Applying the “MCC Spirit of Cricket” lecture by Brendon McCullum to Flicx UK

This week in our team meeting, we listened to parts of the Brendon McCullum MCC lecture. Given everyone at Flicx is passionate about sport, we often apply sporting case studies to business and it certainly influences how we conduct ourselves as a company. The lessons you pick up from playing team sports, certainly apply to corporate teams and we all believe can steer your life in general in so many positive ways. The first instance of this was when we attended a High Performance event run by Jeremy Snape of Sporting Edge … now following McCullum’s moving lecture last week at Lords, we discussed our own team values, what we stand for and how we would like to be perceived by our industry colleagues and customers.

“It was agreed that we were seen as arrogant, emotional, distant, up-ourselves and uninterested in our followers. The environment that the younger players were being welcomed into was really poor – there was a very traditional hierarchy, where senior players ruled the roost. Ultimately, we concluded that individually and collectively we lacked character.

We recognised that we had to change. We wanted to personify the traits that we identified in New Zealanders – to be humble and hardworking. We wanted to be respected by our long-suffering fans in New Zealand. We wanted to be respected by our opposition; and before we could demand this we had to learn to respect them.”

McCullum spoke openly and honestly about the transition that the NZ team took and the values that they now play by… “In fact, if every sportsman simply tried to be the best he could be, and attempted to behave decently along the way, you’ve pretty much summed up every available optimal strategy in one simple sentence.”

So what did we take from Brendon’s lecture?

Flicx is people – Rich, Gary, Ash, Rob and Kate … a small team – but we all have a passion for our unique, quality, innovative sporting brands and that is underpinned by our focus on delivering high levels of personal service – we hope our customers like dealing with us because of us as people! We are certainly appreciative of the strong relationships that we have we many of our customers – its more than just business to us. Our tagline is “Bringing Sport to Life” and the history of the development of the Flicx Pitch by founder Richard Beghin shows our passion for developing sport through our products. We take pride in being a company who has more of a personal approach to selling – and we hope this comes across in our actions.

We then discussed our team – Ash spoke about the decision to leave his home in South Africa to come and work for Flicx, being an easy one and we are very happy to have him as part of the team. We are going to try and make more time to chat over a cup of tea or game of Crazy Catch so help develop our bond further – its so easy to get so caught up in your own role when its busy but taking time to reward the good work of teammates is always important and likewise pick up when people are having a bad day.

The lessons of sport are so powerful and wide ranging – Leicester City’s incredible title triumph shows how far team spirit can take you and how important the values that you work by each day are in creating the foundations of success and the importance of having lots of fun along the way. Let us know what you think …