The Rules of Sportsthink

Success is a choice.

All is within our grasp, if we just follow slugger Kirk Gibson's lead by calling upon our psychic and emotional stockpiles. (Success Is a Choice is the title of a best-selling book by basketball-coach-cum-seminar-speaker Rick Pitino.) "Every moment of the day provides a new opportunity to take the fearful or fearless path," says Jeff Greenwald, founder of Mental Edge International, a leader in sports-based training. "The sum of these choices will determine the quality of our performance with customers and coworkers, and ultimately, our results." This attitude uber alles mantra sounds appealing enough when phrased in affirming language, but the obvious corollary is less cheery: Failure, too, is a choice. This grossly oversimplifies the mechanisms of both winning and losing.

According to Mark Fichman, an organizational consultant affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, mental attitude is a "relatively small [factor in success] compared to your location in the social world to begin with. It is easier to become president," he adds archly, "if your father was president." Fichman also points up the logical flaw in selecting only successful figures, like Lasorda and Mia Hamm, and asking them to reflect on what got them where they are: "Bill Gates tells us he dropped out of school, [but] that does not mean dropping out of school is a key to success."

Show no weakness in the face of adversity:

Like the palooka who pulls himself up off the canvas after each knockdown, the dedicated employee is expected never to waver, no matter what battering he takes. But this bulletproof, bullheaded mind-set may bleed over into other areas of life. It may also not be the most productive way to function on the job. "People need to know that it's OK to falter sometimes," says Benjamin Dattner, principal in Dattner Consulting and adjunct professor of organizational development at New York University. "This approach of being constantly 'on' and never saying die is a key cause of burnout."

The 'game' always comes first:

Relationships, personal issues, extracurricular interests, even family—all take a back seat to The Almighty Job. This has been especially hard on women, already under crushing pressure to choose between domestic life and career. True winners aren't expected to avail themselves of such "easy outs" as the Family Leave Act. (Ironically, this is no longer the case in sports itself—particularly baseball and basketball—where players routinely skip games in order to tend to personal business.)

Winning is the only thing:

The timeless Lombardi-ism translates, in corporate settings, to "nothing matters but the end result." This schema gives little credence to effort—or to the fact that failure may have more to do with fate than effort. "If everything is do-or-die, and you fail at whatever it is you're trying to do, you've delivered a potent message to yourself," says Jim Bouton, author of the baseball book Ball Four. Critics link this axiom to the erosion of business ethics in recent decades: "Corrupt business practices have been with us since the dawn of business itself," says MacKenzie, "but the 'win at all costs' construct, imported from sports during the 1980s, greatly magnified the inclination to cheat."