Trust and a Fast Pace

When Michael Denisoff is working with international clients of the Denisoff Consulting Group he says tries not to use too many American colloquialisms, but there are a couple that he can’t help.

“The football stuff just slips out when I’m talking,” he says. “It’s just a lot like business, and life.”

Resorting to football metaphor’s and stories isn’t unusual for Denisoff. He was a wide receiver at the University of Notre Dame in the late 1980s, playing on the 1988 National Championship team under Lou Holtz.

After earning a theology degree with a minor in mathematics from Notre Dame, he went on to a consulting career, earning his MBA from Loyola Marymount University and establishing the Denisoff Consulting Group in Los Angeles.

He says that his time spent on the football field has translated well into the working world, though he didn’t realize that when he was playing.

“I was so ill prepared for life, and in some ways really prepared for it, when I graduated,” he says. “All the things that you do in football – goal setting, having a plan, having a strategy, being bold, being disciplined – I still carry those with me today.”

The sport taught Denisoff how to play on a team, whether it’s on a field, or in an office.

“You have to have a high level of trust in the people you work with,” he says. “In football, you have 10 other people on the field, and if you make a mistake, you have to cross your fingers that they’ll clean up after you. If you try to do everything instead of sticking to an agreed upon plan, it breaks down really quick.”

The same can be said of any business, he says, where companies and co-workers have to understand each other and sync their talents to perform at a high level.

Football also taught Denisoff how to keep up with the fast pace of decisions in the business world. Time management, whether it be of a play clock or a work day, is essential to succeed.

It also teaches that you won’t win every play, every hit or every game. He says he thinks of what sports analysts and fans say of great quarterbacks – quarterbacks have to have a short memory.

“If you make a good play, on the field or in an office, you can’t live off of that,” he says. “And if you make a bad play, you can’t get despondent over that. You have to get up and do the next play.”

When all of these lessons from football work together, businesses and teams can succeed, but when they don’t break downs occur. You can see those break downs on the football field each Saturday because, unlike most businesses, they’re broadcast nationally and analyzed on cable networks, but the same things do happen in the same ways in companies.

“You have to have a handle on things because things are happening so fast and there are so many decisions to make and you have to keep a handle on the technical aspects,” Denisoff says. “You have to be focused and trust that if you do what you’re supposed to do, the rest of the team will bring what they’re supposed to have to the table so you can win.”

–

To learn more about how success in college football can translate to success in business, visit the Cincom Business Knowledge Center. And, for some more fun – and the chance to win prizes like a flat-screen TV – join our Cincom College Football Bowl Extravaganza at http://champions.cincom.com