There’s a lot of nerds I know that dislike “Sportsball” – a generalized term for anything that might be associated with the term “jocks.” Some ignore it, some look down on sports with disdain and some even make fun of people who are fans.
I get it. It was me. I was that guy.
And then, in 2017, I watched Super Bowl LI – where the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history happened. I had no dog in this fight, but suddenly I saw how much drama, luck, strategy and fun there was in watching. It’s less nerve-wracking when you don’t care who wins and you’re just watching the story.
After that, as I got older, I noticed how my body was starting to break down little by little and then had a whole new respect for 40+ year old quarterbacks that could play at a world class level. They adjusted their play from when they were in their 20s… doing more thinking and less running, but they were still leading great teams. No matter what you think of Tom Brady, you have to admit that his resume is impressive.
All of this gave me a few lessons in running a team. I knew that I wasn’t going to be the one slinging code for much longer. But I could see some of the problems before other people could. I recognized patterns that I had seen 200 times but that my coworkers weren’t as dialed in on. I started being the slower, more experienced player. I was no Super Bowl winning QB, but I was someone that knew how to help a team get better and how to deliver solutions better than I used to.
As we move into a world of AI and maybe a whole new way of playing the game, I think of what a colleague of mine said to me: “We will have to find the fun again.” I think that’s very true. And at the same time, we’ll bring in an experience nobody else will have, knowing at a deeper level what is happening under the hood while also changing the speed of the game. I think there is a value in having that past experience, but I also know that the rules have changed forever and that we won’t get to move forward unless we change with them.