Super Bowl 53 (or for those who still speak fluent Latin) will be remembered as a defensive battle that produced the least total score in Super Bowl history. While the New England Patriots’ slight favorite, the Los Angeles Rams have a high octane offense, averaging 32.9 points per game. Unfortunately, they met the NFL’s best strategist at Bill Belichick. Ram’s head coach Sean McVay said after a failed effort: “There is no other way to say: I’m eliminated.”
Whether it is business, sports or almost any other stage, strategy wins. Several long-term studies of bankrupt companies (10 and 25 years, respectively) show that the number one cause of business failure – loss of business – bad strategy. New England coach Bill Belichick’s sixth title also strengthened the strategy’s victory in sports.
I define a strategy as an intelligent allocation to achieve my goals through a unique activity system. In football games, the resources available to coaches are people, time and distance. Belichick ran out of the game in the AFC Championship and Super Bowl and used the formation to allow the Patriots to control the time they owned and keep the prolific quarterbacks of other teams (Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Jared Goff of Ram’s Jared Goff). Despite the Patriots’ emphasis on passing football early this year, they evolved to make the running game stand out more at the end of the season, allowing them to absorb more time.
From a person’s point of view, quarterback Tom Brady is most commonly known as a catalyst, but Belichick’s strategic thinking can be found in other, more nuanced areas. While the bettor may be the most overlooked person on the team, Belichick puts strategic ideas into choices until it becomes extremely important in a tight, low-scoring game. New England coaches prefer to hit a left-footed bettor, in this case Ryan Allen, because the football rotates from the left-handed’s foot in the opposite direction to the kicker. In other words, this is different from the norm. As we know in the business, the core of a good strategy involves differentiation – in the form of activities, products, experiences, etc.
Belichick took another strategic move ahead of the game to prepare his players, which is signing practice teams with almost the same speed as the star players of his future rivals. By attracting clones of opponent players, Patriots’ teams can have a more realistic understanding of how to prepare and stop them from playing. From a business perspective, strategic workshops that leverage competitor products and experiences can make the management team think about the management team’s sense of urgency and understanding by neutralizing the strengths of the competitors.
Finally, Patriots usually don’t have the most talented or top players, but they do their best to the fullest, as Berichick puts them in a position of success. While Tom Brady is now considered his position (the greatest goat ever), most general managers and teams don’t consider him to be a very good graduate of college (199th in the sixth round). Like Kent State’s 5-foot-10 quarterback champion Julian Edelman, he won this year’s Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Award, with a total of 232 shots in the seventh round. Belichick studied the movie at Edelman and saw potential places for teams that others didn’t consider. As a business leader, one of the differentiators between the best and the best factions is the ability to put your employees in positions of greater opportunities. Do you maximize your resources or do you put them in the same spot throughout the year and in the same spot for the year, hoping to get a touchdown from Hail Mary?
Consider this question for the time being: Are you a Bill Belichick on the market? Or are others using their resources to perform better than you in time, talent and money? Stay strategic…or disappear in today’s competitive business environment.
