I consider myself very lucky to have spent a large part of my career in and around professional sport, so I have always been interested in how key traits of sport and business overlap.
I have just started reading a great book called the 'Comeback Quotient' by Matt Fitzgerald, who is a professional sports endurance coach and writer. (defiantly worth the purchase its a great read)
It seems as relevant to today's business as it does to sport.
In the book, he writes about the difference between those that make great comebacks in sport and those that don't.
He talks about physical fitness is about being able to 'do hard things', and mental fitness is about being able to 'deal with hard things'.
He writes 'Simply put, athletes who fail to make the best of a bad situation turn away from reality, whereas athletes capable of achieving great comebacks face reality squarely.'
'When athletes with less than Kipchoge-level mental fitness find themselves in a bad situation, all too often they fail to accept it as real; or, having accepted it, they fail to embrace that new reality; or, having embraced it, they fail to do what's necessary to address it. '
This three-step process of accepting, embracing, and addressing reality is the sine qua non of great athletic comebacks'.
When I have helped a business make a comeback, for whatever reason, they have all accepted this common trait of accepting, embracing, and addressing reality.
The earlier the situation is accepted, the quicker and the better chance of the comeback.
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