http://www.muditajournal.com/archives/609.php Mindfulness and Individualism Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:37:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 http://www.muditajournal.com/archives/609.php#comment-60697 Austen Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:30:51 +0000 http://www.muditajournal.com/archives/609.php#comment-60697 The "deeper purpose than profits" theme reminded me of something that's always amused me about professional sports. Perhaps it's related. In team sports, winning is the professed ultimate goal of everybody. Especially winning championships. There's no NBA player who says his driving goal is to have an interesting career full of diverse experiences, or to play in lots of closely competitive (thrilling) games, or even to contribute toward lots of winning seasons. Nor can a player have maximizing league revenue as his top priority. A player who professed to be in it for the beauty of the sport, who saw himself as an artist contributing to a kind of vast dynamic artwork -- and who put all that above winning -- would not be welcome on any team. heh. All of which is kinda weird because anybody who loves sports knows that winning isn't even really what we love about them. It's all the other stuff -- the entertainment, anticipation, competition, etc. And yet winning is everybody's organizing principle. It's what drives the competition, and guides the decision making, and maybe sports would fall into dysfunction if that changed very much. Do you think there's any parallel in business? Does profit as an organizing principle function anything like winning in sports? The “deeper purpose than profits” theme reminded me of something that’s always amused me about professional sports. Perhaps it’s related. In team sports, winning is the professed ultimate goal of everybody. Especially winning championships. There’s no NBA player who says his driving goal is to have an interesting career full of diverse experiences, or to play in lots of closely competitive (thrilling) games, or even to contribute toward lots of winning seasons. Nor can a player have maximizing league revenue as his top priority. A player who professed to be in it for the beauty of the sport, who saw himself as an artist contributing to a kind of vast dynamic artwork — and who put all that above winning — would not be welcome on any team. heh. All of which is kinda weird because anybody who loves sports knows that winning isn’t even really what we love about them. It’s all the other stuff — the entertainment, anticipation, competition, etc. And yet winning is everybody’s organizing principle. It’s what drives the competition, and guides the decision making, and maybe sports would fall into dysfunction if that changed very much. Do you think there’s any parallel in business? Does profit as an organizing principle function anything like winning in sports?

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