Four Quarters in Football and Business Tom Cline Football season is wrapping up with bowl games and playoffs—both college and pro. The business year, on the other hand, is just beginning for most of you. A commonality in both ventures is that it’s critical to work hard for the full four quarters. As my home team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, used to say: be 60-minute men. Sports are often used in metaphors for business and rightly so. Your annual business cycle is much like a football game. In both football and business, you begin by studying the competition. You assess their strengths and weaknesses, compare them to your own, and develop a game plan (business plan). That plan is designed to help you win in the short term—the particular game or new customer—and achieve your objectives while pursuing longer–term goals like winning a national title or achieving the vision you have for where your business will be in 7 to 10 years. With the plan in place, you focus on execution. In sports, execution is tracked and measured by statistics: pass completion percentage, yards per carry, number of sacks, and points on the scoreboard. In business, you use metrics: revenue, gross profit, employee turnover, cash flow, customer satisfaction, and other KPIs. It’s important to decide before the game or the business year which metrics you will track