Sports Playbook for Business: Leading with Speed, Clarity, and Purpose

By Aleksandar Ciric

I was a medical student in Belgrade when a friend noticed an unusual object in the corner of my apartment. It was an American football, something I had carried back with me from years of living in Canada. He had never seen one up close. "What kind of ball is that?" he asked, "It's not even round."

We went outside to throw it. Then two more friends walking through the park stopped to watch. Then more came. Within weeks, we had enough people for a full game. Within months, we had a club. Within years, we had a league. Today, thousands of people play American football across Serbia — kids, adults, flag teams, tackle teams — and it all started from a single ball and a willingness to move fast, stay clear on the goal, and never wait for the perfect conditions to begin.

I tell this story not because I think every business leader should start a sports federation. I tell it because what we built taught me everything I still believe about leadership. We had no money, no infrastructure, no sponsorship, and no roadmap. What we had was speed of action, clarity of purpose, and zero tolerance for standing still. We just played.

Those same principles have guided every leadership role I have held since.

The Hidden Cost Of Slowing Down

In business, we talk constantly about strategy, alignment, and process. What we talk about far less is what that internal activity is costing us, not just in time and money, but in relevance.

Here is a simple exercise I use to make this concrete. Take any meeting on your calendar. Add up a rough estimate of the hourly cost of everyone in that room. Multiply it by the length of the meeting. Now ask yourself honestly: did the outcome justify that investment? And more importantly, while you were in that meeting, what happened outside?

Because the external world does not pause for your agenda. Customers evolve. Competitors move. Markets shift. As someone once wrote, and as I have found to be consistently true: when the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end result is already determined. Every hour spent internally without generating external value is not just time lost, it is ground ceded.

In American football, this is immediately visible. If your offense is slow to the line, the defense reads you. If your team cannot execute a play in two seconds, you lose yards. If you spend the whole game in the huddle and never run a play, the scoreboard makes the verdict clear. Business works the same way. The scoreboard just updates a little more slowly, which makes it easier to ignore until it is too late.

Start With Yourself

The most common mistake leaders make when they decide to build a faster, more agile organization is that they start by looking outward. They design new processes, restructure teams, or launch change initiatives. They rarely start by looking in the mirror.

My first advice to any leader who wants to operate at a higher pace is this: open your phone and look at your inbox. How many unread emails do you have? How many unanswered messages? If the answer is in the hundreds, or thousands, then you are not in a position to lead a faster organization. You are already behind, and everyone watching you knows it.

I treat every message the same, regardless of the channel: Teams, WhatsApp, email, SMS. I clear my inbox daily. Not because I am obsessive about email, but because responsiveness is a signal. It tells your team, your customers, and your peers what you value. You cannot preach speed and model slowness. The two are incompatible.

Beyond your inbox, look at your calendar. If you are attending every meeting you are invited to, you are not leading, you are reacting. I have learned to decline meetings that will not generate external value, and to say so clearly and respectfully. More importantly, if I find myself in a meeting that should not have happened, I say that too, so it does not happen again. Every meeting you attend that should not exist is a vote for a culture you do not want.

Clarity Is The Engine Of Speed

One of the most powerful lessons I carried from the field to the boardroom is this: speed is impossible without clarity. In football, everyone knows their assignment before the play is called. Every player understands the goal, their role, and what success looks like in the next ten seconds. That level of clarity is not a luxury; it is what makes fast execution possible.

In organizations, we often confuse activity with alignment. We hold meetings to discuss the strategy rather than to execute it. We add layers of approval that create the appearance of rigor while actually slowing everything down. The best teams I have worked with do not move fast because they are reckless, they move fast because everyone already knows what they are trying to do and trusts each other to do it.

That clarity also helps with risk management, which is the objection I hear most often. "We cannot move quickly in a regulated industry," people tell me. And they are right … about some things. Research and development takes the time it takes. Safety and compliance are non-negotiable. But answering an email? Walking over to a colleague's desk instead of scheduling a meeting? Deciding on a vendor in a day rather than a quarter? These do not require more careful deliberation. They require leaders who are willing to act.

Not everything must be fast. But most things can be faster than they are.

Build The Team The Game Requires

We built American football in Serbia with students who had no money and no equipment. What we had was enthusiasm, a shared mission, and an absolute intolerance for people who were not committed to the game. That combination moved mountains.

In business, I apply the same logic. Surround yourself with people who operate at the pace the moment requires. Culture is not something you declare, it is something you hire for, model every day, and protect relentlessly. If you are surrounded by people who are slow to respond, slow to decide, and slow to act, that is the culture you will have, regardless of what your values statement says.

The leaders I admire most are not the ones with the most polished presentations or the most carefully worded strategies. They are the ones who make a call, move forward, and adjust as new information arrives. They are the ones who are already running the next play before the last one has finished.

That is the sports playbook. And in my experience, it works just as well in the boardroom as it does on the field.

About The Author:

Aleksandar Ciric is General Manager at Novo Nordisk Austria and a visiting faculty member at COTRUGLI Business School. He founded American football in Serbia in 2003 and has spent his career applying sports-based leadership principles to building high-performance commercial organizations in the pharmaceutical industry.