Football is a game with 11 players on each team, and in the end, the Germans always win

A long time ago, I had the pleasure of working with Bojan Mladenovic on a Serbian SME project for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. I loved it.

Business and sports

He wrote a book, “Play That Game: Let the business be your playground.” It is excellent. He uses lessons from sports, particularly soccer, as a metaphor for lessons in business. As he says, sports teams, coaches, managers, and athletes have quite a lot in common with acknowledged business leaders and entrepreneurs. Sports can serve as the source of a myriad of life philosophies. I could not agree more.

Salient advice

I read it chapter by chapter. One chapter a day. Every day another good lesson and something to think about. It covers a wide range of topics and gives lots of salient advice, such as:

• Everything is based on emotions; we are living organisms.
• Every activity, as futile as it may seem, has its beginning, its end and, naturally, its purpose.
• The force of self-conviction is the most potent one.
• Games serve as a testing ground without real casualties.
• The excess of anything is a bad thing.