How to tackle world champions and win

New Zealand’s rugby union team – The All Blacks (ABs) – are 2016 world team of the year (beating the likes of FC Barcelona and the Mercedes Formula 1 team). But when they beat Ireland last weekend, that was a return to form, because in Chicago a couple of weeks earlier, the Irish beat the ABs for the first time in 111 years (making Chicago Cubs’ fans look a bit impatient for their world series win). That also brought to an end a record-breaking winning streak for the Rugby World Champions.

After that first game, the ABs’ Beauden Barrett (2016 world rugby player of the year, no less) commented that his team ‘didn’t adapt as we should have’. In other words, it wasn’t the lack of strategy, fitness, passion, experience, or teamwork that finally let the ABs down, it was that they didn’t apply their change intelligence on the field. They are used to dictating how the game is played, but when their competition got the upper hand, the ABs suffered the fate of so many organisations that have all the assets they need to win, but lose anyway because they can’t mentally adapt to their environment. In the last 10 minutes, their lack of innovation signalled a loss of confidence, and crucial unforced errors revealed their mounting anxiety, all of which allowed Ireland to score again. These regressive traits are normally reserved for us mere mortals when faced with change we can’t or won’t handle.

So even the members of the best team in the world need to work on how they think and feel about change, in order to adapt to how the game is being played. And if they do, then we all do, whatever we do.