Lessons from losing.

I watched the game is disbelief on Saturday as the Welsh overpowered England to win a convincing victory in front of a passionate home crowd (I wish the English had a rousing anthem) and steal the 6 Nations from a team that ran out of ideas and energy.

I am sure the England coaching staff will have reviewed the game and looked at the critical areas where England were out-muscled and out-thought by a Welsh team with the crowd behind them and the incentive of delivering England a bloody nose. They will learn huge lessons and be much better prepared for their next game. The team are still young and although at the moment they will be rueing a missed opportunity, they will soon be back training and ready to play against another opponent for either club or country.

Obviously professional sportsmen ( I still remember when it was an amateur game ) are used to dealing with failure. They understand that in order to be successful you have to repeatedly fail… the key is in your ability to learn, to keep pushing your knowledge and capabilities, keep trying and challenging what is understood to be possible. This resilience is what separates the achievers from the rest.

The same is true for business, ask any successful entrepreneur about the early years and they will be able to tell you about the mistakes they made and the lessons learned. Think about successful sales people, even with the best lead generation in the world, they don’t close 100% of the time.

The lessons are the same for all of us in our endeavours, review performance, look at critical areas, identify what want well and what needs to improve, create a plan, coach and train and get back out there again, pushing the boundaries, stepping out of the comfort zone and see what is possible.

There were some people on twitter blaming the referee but although Walsh has previous against England he made some dubious calls against both teams. (That is probably a topic for another day). As a player you have to accept that decisions don’t always go your way and retain focus on your goals. In business, there are people making excuses and blaming others but the best thing to do is pick yourself up and carry on.

So, congratulations to the Welsh, look forward to a good Lions tour and roll on next time, hopefully I will be in a cold Twickenham fortress cheering a reversed scoreline.

Adam

p.s. Mike Catt discussing the way forward via the RFU site… Failures fuel our ambition