Against Sports Analogies at Work – The Atlantic

“Sports metaphors really started to hit their stride at the beginning of the 20th century. We had a period where you had really literate sports writers,” says Chetwynd. “The three big sports that probably the largest number of sports metaphors come from are horse racing, boxing, and baseball, because those were the three big sports of the century and it sort of crossed over from there.”

While researching his book on the origin of sports metaphors and idioms, Chetwynd says that he found that big-name CEOs were not as likely to use them. He suspects that one reason why sports metaphors are more commonly used by managers rather than visionary CEOs is that the former has to motivate staff, while the latter is doing the kind of big holistic thinking Vermeulen thinks is better off without being influenced by sports. “I think there’s some positives to it, but I don’t disagree with the concern of the idea that ‘we’re all about winning,’ and sports gives us that. Certainly that’s one of the big problems when we use sports language in politics. We’re talking about the horse race, we’re talking about who’s up and who’s down instead of talking about policy and governance,” says Chetwynd.

Vermeulen isn’t confident that his arguments will persuade businesspeople to drop sports metaphors. But it’s worth stressing that the reality of the business world is that both a company and its competitor can both be winners (or losers)—something that seems to be lost in sports metaphors in the workplace. “I think the elements in sports that do more harm than good are the racing and competitive elements. Very often in sports, it’s some sort of a race, whether it’s running fast, jumping high, or throwing a disc—and that is quite a unidimensional thing, building an organization and becoming a good organization is certainly not unidimensional,” says Vermeulen. “Analogies can certainly help you, but if you have a wrong or skewed mental model, it can lead you astray.”

This article is part of a week-long series of articles about the business of sports. Joe Pinsker on the future of corporate sponsorship is here. Alana Semuels on publicly-financed sports stadiums is here. Gillian White on the struggle for equal pay in U.S. soccer is here.