Are you a sports fan?

Whether you are or not, there are literally billions of people around the globe who are sports fans. Some are rabid, some are casual, but there is no denying the popularity of sports on the world stage. Baseball, hockey, football, basketball, soccer, rugby, and scores of other team sports are revered, regarded, admired, attended, followed and fanaticised. Not to mention the myriad individual competitive sports.

Sports of all sorts captivate humanity.

Why?

Not to oversimplify and disregard elements like community, belonging, human drama, history, talent, skill and like, I want to suggest there are a few key elements to competitive sport that propels it to broad-based, world-wide, cross-cultural popularity: 1. There is a clear objective. 2. The objective is easily measured. 3. The rules are clear, understood and enforced.

Sport in its most basal form is about winning and losing. There is ultimately a winner and a loser. The way you determine the winner is very clear – the winner, depending on the sport, either has the high score or the low score. There are rules everyone has to abide by that are enforced by a referee. Justice prevails – well, as often as humanly possible.

We could surmise from a study of sport that we all share a desire to win, to understand how to win, and to operate within a clearly understood set of universally enforced rules.

So, let’s apply this to leadership. Within your role as a leader you need to have a clear understanding of what “winning” looks like. What does winning look like for you, for the people you lead, and for your organization? What is your mandate?

Then, you need to understand what the parameters (rules and responsibilities) are for your mandate. And yes, there is a referee who oversees your performance, be it a boss, board, banker or buyer.

It is imperative then that you understand what the activities are you must engage in that contribute to you winning – to you succeeding in your mandate. The problem is, you have many demands on a daily basis pulling you in multiple directions and potentially distracting you from the winning activities you must engage in to fulfill your mandate and win.

You have a unique contribution you provide through your position on your team. If you do not fulfill the requirements of your position to the best of your ability, utilizing all the unique talents, abilities and experience you bring, your team will not excel, and ultimately fail to win. In light of this, there are activities you engage in on a daily basis that profoundly and powerfully contribute to the success of your organization.

Let’s call those “winning activities”.

Conversely, there are also activities you engage in on a daily basis that take up your time, and actually stop you from making your greatest contribution to the success of your organization.

Let’s call those “losing activities”.

Your role as a leader (as a Chief Priority Officer) is to engage in as many winning activities and as few losing activities as possible on a daily basis. This may seem over simplistic, but I often hear from leaders that the demands on their time keep them from doing what they feel their unique contribution to their organization really is – that which best leads to their organization winning.

Here is an exercise I get them to do: Write down all the activities you typically give your time to. Get as specific as possible. Now put a “W” beside those activities that are winning activities, and an “L” beside those things that are losing activities – that keep your from your winning activities.

Your challenge as a leader is to reduce as much as possible the losing activities you engage in every day. Delegate, hire, subcontract, and eliminate – whatever is possible within the parameters of your mandate – to ensure you are engaged in winning activities as consistently as possible.

Great leaders know how they can best contribute to their team winning, and then prioritize their daily activities to ensure they do not get distracted from doing just that. They increase their winning activities and decrease their losing activities.

You will never lose by focusing on winning activities.