Business is a game of inches

In Oliver Stone’s 1999 American Football movie “Any Given Sunday”, head coach Al Pacino’s team head into the locker room at half-time, losing a must-win game.

Pacino plays Tony D’Amato, a veteran coach who has fallen out of favour with the team’s owner. The team has made the season play-offs but is riven with internal conflict and falling apart in the crunch game. At half time Pacino delivers the famous “Game of Inches” speech, motivating his team to the win and setting up his own redemption in the final scene of the movie. It’s a really good speech.

In his speech, D’Amato’s message is this; Football, like life, is a game of inches. You must fight for every inch because, when you add them up, those inches make the difference between success and failure. The same is true in business, especially so this year.

Every deal you do will be hard won, which means you need to do everything you can to extract every last bit of value from every single deal. Those extra marginal gains are the inches you must fight for. As a consultant I work with my clients to ensure that every deal they close delivers more . Because every deal can be better.

In business, the inches we fight for are the extra value we negotiate. They are rarely game changers in their own right, but those marginal gains on every deal all add up to game changing value over time. What would 1% more margin on every deal mean for your business over the course of a year?

For most of us, this will be a challenging year. Reach out via the contacts page to see how we can help your people rise to the challenge.