What companies can learn from the failures of the BCS

Posted by Justin Goldsborough | 0 comments

If you watched Monday night’s BCS Championship Game, you might think this is a post about how Notre Dame didn’t deserve to be in the game. It’s not. They did deserve to be in the game under the current system. If you watched Monday night’s game, you might think this is a post about how college football needs a playoff. It’s not. Well not really. It does. But that’s a side note.

If you watched Alabama and Notre Dame Monday night what you saw was an example of a system that isn’t working. A system run by a leadership group that is only focused on two things — 1) Money, 2) Tradition.

What’s wrong with focusing on money? Well, amongst many things it can cloud your judgment about what is best for your organization in the long term. These bowl game managers know how much money they get from the current system. Any sort of change is an unknown. So they’ve chosen to keep things the way they are for the most part over the past several decades.An incredible sign of weakness in a leadership group. Keeping things the same way because a small group of out-of-touch, rich elitists is scared of evolving or trying something new.

What’s wrong with tradition? Nothing unless it becomes an excuse for complacency, which is what’s happened with the BCS. Every time someone wants to talk about a playoff system in college football, one of the aforementioned rich elitists throws out tradition as an excuse. The tradition of the bowl games. The tradition of giving students the month of December off for finals. The tradition of them lining their pockets.

So how does this translate to corporate America? I once had a CEO in my first job out of school who made a statement I’ll never forget. I’m paraphrasing: “When things are going really well…when the company’s making money and your competitors are struggling…that’s the time to start thinking about change. Otherwise you risk becoming complacent and out of touch. And that’s when you are at the greatest risk of failure.”

Now college football is sort of an anomaly. Because no matter how lame the BCS gets — and I’m not sure it could get any more lame — college football is a cornerstone of our culture without a staunch competitor and it isn’t going anywhere. However, the same can’t be said for most organizations and corporations. And those that have leadership teams that keep doing the same thing over and over again because they’re “comfortable” or because doing something different means the results are unknown…

Well, those organizations are going to find themselves down 35-0 before they know what hit them too. Ask Notre Dame how that feels. And yes I know, the BCS is finally moving to a four-team playoff in 2014. Finally…It took them long enough. Again, college football is an anomaly. The BCS can get away with it because of the popularity of college football.

But a company, I promise you, cannot. Not if it wants to survive.