I’m a huge football fanatic. Or should I call it soccer? Well, whatever it is called, I’m basically a sports-enthusiastic person.

To the ones who don’t know about the game, here’s a little briefing. There are 11 players on the pitch with a manager competing against a team of the same size. One who puts the ball the most number of times in the opponent’s net wins the game.

Now how am I going to connect it to a company’s workforce??

Here we are talking about analogies where we could learn something from it.

There are 4 main roles in football and any hybrid player tries to fit in one of these — goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, forward.

In our case, let’s map them this way.

Goalkeeper — the management team

Defender — R&D

Midfielder — Marketing

Forward — Salesperson

Having mapped this, let us go into the analogies.

A defender doesn’t allow the opponents to enter the area where there are high chances of giving a goal. How does he prepare for the match? He/she analyses the video of how opponents play the match, catch their negative points and practice with them. This requires a lot of patience and understanding the present situation. I call it R&D because this too requires the patience skills, putting night outs to come with a small but new circuit. This is also true in the case of UI developers. They too require a lot of technical skill and hours of time to code to get the button “Call now” in the proper place. He needs to work with the presently available styles of that button and put it in place.

Now comes the Midfielder — he/she needs to form a link between the defence line and the forward line. This is called the life of a football pitch since he aids the ball to their forwards as well as intercepts the opponents entering his area. A marketing person, in the same way, works on how their product in R&D could be translated in a manner Salesperson could make sales to the customer easily. He works on how a customer precepts their brand and how he could present to get the best positive output. For an Online marketer, he/she publishes in social media using various ways in which their brand gets established.

Here comes the Forward — he/she takes the ball from his teammate and tries various ways to score a goal. This needs agility, aggressive mindset and the intent not to fear. Similarly, a salesperson is the image of the product he is selling. He needs to understand the needs of the customer, know the benefits and features of the product and project them in a compelling way so that the customer buys. He is the important part of the sales process. The more intent he is on understanding the customer, the more sales he makes.

How does this test the outcome of the way the company operates?

Well, this is easier to understand. If you have a better forward line, you will score more. If you have a better defense, you will defend better. If the midfield is good, you will have better ball possession.

If your forward line is weaker with a better defence, the chances of scoring become nil. This is true in the case of having the best invention of the product, but being unable to make sales.

If your forward line is strong with a weaker defence, then the opponent will also score easily. This is true if you can’t establish a unique product or service.

If your midfield is weak, your branding is dull and that says the rest.

And a lot more could be understood and answered. Even when I’m writing, I have a lot of points to think about.

Also, the style of football you play is your vision.

There are many football clubs who play their own brand of football, but are still successful — Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Juventus, Bayern Munich, AC Milan…..

Hope this helps you see your workforce management in a new way.