself" but I actually did pinch my forearm involuntarily when I received the WhatsApp invite.

What about being away for most of January?

Well, with a well rounded leadership team, it was time to let go of some of the things I'd done for the first 20 years of Resulting IT 's history.? It was time to let the team build a few floors without scaffolding, or to build their own scaffolding.? My slightly extended absence would create space for others.? Plus, it would give me time to think, recharge and reflect.

The icing on the cake - I'd be spending time in camp with one of the world's top Rugby League teams and have the chance to see how elite sports performance differs from business performance.? The cherry on the icing - I'd spend the week watching Sam Burgess go about his business, supported by a hugely experienced coaching team.

As I write, I'm sat in a bar in Tenerife reflecting on what I've learned as I plan to take some of it home for my team, our customers, and - if you carry on reading, for you.?

What follows are 12 of my takeaways that business leaders can learn from elite athletes.

Performance in real time

Players wear GPS units in training that track their movement from the moment they walk onto the training pitch to the moment the walk off.? Their performance team continually monitor individual and team KPIs as they train, and are in constant contact with coaches via radio to manage their workload.?

Each player's distance, speed, metres per minute, acceleration and load (which is an algorithm specific to each player's position, age and build) is monitored.? Each session is compared with prior sessions, averages and optimum performance to provide detailed tracking of performance.

Imagine, as a business person, knowing what load your people are under, and how they're performing in real-time compared to their own historic performance and their peers - knowing when they're blowing out their rolling average or personal best, as it happens.

Imagine having this fed into your ear via radio mic as you go about your business.?

Sure, people are tracked in call centres and in battery-hen jobs like DPS drivers or Amazon delivery people.? But the fat middle of the normal distribution curve of roles in offices around the world aren't tracked in this way.?

Despite decades of MI, Dashboards, Data Warehouses, Data Lakes and hyped-up data visualisation bullshit, enterprises just don't have this.

High performing teams use visceral, real-time KPIs and tracking of performance to improve.

What are you using?

Big brother, nurturing mother, significant other - people who care watching over you to help you perform to your best, and protect you from stress and strain.

Frighteningly high energy

If you walk into an average office in the morning as people are drifting in, you hear good-morning hellos, mild laughter, stories from the weekend or evening before, chatter about last night's match or moans over this morning's traffic.?

But it's low key chatter, right??

Your team chats a little and then settles down to stare at an idiot lantern as they plough through rows of email in an inbox, or rows of data in a spreadsheet.? They chat silently to team mates across the room by tapping away on Teams, Slack or some other technology enabled volume vacuum.

When a professional rugby league team* meets for their day, there are two profound differences.? First, they all arrive on time for a strict schedule - if the schedule says 9AM start, then 8:30 is late.

The second is that their chatter is boom-box loud.?

The energy that comes into the room from a tight-as-fuck team is frightening.? You don't just hear it, you feel it.? The air in the room sizzles as the players, coaching and support staff convene, first over breakfast (as they were in camp) and then at each planned slice of that day's session.

No apologising at the end of a late Teams call and the silently joining the next with a...

"Sorry I'm late, I over ran...".?

No.

This is on time, high energy, fully charged, ready and alert.? These guys are pumped and ready to go.? They turn up primed to rip into whatever is thrown at them and they build their own atmospheric halo to take with them.

It truly is frightening to experience if you're used to sterile office atmospheres.

Have a think about this the next time you walk into your office, or enter a Zoom meeting.

Think about how different the energy in the room could be - and what that would do the the mental state of the players on your team.

*As a side note, some of the performance staff had worked in Premier League football - and their observations across different sports were very different. Some sports teams don't have this - they are more reserved. All of them said that this sport, and in particular, this team were very different.

Overt physicality

Something else happens when the team meets up which probably fuels the frighteningly high energy, but it warrants being called out specifically.

There's a huge emphasis on the physical.?

Every player shakes hands in a way that evokes being fully present - players, coaches, their CEO, and (by day 3) the handful of guests like me.? To be really specific, it's not a conventional gentleman-in-a-suit hand shake. No, more of a Bro handshake - with a vertical hand, thumb tilted back, and a pull you in, stopping just short of the hug kinda-thing.?

I mean, there are hugs too, and pats on the back and shoulders, digs in the ribs and ruffles of hair?- it's not just the handshake.

Maybe strangers like me or the hotel staff get the conventional handshake the first time, but from then on it's Bro-style.

And nuanced.?

You see, it's not just there for the act, but to amplify their connectedness.

There's a look in the eye - not a lame glance, but a proper iris expanding eye-to-eye lock that says..

"I'm here, with you. Right now."

There's a genuine "How are you...?" and deeper, curiosity oriented dialogue around this - What's your plan today?? How you feeling? Did you sleep well?? Are you enjoining the week?

What does this physical connectedness show?

Trust.

The team trusts each other like true brethren.? And, they trust the people who are allowed into their camp because they trust the people who invited them in.

I've never felt so trusted so quickly.

Do you have this in your workplace??

Do you properly connect with the people in your team??

Is there real, intentional eye contact??

Do you have their back - and do they have yours?

Narrow band experience

You don't find many old elite athletes in contact sport.?

In a Rugby League team, the youngest player might be 16 and the oldest 35. But these extremes are outliers of either very talented youth being exposed to the first team, or veteran players who's presence is more more of a guiding-hand than a first name on the team sheet.?

In reality, the core age band hovers around 23-30 (a 7 year span).

Some teams have mantra of "if you're good enough you're old enough" and will adopt a "next man up" strategy if there's an injury - promoting talent and trusting in their ability.? Sam Burgess definitely adopts this philosophy, probably because his meteoric rise was a result of the same coaching principles (he debuted age 17 for Bradford Bulls).

This narrow band of experience differs hugely from most conventional businesses where the band might be 18-60 (a 42 year span). This is a significant 6x difference in spread.

My observation is that this has two clear impacts:

One - the management styles you need in a narrow age band are simpler - because you're dealing with a closer generational population.? They all learn in a similar way, have common cultural references, and share similar interests.? There's no "You're too young to remember this..." pretext to stories for with a 7 year age band.

Two - promotion isn't based on decades of experience.? There isn't the same monotonous, slow cadence cycle to progression.? Glass ceilings are paper thin.? In business, for an 18 year old to progress up the career structure or grading system takes decades, because "experience" is the metronome.? In elite sport, that's not the case - the metronome ticks faster and has myriad dimensions - skill, physique, application in training, injuries in the squad, positional flexibility, attitude.? Put simply, you can go from apprentice to COO in 2 seasons, whereas in business, that might take 25 years.

Imagine if your HR performance management function had this kind of metronome.

Imagine if the management and learning styles you could use effectively were tightly compressed and meaningful to everyone, rather than a luke warm gravy of stuff that fills the belly but doesn't touch the taste buds.

Inherent succession planning

In business, you need to succession plan for retirement or to build cover where there is either flight risk, or because internal progression will leave vacancies.

Players move on from team to team as part of a transfer process (which is another sport/business variance) if they're no longer good enough. And, players eventually retire.

But, injuries happen in physical sports, leaving short-term vacancies.?

Players also need rest to prevent injury. There are suspensions for indiscretions. Players have "form" too.? I mean, workers in every company have "form" but we don't tend to consciously label it that way.?

In sport, "form" is an accepted label - for individuals and teams.

"He's out of form at the moment..."

Imagine saying that in your next Monday morning sales meeting?

The factors that lead to 'vacancies' in sport mean that you have to have cover for every position.? Succession Planning isn't a concept that gets discussed in some annual staff review meeting.

In sport, succession is visceral and critical.

Warrington Wolves took their entire first team and second-string team to camp - 35 players to cover 17 starting positions (13 players + 4 subs).

The junior players were in the mix with those who are expected to start in Round 1.? They're training with them, doing the exact same drills.? Game situations pitch them against each other in what feels like full-on warfare. There's little difference in a match against their biggest adversary and internal simulation.?

Training simulates reality.

But that's not my point really.?

My point - sport requires you to create cover for every position and to build a pipeline of players via your youth system that can step up and cover.? Sure, the overall team ability may vary as inexperienced players replace the experienced, but the new guys know the process, they slot straight in, and they're constantly (but patiently) chipping at the heels of the stars.?

Which means nobody can take their position for granted in any given week.

Imagine?

The best most business can do is a "bit of shadowing".

Succession is an afterthought in business, but a necessity in elite team sport.

When performance is poor, players expect to be dropped or even moved on - out on loan or placed on the transfer register. Inbuilt, performance oriented succession.

Which leads me to my next point.

The training paradox

When did you last do a training course?

Actually, when did you last do a training course that made you better able to do your job - one that improved your performance measurably?

While businesses talk about training, the nature of work is such that our primary focus is being productive, not getting better.

We are doers - spending >95% of our time being busy.

"How's work - are you busy?"

Elite sports teams spend 95% of their time training and less than 5% playing.

I'll maybe nuance that by adding "training" includes planning, preparation, strength and conditioning.? But the principle holds - the time they spend doing things that help them become better players is massively disproportionate to their doing (playing).

In business, we spend 99% of our time performing and 1% training.

In elite sports, this is completely flipped.

And, the small amount of time that elite athletes spend performing is then scrutinised by thousands of baying supporters, measured by a scoreboard, and their individual metrics are pored over in post-match analysis.

Why are business (or busy-ness) people so busy?? Why don't we invest more time in preparing, planning, focusing on our skills and tactics?

What if we spent say half a day each week on this stuff - moving the needle to 10% training time and 90% doing. Then, what if we did training that actually improved our performance for the very next time we perform?

This clearly has different connotations in different industries, and it's clearly impractical to spend all of our time preparing ourselves to do our jobs.? But having hung out with a group of athletes who invest so much time in improving themselves, each other, and the broader team (and club) as a whole, I've seriously questioned my philosophy towards work this week.

As a sidebar, in my 30s, I decided to work just 3 days per week for a few years so that I could be around more when my kids were young - walk them to school and see them when they got home.? In that "non-working" time, I did "work" but it was kind of exploratory knowledge building work.? I wrote a book, learned SEO, I read a lot - I devoured books, and I did some expensive esoteric training courses.?

At the time, this felt quite selfish.? Looking back, everything I learned helped me achieve some of the big things I've achieved in the years that followed.? I took a short term career and income hit for a future performance gain.

In hindsight, I'm so happy I did this. Massive ROI.

But I don't know why I've slowed this down in the last 15 years or so.

Back on the horse in 2025.

Noise matters

I kind of already knew that communication was a crucial skill in business - worked it out decades ago.? But being around a squad like this accentuates just how much great communication matters.? Great technical skills are essential, but without a wrapper of great communication, they're seriously dampened.

Go to a Rugby League game (or any atmospheric sports match) and the crowd is deafening - chanting, singing, cheering, booing.? Watch a training session with no crowd and you suddenly realise just how loud the players are.? I first experienced this during COVID when I attended a few behond-closed-doors Super League matches - Headingley Stadium, Leeds - attendance 34.

In training camp, close up and personal, the noise they make is motorbike loud.

Players are constantly talking (or shouting) to connect in attack and defence.? They're in each other's ears constantly and proactively, calling what's going to happen next, raising awareness of threats, calling plays, flagging options, reminding the group of the principles and tactics that make up their game plan and playing philosophy.

It's deafening.

They spend time in the gym working on strength, time on the field working on skills, time in meetings discussing tactics and reviewing prior performance.? But communication just seems to come naturally to them - they know that they cannot perform without being constant, clear communicators in the moment.

Us business people communicate using vague, sloppily worded, asynchronous emails.? Or, as I mentioned earlier, sit silently "chatting" with both nearby and distant colleagues using their choice of workplace chat tool.?

LOL.

Worse, they sometimes don't communicate at all, or deliberately communicate vaguely for political gain - to establish some form of personal status arbitrage that isn't for the greater good, and creates inefficiencies or brownian motion in the push for their strategic goals.

I call it "noise" here because it's what typifies their communication.? Sure, the content, clarity and timing are spot on, but the noise is what makes it stand out compared to the world we business people live in.

Noisy communication has intent, urgency.? It's a wild klaxon rather than a wet fart.? It's meant to be heard by everyone.? It's meant to drive action or awareness right here, right now.

I want to make a distinction though around instruction - where a pivotal organiser is moving the team around the field and driving shape or structure, and awareness - where players are reminding, alerting and flagging options.?

Despite the narrow age spread in a team, younger players are more reticent to be the organiser.? More senior players tend to hold more pivotal roles, so their voices are expected to be heard.? Junior players building into pivotal roles are quieter as they build up the courage to instruct and organise senior peers.?

This hierarchy is similar to a more conventional business.?

But everyone - age 16 to 35 - is strong on awareness communication -?it's just a thing great teams do really well.

In business, we could learn a lot from deafening communication, and making it inclusive so that everybody at every level contributes to awareness in the battle for an outcome.? No quiet passengers on the bus - everybody talking, reminding and alerting.

As I write, I almost think, given the time, I could write an enitre book on this subject.? I won't, as I have other things to do, but I will add one more observation to this section:

Noise in business is sometimes just that - pointless, rambling, senseless, ill considered, let-me-be-heard, prattling, white noise.? It has a bad signal to noise ratio - where nobody receives the signal because of the noise.

In these training sessions, the noise had an exceptional signal to noise ratio.?

Deafeningly loud noise and crystal clear signal.

Short, sharp, simple

I was lucky enough to attend all of the team meetings on this camp. To hear the team's attack and defence philosophy first hand, and witness them jointly review yesterday's training sessions, or discuss principles of attack and defence.

I even sat in on Sam's speech to launch this year's Super League assault with his players.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as though I was leaning on a Van der Graff machine at the back of the room. There were wet eyes in that room, dabbed casually with branded long-sleeved training tops as players stared agog at what they were hearing from their scarily inspirational 36 year-old leader.

Team meetings involve all players and support staff.? They're short (the meetings, not the support staff) and sharp.? Most last 15 minutes.? They're rarely longer than 30.

Meetings are focused and specific.?

There's no agenda because the topic of the meeting is the only thing on the agenda.

Item 1 is the meeting title.

There is no item 2.

Messaging is so, so, so clear and simple.

What lies beneath is complex and difficult to master - the structures, shapes, skills and detail are off the scale complex.? But the messaging on the focus areas or priority is rarely more than 2 or 3 simple words.

Why?

Because players need to remember these things during a game under severe fatigue with chanting and cheering in their ears, as they're getting battered by highly conditioned, equally motivated opponents.

The things that matter need to come rushing into their minds in the middle of battle.

Next time you produce a 30 slide Powerpoint, or book a 1 hour standard meeting slot, or write a 10 point agenda, you should ask yourself this:

"How much of this stuff will these guys recall when it really matters.? And, actually, which stuff really matters anyway?"

My learning to take back to work here is going to be game changing.?

I actually think that the competitive advantage businesses could gain from this style of meeting and messaging is more powerful than most will actually realise from AI.

We'll be doing both.

Two tribes, one purpose

On this camp, I came across two types of people:

Players have a clear role - get on the pitch, perform and win.? And Support Staff - who are there to maximise players' ability to get on the pitch, perform and win.

From the nutrition expert to the conditioning staff; from the coaches to the guy who lays the cones out; from the lady who runs yoga to the guy who teaches jiu jitsu; from the people doing massage or strapping bodies to the guy who clips the video for analysis.

All of these people are 100% focused on making the people who matter most to the result be as succesful as they can be.

Imagine an org chart with two boxes - win and help to win.?

Well, it's like that...

Players and Support Staff.

Of course, I'm over simplifying - I have to in order to make my point.? A sports team is also a ticketing business, a membership business, a retail business, a media business and so on.? But when you boil things down to "delivery" there are two clear and distinct groups, each with their own ultra clear purpose.

Have a look at your business and ask yourself who the players are, and who are the people helping them be as succesful as possible.?

What results does your business need??

Who is responsible for delivering those results?

How is everybody else helping to optimise their ability to deliver results?

What are the rest doing?

They tried to make me go to rehab, I said...

Injuries are inevitable and off-season is the time to make repairs.?

Some players aren't able to join in on certain aspects of pre-season training until their bodies fit.? So, they do rehab, working with specific members of the Support Team.

Rehab players live in limbo.?

They want to take part, but they can't.? They want to rush back, but that's counter-productive.? They carry back-of-the-mind worries about their injury recurring.? They spend too much time in their heads focusing on the player they want to be when they return.

As I chatted to a rehab player it dawned on me that business don't have their equivalent -? you don't have a group of staff who are in a special stream, working with specialists to repair their ability to do their job.? I mean, we don't really have injuries as such in our workplaces, so it's not a fair parallel, right?

But we do.?

We have people who are stretched beyond their ability or comfort zone and wind up in a bad place.? We have people who have outside work challenges that affect their ability to perform.? We have people with mental health challenges. We have people with illness.

Do we have specialists that can bring them back on stream?? Do we manage their return to the team effectively and consciously?? Do we monitor their readiness properly?

Rehab in sport is a complex and highly skilled process.? It requires both physical and mental attention.? Rehab players are still around their team mates, but work in a separate stream.? They still attend team meetings and watch field sessions to understand what's changing, but the only place they can rehearse is in the heads.

I can't help but thinking that being in rehab builds mental toughness and enables people to re-invent their future identity in ways that the unfortunate injury weirdly enabled.? It is also a teal test of resilience and resolve in and of itself.

Next time you're "injured" at work, ask yourself how you'll use your rehab time, and what help you need.? Same goes for the people around you who get "injured" and need support - how will you help them?

As I write this, I'm not 100% sure what "injured" means - but I somehow think I'll now be much more focused on identifying it.

High Octane Humility

When the line between winning and losing is gossamer fine, your focus on finding an edge that could be the difference becomes razor sharp.

Having spent a week with this team, their coaches and the broader support team, I was taken by how open they were to new ideas. Some of the things they were doing in camp, some of the expertise they brought in that's tangental to the sport, and some of the areas of discussion that they called on were broad and diverse.

But, I was expecting to be a pure passenger - watch the sessions, attend the team meetings, soak up the experience. What I wasn't expecting was to have my brain picked as much as it was. Everyone from the CEO down were open to how we come at challenges in business, how I'd gone about doing things in the past, what worked for me, how I'd been succesful in certain areas.

As we soaked up the sun by the Atlantic ocean, the sponge like nature of their minds took me a little by surprise. I kind of expected elite sports to be looking for an edge - the whole marginal gains thing is pretty common knowledge. But, in our business world where there's a certain level of hubris and arrogance about pretending you know that you're right, hanging out with sports people who know that they might not have all of the answers was refreshing.

Humility runs rich in this environment.

Don't get me wrong, these guys know what works, they're confident in their principles and methods, but they're still wide open to new ideas from different areas.

Super curious.

Personally, I've adopted high curiosity across my career - casting a wide learning net, looking for parallels in other industries, curating stories and metaphors that might cut-through into my work. This ramble is just that - a deep search for parallels and key differences in two totally dissociated fields. Most of my thinking and writing is anchored in this tangential stuff (go back and read a few old rambles and you'll uncover my recipe).

As business people, we can learn a great deal from a great deal of places.

And, we should.

My big takeaway was just how open and humble these people are. How alert they are to different angles that might provide competitive edge. How they don't try to emulate and better competitors or leaders in their field (maybe other sports or leagues around the world), but how they also consider anything to be a curious possibility that might enrich their performance.

Helicopter reflection and improvement

The high frequency whirring of electric motors could barely be heard above the shouts and calls of the team and the clatter of bodies against each other. Squinting in the sun in the cloudless blue sky, a small drone hovered above the pitch sat 30m behind and 40m above the defensive line.

Every play is recorded.

Like the GPS data, the capture of gameplay provides essential performance improvement content. Analysts crop, edit and mark-up, Coaches analyse, and players re-watch footage the following day. Morning review meetings involve group reflection on the minutest details of gameplay - sometimes as a full team, sometimes with specific groups of players focusing on positionally relevant things.

The notion of group playback doesn't happen so often in the world we live in. There's no drone hovering over us, providing a different perspective of our performance that we can review in detail. Nobody runs though a playback of a big presentation to point out every umm and erm. Nobody shows us the smile or grimace on the face of a customer when they read our recommendations report, or review a proposal. Nobody leaves the line open at the end of a Teams call so we can hear the sighs of desperation, or the whoops of success.

We don't have the privilege of a helicopter view.

Coaches, though, don't point out problem areas or tell players what they should have done.

Sure, there's positive encouragement for doing the good stuff well - rewarding words for implementing well constructed theory into practice. But they allow the players, as a group, to identify what could be better - leading questions open the floor, and players - both senior and junior - have their say.

What struck me is that when the players identified an error, break down in structure or marginal improvement opportunity, you would hear a familiar phrase from some part of the room...

"That's on me - I should have..."

Players in a tight team admit fault quickly and openly. And, they point out what they should have done in a way that has an implicit commitment to sort it in the very next session.

Openness of standards.

Critical analysis.

Self-oriented action planning.

Self-aware players with a focus on the team.

But also, a clear realisation that you need to take personal and public accountability to improve in a high performing team.

So powerful.

Compare this to the politics-rich, ego-led, hide-behind-others antics you see in some business cultures.

Dusty chalk and stinking Stilton.

Try it. Next time there's a SNAFU, glitch, challenge or [insert your own tainted corporate double entendre] - tell the whole team publicly, without prompting that it was "on you" and that you should have done something better, and will do next time.

Do that and watch how your team responds in terms of trust.

Dare you.

I could go on with these observations, but I have a job to do, and I kind of need to start to implement some of these new learnings. So, I'll finish with a small story that says everything.

In the very final team meeting, before two teams from the same group were about to go out for a final full-contact, apply everything we've learned this week game (complete with drone) - they were clearly pumped. A place in the first game of the season (and maybe more importantly - a place in the 3rd game*) were at stake.

The coaches had delivered all of the messaging they wanted, and the players jumped to their fee to rip into each other to a backdrop of deafening energy.

But, before they moved, their Director of Rugby interrupted with a quick thank you.

He thanked the team for their effort, application and attention across the whole week before closing with this...

"Thanks for putting your strapping and tape in the bins at the side of the pitch - there wasn't a single time that there was rubbish left on the training pitch this week. Immaculate. Well done."

Nobody had asked them to do this. Nobody had said to leave the pitch as they found it.

Nobody needed to.

Its just cultural.

On the 23rd February, I fly to Philadelphia to speak at the Next GenerationSAP Enterprise Architecture Forum. I then fly straight to Vegas to watch Wigan vs. Warrington play a brutal local derby in the Agilent Stadium on 1st March.

This is the 3rd game of their season.

I can't wait.

Thanks Karl Fitzpatrick and the whole team for inviting me to your training camp and being so inclusive. I'm so privileged and thankful for a week that I'll never forget, and which will honestly change me as a human.

If you're at SAP Newtown Square in Feb, or happen to be in Vegas the week after, drop me a line. Or, if you're in the SAP world and fancy joining me at a Rugby League match this season, let me know and I'll see what I can do.