If you know me, you know I’m completely sports-mad; I’ve played a variety of sports myself and am a die-hard Penrith Panthers supporter. This year I’ve watched the Panthers climb through the ranks to gain a spot in the 2020 Grand Final. Even though they ended up losing the GF, I couldn’t help but notice their incredible teamwork, brotherhood and unwavering motivation throughout the season. Sure, watching the Panthers go head to head with other NRL teams has been a fun activity to look forward to every week, but I also saw each match as an opportunity to pick up some managerial pointers. 

I view my role at Milk Chocolate as that of a coach. While I may not be able to formulate on-field tactics in quite the same way as Panthers coach Ivan Cleary, my function is to recruit the best talent, motivate, make sure the business is driven towards a singular objective, and provide each member of our team with a long-term game plan that allows them to kick their professional goals. Values I try to instill include passion, honesty, authenticity, teamwork, consistency, purpose, and empowerment – merits I’ve observed in the very best sports teams that are so easily transferable to the business. 

This year especially, as Milk Chocolate navigated one of its toughest years, I’ve adopted a few key strategies that have allowed us to better celebrate our accomplishments, learn from our challenges, and steer our business towards victory. 

While it’s easy to get stuck in the day-to-day grind, it’s so important to showcase everyone’s efforts. Properly commemorating our wins as a team is a great way of recognising our collective achievements and developing comradery among our squad. But as the Panthers so aptly demonstrated in the Grand Final, even despite their hard work and a 17-game winning streak (one of the longest in NRL history), sometimes things just don’t work out for reasons out of your control. The past few months have proven to be much the same at Milk Chocolate; a good few years and lots of progress were totally stripped back by an unforeseen pandemic.

We’ve come to the conclusion that there’s so much to gain from these kinds of defeats – that’s where real business growth happens. It’s crucial to look at the ‘why’ when analysing your upsets, because if you’re not learning from something, there’s no room for improvement. We go in-depth with every setback and look at key lessons and takeaways. We’re open about our losses with the rest of the team and dissect them with an honest approach, setting frameworks to minimise the chance of them happening again and keeping them top of mind in our decision-making processes. The pandemic has been difficult, but we’ve put future-proofing tactics in place that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

We also find challenges to be great motivators that guide us, our team and our business in the direction of success – because the anguish of experiencing a loss only highlights the joy of working towards a win. As Panthers coach Ivan Cleary so accurately put it following the Grand Final, “To be still swinging at the end of the game is an incredible effort, and I’m really proud of the boys … I look forward to when the dust settles and getting back into it, because it’s so much fun.”

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