Recommended reading: Sally Jenkins’s Washington Post piece on the nexus of sports and high finance. Such CEOs or former CEOs such as Bank of America’s Kenneth Lewis, Merrill Lynch’s John Thain, Morgan Stanley’s John J. Mack, J.P. Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Lehman Brothers’ Richard Fuld (that's Mr. Square Jaw, above) have sports backgrounds, and a sports mentality — which hasn’t always served them or their shareholders well.
Jenkins writes:
“Edward Bennett Williams called it ‘contest living,’ the unrelieved striving in which ‘every effort is marked down at the end as a win or a loss.’ In times of prosperity that kind of strut was called successful ambition, but as new frauds are revealed weekly and financial institutions turn to sand, it's fair to ask whether these super-motivated, aggressive risk-taker chief executives misapplied the notion of business as sport, and got too intoxicated with winning.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/18/AR2009021803541.html?hpid=sec-sports
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 have sports backgrounds, and a sports mentality — which hasn’t always served them or their shareholders well. Jenkins writes: “Edward Bennett Williams called it ‘contest living,’ the unrelieved striving in which ‘every effort is marked down at the end as a win or a loss.’ In times of prosperity that kind of strut was called successful ambition, but as new frauds are revealed weekly and financial institutions turn to sand, it's fair to ask whether these super-motivated, aggressive risk-taker chief executives misapplied the notion of business as sport, and got too intoxicated with winning.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/18/AR2009021803541.html?hpid=sec-sports){kind=link}
2 comments:
It is disappointing to me (as a high school coach) that the recklessness and greed of our financial leaders (if they can be called that) is called a sports mentally. Sports mentality is preparation, hard work and the ability to deal with failure.
@High School Coach: That may be what's taught in high school, but as we all know, in real life winning is all that matters. There is no gain to a loss by definition.
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