83. Superiority and winners

Dear Gerard

I totally agree with your opinion about misplaced feelings of superiority. No nation is superior over another and unfortunately this is a major problem in the geopolitical environment in which we live.
However, if you can convert superiority into a pure form of competition under equal conditions you have reached your goal as an entrepreneur: ‘the winner takes all’.When I played football, we sometimes played against the youth teams of Ajax. Those guys behaved in a superior way and before we started they already ‘lead’ with 1-0. So usually we lost. They were able to transfer their superior attitude into energy. Nothing wrong with that. If you can ensure this in your company you do well. And then again and again staying the best is the challenge.

In late 2009, I have been involved on the sidelines in the rescue of AZ (Dutch football club in the major league). The then owner of AZ, Dirk Scheringa, not so very long before named entrepreneur of the year, appeared to have a bad business concept with his DSB bank. This eventually led to the collapse of the bank and near-bankruptcy of the football club where Scheringa acted as chairman and main sponsor. Through decisive action by a number of entrepreneurs and the curator AZ could make a new start. Due to the lack of a rich sponsor a new direction had to be chosen. The mission now is to belong among the top five in the Netherlands. Why not choose to be the best? This is based on a sense of reality that AZ is not able to attract super sponsors with a budget enabling the club to become the number one in Holland. The vision is now to focus on a top training program for young players of 10 years and older. AZ now provides great facilities, excellent training, scouting and a professional medical staff. The most modern techniques of measuring effort, strength and speed are also being implemented.

Obviously there willbeyearswith disappointing results due to having limited resources compared to the competition.However, bynot panicking when results are down and keeping the focus on the training program of young players the missioncanbe accomplished. Growing some sense of superiority might help as long as it is not misplacedand does not leadto underestimating the competition.

Regards,

Jan Stam