Business Is a Sport
Designing and Coaching Teams, Game Plans, and Playing to Win
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Business Is a Sport: Are You Playing to Win? Are You Coaching to Win?
In sports, the scoreboard never lies. You’re either winning or losing and grinding every play until the clock runs out.
The same is true in business. However, too many companies show up without a game plan. Many don’t have team positions clearly defined. Or the team doesn’t know what plays are being called.
The typical result in a startup is the equivalent of a backyard pick up game. It’s fun and full of frenzy. The plays? Mostly the famous scramble drills or Hail Mary’s. Success is mostly equated to luck.
“Everyone get open and I’ll find you in the end zone.”
Yeah, no. That will rarely win in business.
Most startups are playing a pickup game without a real game plan. Some are even confused they are even playing a sport with fierce competitors.
The most successful teams in sports play at a different level. Team success at this level uses the best clock management timing, position substitutions, and making sure the right personnel is on the field when the right play needs to be called.
The best of the best have drilled these concepts into each team member daily during practice. When “game time” comes and the difference between winning or losing is on the line, the team simply instinctively performs what they’ve practiced for hours.
When team members know the game plan, the plays, their role/position/technique for that play, and understand the clock/timing, the winning % of that team is usually dynasty like.
After 30 years on the field with teams like Intuit, Netflix, and Mozilla and many like-minded conversations with former athletes turned executives, I’ve been carrying this post in my head for years with a theme that boils down to this:
Every company and every department needs to operate more like a high-performance sports team.
Team game plan.
Clear positions and roles within your position.
Team goals.
Designed plays.
Disciplined practices
Game film reviews.
Bottom Line: If you’re in any executive leadership seat whether Founder, CEO, COO, CFO, your job is to be both a player and coach. Architect and athlete. Strategist and executor.
Here’s my best attempt to get down on paper what’s been in my head for so many years.
1. Know Your Sport: What Game and at What Level Are You Actually Playing?
Are you in a sprint for product-market fit? Trying to climb the standings in your division with higher market share? Are you in the final stretch of a winning season or close to winning and trying to defend the points you’ve already put on the scoreboard?
Different phases of company growth call for different strategies just like the great teams that adjust their game plans depending on the stage of the game they are currently in.
Early Stage = Amateur: Raw talent, grit, learning through lots of reps. Improvisation, high risk tolerance, resilience.
Growth Stage = College/Minor Leagues: Staying competitive here requires executing with more consistent fundamentals. Positions are clear. Extremely rare is the player who plays both offense and defense equally well or plays the entire game. Positions are clearly defined and the team relies on each person executing their role as flawlessly as possible.
Scale Stage = Pro Level: The top 1% of the sport. Precision execution. Depth at every position. “The locker room” here is critical to team performance. Opponent-specific strategies. At this level, coaching, team design and play calling separates the teams that make the playoffs year in and year out.
Are you playing Football or Futbol? Basketball or Hockey?
Know your sport. Know your league.
Design your team and game plans accordingly.
Don’t ever lose the locker room.
2. Build the Right Team: Clear Roles Win Games
No winning football team fields 11 quarterbacks, 11 star strikers, or 9 home run hitters. There are always specialists such as goalies, field goal kickers, and closing pitchers.
And yet in business, we often put too many star players or strategists on the field and forget the specialists or role specific positions are required to win. Every player on your team is critical for the ultimate success of “the team”. Every position executing each play is required for the team to win consistently.
Ask yourself:
Who’s calling the plays? (Strategy)
Who’s reading the field? (Market Research/Data)
Who’s blocking and tackling? (Execution)
Who’s watching the clock and keeping score? (Metrics/Stats)
As a business leader of your team, you must be both player and coach who sees the entire field, the opponents, and creates the game plans and playbooks (the systems) in order to consistently win.
3. Offense, Defense, and Special Teams
Great companies balance execution across all three units:
Offense = Growth: Customer acquisition, new revenue lines, GTM campaigns.
Defense = Controls & Risk: Cash preservation, compliance, quality, talent health and retention.
Special Teams = Strategic Bets: M&A, special plays, moonshots.
Too often, teams over-index on offense without a real defense (hello 2021, “growth at all costs”). Or they lock down defensively and forget how to score points (hello 2023, “must be profitable”).
Your leadership job: build strategic game plans and playbooks for each operating unit you coach (offense, defense, and special teams). Know when to put which unit on (and off) the field.
4. Playbooks, Not Just Plays
In sports, we practice dozens of plays in preparation for “game time”. In Silicon Valley startups, we often just wing it.
A great playbook turns chaos into choreography. There’s my orchestra conductor metaphor showing up again in my writings.
Great playbooks align:
Strategy (What’s the goal?)
Structure (Who owns what?)
Execution (How we win!)
Whether it’s your Q3 forecast, your Series B raise, or your go-to-market push, you need a game plan with repeatable, coachable plays your team can execute under pressure.
Ultimately, that’s why I am writing Cook’s PlayBooks. I believe business isn’t just like a sport.
Business IS a sport.
5. Game Film and Practice: The Discipline of Feedback
The best teams don’t just play hard. They study film, analyze almost every play, and practice to get better each week.
How often are you reviewing your own “game film”?
Game winning plays?
Broken plays?
Who missed their positional execution?
Who was out of position?
Did we expose a weakness in our opponent?
Now that you see yourself on video, do you now see your flawed technique?
Feedback loops are your film room. It’s critical to invest leadership time and create the rhythm and the rigor of weekly, monthly, and quarterly game film reviews.
You are your best critic. Study and practice what you want to do. Then “go to the tape” and see if you really performed what you practiced.
The Takeaway: Be the Coach and the Quarterback/Unit Leader
If you want to scale, you can’t just be a player. You need to:
Structure a winning team (Coach)
Design winning plays and motivate the team (Coach)
Call and execute the plays under pressure and call audibles on the field (Quarterback/Unit Leader)
Winning teams don’t luck into success. The best teams are designed to win the season and always have a great set of leaders.
Roles & Positions: You Can’t Run a Reverse with a Lineman
One of the most underrated responsibilities of any business leader, especially a CEO, COO, or CFO, is putting the right players in the right positions at the right times.
Sounds simple but this is where most teams fail.
Execution rarely fails due to bad or poor talent. It usually fails because of misalignment between the positions required and the players put into those positions.
Too many wrong people are in the wrong positions.
Football: Skill Players, Linemen, and Quarterbacks
In football, there are clear role archetypes:
Quarterbacks (QBs) = Visionaries (Founders, Strategic CEOs and CFOs). They are adept at seeing the whole field and making the right plays at the right times. Just don’t ask them to block that blitz.
Running Backs (RBs) = Operators (Grinders, Fast Executors). Give them the ball and a clear lane. But don’t usually ask them to throw the ball downfield. But when you need that 3 yards for the 1st down, this is your go to player.
Wide Receivers (WRs): (Design, Brand, GTM Reps). These are your agile specialists. They need space and timing to do their best work. They can be explosive when they run the right route and get open.
Linemen (OL/DL): (DevOps, RevOps, Accounting, Legal). The unheralded foundation. Never flashy. Always critical.
Try to win the game with these players playing the wrong positions. Good luck. You will lose.
Basketball: “Run and Gun” Still Needs Structure
Modern basketball is more fluid. 5 players on the court. Running to various positions on the court to get open. What seems to be 5 players without real positions is not the case at all. Each players role is critical to consistent scoring and winning.
Centers control the paint. They’re your strong internal systems builders and sales reps who know how to close. Just don’t ask them to hit step-back 3s under pressure.
3-Point Shooters stretch the court. They’re your external storytellers in investor relations, brand marketing, bus dev. But don’t count on them to box out or manage gritty HR issues or legal issues when elbows are being throw wildly.
Point Guards are your game managers. The equivalent of your COO, Chief of Staff, Product Managers. They are adept at reading the floor, directing tempo, making the pass to the best player who can score.
A team of all 3 point shooters won’t be able to get enough rebounds. A team of all bigs won’t be able to run the court or keep up in transition.
Balance matters. Chemistry matters more.
The Right Player in the Wrong Position Can Break the Team
We talk a lot about culture fit. But what about role fit?
A “star” hire who doesn’t gel with your system can create confusion and drag.
A high performer stuck in the wrong role will either burn out or stall out.
A great player in their zone of genius will elevate the team.
Wrong Player in Wrong Position or Calling Wrong Play?
Don’t ask your lineman to run a 40-yard route.
Don’t pull your Offensive Tackle and leave your QB exposed to that season ending Blind Side crushing blow.
Don’t put your star receiver in a running back role. They’ll dance too much behind the line and get dropped for a loss.
The business equivalent?
Making a strategic thinker run daily ops.
Hiring a growth hacker and expecting them to rebuild your ERP.
Promoting a reliable operator into a visionary/leadership seat and then blaming them when they haven’t had enough practice reps in their new role.
Your job as CEO/COO/CFO is to be the GM/Head Coach:
Diagnose the real requirements of each role.
Match these requirements to players actual capabilities.
Identify role fit / misalignment early and often. Don’t wait until you are being blown out in the game or you’ve already lost most of the games in the season.
Cook’s PlayBook Tip: Run a “Position Audit”
Every quarter, map your org using this framework:
What position is each key leader playing today?
Is that their natural position or one they’ve been forced into?
What position do they think they’re playing?
What’s the impact on team dynamics and execution when they play out of position?
Are there any “double-stuffed” roles where one person is covering too much field?
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s clarity. Try to get each of your players into the roles where they are best positioned and know how to execute.
Here’s a Summary of These 7 Business Athlete Archetypes
Thanks ChatGPT for quickly creating this excellent table of the 7 positions I just wrote about above. That would have taken me much longer.
As a executive team leader, one of your most strategic levers isn’t just hiring great people. It’s knowing what type of “athlete” you’re hiring and designing the right role for how they naturally perform.
You wouldn’t ask a point guard to post up against a 7-footer, so why ask a creative, innovative person to manage regulatory compliance?
More details for when you need to design your business athletes:
1. The Quarterback (Vision-Driven Playmaker)
Design Principles:
Strategic thinker with field vision.
Makes fast decisions under pressure.
Communicates clearly and inspires action.
Give them a clear mandate and allow ownership and autonomy.
Surround them with strong execution support. Don’t bury them in tactical ops.
2. The Running Back (Resilient Executor)
Design Principles:
High-output, high-stamina operator.
Doesn’t need to own the strategy. Just needs to own the lane.
Performs best with structure and rhythm.
Give them a clear playbooks
Avoid excessive chaos.
3. The Wide Receiver (Creative Specialist)
Design Principles:
Agile, creative, fast.
Not great in traffic.
Performs best with timing and space.
Define the route for them.
Use them to open up the field.
Throw them open and let them make the play.
4. The Lineman (Infrastructure Anchor)
Design Principles:
Unsexy (sorry Jason Kelce) but essential. Highly dependable.
Risk-averse, systems-oriented, quietly proud.
Often the glue holding operations or finance together.
Define their role tightly and protect it from scope creep.
Give them recognition. Their work is often invisible but mission-critical.
Partner them with the play makers. Together they will score! Some of the best plays out there are “pulling the guard or offensive tackle” and letting them block in front of your star RB.
5. The Point Guard (Tempo and Team Facilitator)
Design Principles:
Orchestrator / conductor of the game plan and plays
Values team rhythm and position coordination.
Let them run the floor with defined plays and desired outcomes.
Track their success by team performance, not just personal output.
6. The 3-Point Specialist (High-Leverage Communicator)
Design Principles:
Knows how to frame, present, and persuade.
Measure their value in key moments of impact (board, media, capital raises; closing key deal).
May not be great at internal grind or sustained project work.
Deploy them surgically. Don’t overload them with internal ops.
7. The Center (System Stabilizer)
Design Principles:
Stays close to the basket with strong fundamentals and footwork.
Keeps calm under pressure.
They can finish the play others have created.
They want to save the play. They want the rebound and love boxing out. The best are also unselfish and pass to the open 3 point shooter when double teamed.
Their hands are always up. Find them with a finishing pass when they are open for the easy score.
Cook’s PlayBook Tip: Design for Position Strength Not Versatility
Yes, some players can switch-hit and play multiple positions. But most will only thrive and consistently help the team win when they specialize.
Your leadership job isn’t to “coach everyone up”. It’s to diagnose your players strengths, put them in the right positions, and make sure your team is executing as unit.
Teams that are “collections of all-stars” usually lose. Just ask the LA Lakers or the NY Yankees with their massive payrolls and their “All Stars” in every position who still lose each and every year.
Great Coaches Create Great Systems and Great Teams
Sports history has taught us that great coaches with great systems create great teams. I’ve been a student of great coaches my whole life:
Bill Walsh (49ers & Stanford)
West Coast Offense; timing, rhythm, short passing control game
1st 25 plays of the game
System level innovations that changed the game for an entire era
Mentored future coaching greats (Seifert, Holmgren, Shanahan)
Great Book: “The Score Takes Care of Itself”
Signature Quote(s):
“Champions Behave Like Champions Before They Are Champions.”
“Your philosophy is not just what you say. It’s what you do.”
Walsh’s Business equivalent(s):
Precise Customer Journey mapping
30/60/90 day GTM plans
Codify your ops playbooks
“Develop the tree”; Build your own future team dynasty. A company and career succession-ready organization. Build leaders at every level
Bill Belichick (Patriots)
Ruthless situational football
Game plans changed weekly
Discipline and accountability never changed
Clock management mastery
Used the “rulebook” to gain strategic advantage. Bill knew the rules better than anyone else in the game and at time treated the NFL rulebook like a playbook looking for opportunity vs compliance.
Signature Quote(s):
“Do your job!”
“We prepare for every possible situation, even the ones that have never happened… yet.”
“Talent set the floor. Character sets the ceiling.”
Belichick’s Business equivalent:
Precise but adaptable weekly or quarterly execution and hold people accountable for their roles in achieving the shared “game plan”
Swap players in and out without breaking the system
Fundraise timing (clock mastery)
Creative tax structuring (legal rule exploitation)
New “formations” for how people collaborate in the office
Nick Saban (Alabama);
“Trust The Process” - intense focus on inputs, not outcome
High standards + systems orientation = dominance
Year In and Year Out; Built a dynasty regardless of players
Signature Quote(s)
“Discipline is doing what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it, the way it’s supposed to be done - regardless of how you feel.”
“Mediocre people don’t like high achievers, and high achievers don’t like mediocre people.”
Saban’s Business Equivalent(s)
Build systems to control the critical parts of the business (meetings, metrics, business reviews, feedback loops, and yes, revenue, expenses, and reporting)
Rebuild the team for each stage of the company - just like Saban had to do with each team, each season
Cultural reinforcement: don’t just measure what happened, reinforce your cultural for how and why it happened. Then learn and improve.
Mike Leach (Wash St / Texas Tech / Miss St)
Great Book: “Swing Your Sword: Leading the Charge in Football and Life”
Be a contrarian with purpose
System innovation - Air Raid Offense - disrupted entrenched norms
Radical ownership, autonomy and clear expectations unlocked creativity in his players
Signature Quotes:
“A pirate is prepared to chart a course that’s never been navigated before.”
“You are either coaching it or you’re allowing it to happen.”
“I don’t need a bunch of guys to ‘buy in’. I need a few who are invested!”
“We don’t run trick plays, we simply run plays better than you do.”
“If you are going to swing your sword, swing it hard and with a plan. Don’t tiptoe through life hoping to arrive safely at death.”
“You have to be willing to be weird. If you aren’t a little weird, then you are probably average.”
Leach’s Business Equivalent(s)
Build simple systems executed exceptionally well. Don’t over design. Find 3 plays that work and run them better than anyone else.
Find disruptive talent and embrace originality. Encourage boldness within a broader set of boundaries. Especially in GTM and Product/Engr
Coach every rep. Use Leach’s “you are either coaching it or allowing it” as a leadership diagnostic for your org.
Sidebar story on Mike Leach from his ex-QB Luke Falk?
RIP “Pirate Mike”
John Wooden - UCLA Basketball
The godfather of systematic leadership
“Pyramid of Success”
A system of behaviors, values, and habits designed to build high character and high performing teams
Signature Quote(s):
“Failing to Prepare Is Preparing to Fail”
“Be Quick - But Don’t Hurry”
Wooden’s Business Equivalent(s)
Build a cultural operating system. Build behavioral reviews into your execution and feedback loops. They aren’t words that live on a wall. The actual behaviors these words describe are what really matters.
Build rituals and traditions. Team habits and the basics and fundamentals matter. How you meet, review, and feedback matters more than what you say in those meetings or at all-hands.
Steve Kerr (Warriors)
Pace + Space + Flow
Off ball movement
Precision-engineered, probability maximizing offensive architect of the modern day 3 point shooting game.
Culture of joy, competition, mindfulness, and purpose
Maybe the best ever at putting the right players in the right positions at the right times
Signature Quote(s):
“The culture is the most important thing. Our winning is the result of our culture.”
“You create good 3s with spacing, movement, and passing. It’s not just about shooting volume, it’s about how you get to those shots.”
“We are not just hunting 3s, we are hunting great shots. If that’s a layup, great. If it’s a 3, even better.”
Kerr’s Business Equivalent(s)
High-probability decision making
Be like Steph Curry and only take great shots. Train your teams to avoid low-return work
Make your role-players look elite. Recognize them and reward them
Build Continuous Motion Operations. Remove bottlenecks and focus on the rhythm of execution especially through cross-functional flows
Don’t forget to “Read and React” vs. our Scripted Plays. Enable real-time decisions so they can optimize for the best shot, not just the shot the play called for.
Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K - Duke Basketball)
Team Trust
Communication; Collective Responsibility
Built a system of internal player led leadership
“Five Fingers = A Fist”; his metaphor for alone each finger is weak - limited in strength; together they create power with a purpose.
Great Book: “Leading With Heart”
Signature Quote(s):
“I don’t look at myself as a basketball coach. I look at myself as a leader who happens to coach basketball.”
“Unity is strength. A fist is much stronger than five fingers spread out.”
“Each player brings something different. When each players talents are respected and synchronized, you win.”
Coach K’s Business Equivalent(s)
Build teams that lead together as a unit
Build future leaders at every level
Scale in stages (seasons). Don’t let legacy structures define the next stage. Every fiscal year (season) is a reset… not a continuation.
No heroes. No silos. No passengers. Message this to your exec team and your direct reporting teams. You can have the best strategy, product, and forecast, but without team alignment and execution, all you have are open fingers… not a fist.
Tara VanDerveer (Stanford Women’s Basketball)
Execution over Ego
Intellectual Discipline - ran some of the most complex motion offenses in all of college basketball
Culture of Teaching
Signature Quote(s):
“You win with people. You coach character, not just skills.”
“Sometimes you have to slow down to go faster.”
“We practice more than we play. We prepare more than we talk.”
“Everyone plays a role. Everyone has value. But not everyone takes the same shot.”
VanDerveer’s Business Equivalent(s)
Build organizational systems that withstand the tests of time. Build Ops and G&A that scales not just for this quarter or this year.
Coach and teach the complex systems clearly. Build playbooks that do the same. Write them down. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat.
Invest in internal “code”, tooling, and infrastructure to unlock velocity later. Especially with the rebuilds of your financial systems, CRM’s, and HRIS’s. Do it right the first time.
Invest in dry runs, forecast “pre-mortems”, go to market simulations.
Reps matter - pressures reveal the strength or weaknesses of a system. Don’t make your first shot the real one.
As an exec leader, it’s your job to define “who takes what shot”. Don’t let ambiguity kill execution.
Final Whistle:
My Personal Game Film Review of This Post
Business isn’t just like a sport; It is a sport
Know what game you are playing; What level you are playing at?
Winning teams are designed and coached at a position-by-position level matched to a “team system”
Put the right players in the right positions at the right times
Design clear roles across offense, defense, and special teams
Run structured, repeatable playbooks that aligns strategy, structure, and execution
Study your game film and get better every week
Coach up your team focused on discipline, character, team culture
The Scoreboard Will Take Care of Itself - Just Do Your Job!
And always have a little Pirate in you
