Opinion: Super Bowl delivers super business tips

I always have been and I always will be a Bears fan. It’s ingrained in us Chicagoans.

Hopes were high throughout my extended family when the Bears returned to the Super Bowl after a 22-year hiatus. Those hopes were washed away Feb. 4 in Miami.

I’m sharing this to explain why I had to postpone this column for a week. I let the wound heal. And now, I am pleased to say that there was no loser in that game.

I’m not taking anything away from Peyton Manning, the Indianapolis Colts’ couldn’t-win-the-big-one-until-now quarterback, and his coach, Tony Dungy.

There was no loser because of the way both teams were managed all year and the way those team managers responded to adversity. So many lessons were taught.

As both teams talked with the media hordes the week before the big game, faith and diversity were constants. This is the highest platform in sports, and the two coaches used it to promote their beliefs in Jesus Christ as savior and their heritages. Dungy and the Bears’ Lovie Smith are the first black head coaches to take a team to the Super Bowl, they’re both professing Christians, and they’re very close friends.

The principles they’ve applied to managing their teams are easily transferred into the business world.

• Respect. In a highly intense profession built on tongue-lashings to motivate personnel, these National Football League coaches don’t cuss at their players or at the referees.

“Yelling and screaming, that’s one of the most overrated ideas out there,” Smith says on a Web site dedicated to his and Smith’s beliefs. “What I’ve found is that if you tell guys what to do ... they will do it. You don’t have to belittle them, threaten them. I simply tell them what I want done. If they can’t do it, there are other guys waiting for the chance to do it.”

That holds true in business, too. If personnel can’t take straight orders from their supervisors, there are others waiting for that job opportunity. Following the coach’s example, orders should be given with kindness and respect.

• Character. Adversity builds character. Dungy knows. Last year, his college-age son committed suicide, and it’s obvious Dungy grew from that heartbreaking situation.

The Web site www.beyondtheultimate.org posts Dungy’s comments about character development. “When people ask me, ‘How do you stay so calm on the sideline?’ I have to tell them it is Christian maturity and Christ working in me,” he says. “It’s not natural. It didn’t happen overnight. It was a process. I know how powerful God’s spirit is. I know he can change people. And I know that he will do that if we allow him to.”

Losing that key salesperson might have set your bottom line back a bit, but how did you overcome it? Within the answer lies your character development.

• Patience. Smith and the Bears front office have executed tremendous patience in developing young quarterback Rex Grossman. During Grossman’s terribly erratic performances, Smith insisted, “Rex is our guy.”

Grossman is human. He has bad days and good days at the office; so do we, so does your staff. Smith never publicly got down on his young quarterback. He waited – and is still waiting – for his QB to develop.

Is there someone on your team who needs time to develop? Try encouraging them, and let it happen.

• Integrity. A proverb in the Bible says, “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches.” Allow me to insert the word business. If one builds a business on integrity and keeps its name in good favor, the Bible says the work will be rewarded.

• Trust. I have small-business owner friends, who say that trust is one of the most difficult parts of running their companies. It’s also the most rewarding, these Christian men say, when they look back and see how God has provided for them.

“The Lord really prepared us,” Dungy said in a post-game news conference, leaving no question where he placed his trust in difficult times. Did you see the Colts’ last-second finish in the conference championship to beat archenemy New England? The Patriots had beat up the Colts for several years in the playoffs. Now that’s adversity producing character – and a winner. Congratulations, Colts fans.

Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.