Sport is a metaphor for much in life.
We like its ability to encapsulate all that is human and condense it into a manageable scale. It’s all about human endeavour to achieve, to overcome challenges and obstacles. These challenges are physical and mental, with one informing the other.
Unlike other things in life, sports have clear measurements which define success and clearly differentiate it from failure. Sports demand emotional engagement. It draws us in.
The sports story of the moment, little Leicester City Football Club’s triumph in the English Premier League, is an intoxicating tale of David vs Goliath. But in this case David is further debilitated in having only one arm, one leg and is virtually blind.
Image via http://football.wikia.com/wiki/Leicester_City_F.C
Leicester City started the season as rank outsiders. Bookmakers were offering odds of 5,000/1. You could get shorter odds on Elvis Presley riding the next Grand National winner. Understandably so.
Leicester City didn’t have the resources of the affluent clubs, and therefore they didn’t have the best players. Many were picked up from other clubs for free, having been discarded as failures. Others were recruited for paltry sums from clubs where the established powers in the game had no intention of venturing to. The travel schedules of the fashionable clubs did not take their talent scouts to the non-league clubs and the lower tiers of the professional game in Europe’s weaker leagues. This is where Leicester City would discover players with potential. Leicester even went as far as taking an out of work manager, sacked from presiding over the humiliation of the Greek national team, and drawing towards the end of a career that hadn’t achieved the game’s top honours.
To these ingredients were added human attributes that you just can’t buy. These are created, not purchased. A spirit of togetherness and commitment inculcated everything they did. This band of brothers focused, not on the end result, but on the means to the end. For them, success was measured by effort, by desire, by hunger. If each member had contributed the absolute maximum possible to the cause of the team, then success had been achieved. Even if the opponent had been superior and victorious.
As the season progressed, these attributes strengthened and deepened, carrying the team to the top of the League. The game’s “expert analysts” couldn’t accept that Leicester would stay the course. They would choke, they would stumble, they would blow up. In essence, though, these experts were expecting the normal order of things to be re-established. They were so conditioned in their thinking that they just couldn’t comprehend that a different approach was possible.
Leicester was busy tearing up the rule book and the game’s analysts were quickly picking up the torn pieces and sticking it back together. They were unable to entertain anything else.
At LEWIS we are also challenging the traditional structure and approach of our world – the communications industry. As an independent player, we are taking on the oligarchy and rising quickly through the ranks. In fact, earlier this week we broke into PR Week’s top 30 global agencies – and we have no intention of stopping there. We want to provide clients with a creative and integrated approach, and the opportunity to outcompete their rivals. We believe we can deliver that through our team culture, service offerings, commitment and passion.
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