Former England International Lee Mears On Sport & Business

Thanks for giving us your time, Lee. First of all, we’re keen to know what parallels can be drawn between the world of sport and business, do they share underlying principles?

 

“Well, any time you have all got a common goal, no matter what team – whether I’ve been involved in setting up Jika Jika or whether it was Bath rugby, when we knew what we wanted to achieve as a collective, that always made the best results. So you have to look at collective success, the goal you need and the behaviours you want to live by so that everybody buys in, and after that it’s about alignment. We always used to say in Bath that it’s about getting every body pulling in the same direction.”

 

So the principles are similar, they just have to be applied in different ways?

 

“Yes, I think it’s completely similar, sport now runs like a business. You obviously have to hit your targets, if you really want to use the acronym ‘KPIs’ (key performance indicators) so you generally know how to perform, what you’re trying to achieve and then obviously it comes to the different ideas – what do you need? what’s your strategy? Rugby works very similar to business, you have that plan at the beginning, then you’ll have your review and then your strategy – but we just call it tactics.”

 

Do you think you would be entering business in this way if you hadn’t had your rugby career?

 

“I don’t know, that’s a really interesting question. I always love opportunities and rugby for me was fantastic with the doors that it opened, the people I got to meet and the life skills that I have picked up have been phenomenal. I’d like to think I’d be doing a similar thing now, but I suppose you never know…”

 

What personal traits have you carried over from your playing days to your business, and how have these helped you to succeed?

 

“I think my energy, I always quite an energetic person and a friendly and happy person. That seemed to work for me on the rugby field, because it helps you enjoy everything that you do, so I’d say that. I’d also say i’m quite resilient and competitive, I think that’s definitely carried over. I do miss that very big Saturday buzz that you get and the instant reward you get. It happens a bit slower in business, but also you don’t have the papers and 80,000 people telling you how bad you played, so there’s both sides of the scale. I think my thirst for knowledge also, with rugby you’re always searching for the edge and always trying to better yourself and I think I have carried that over. There are so many businesses, concepts, models, so I’m in that stage of learning again.”

 

Did you find the transition to business easy? Compared to sport business can be quite a lonely place, was that difficult for you?

 

“I initially found it quite daunting because you know you’re coming from a completely different environment, and when I focused on the academic side of business it was very daunting, because it’s all new. It isn’t until you go into a business and you listen to them with their acronyms, their PLNs and their different spreadsheets (you realise how complex it is) but when you get down to the bottom level, the fundamental driving level, it’s all about people.”

 

So you can still draw similar team spirit, from a business team?

 

“Yes, definitely. I’m very lucky because I go into companies and get to work with their teams, so I get my fulfilment of new people and interacting. I’ve also got the company I work for which is quite an interactive team, we come together four times a year so we do a lot of idea sharing, so that’s where I get the camaraderie side of things.”

 

But do you miss playing rugby?

 

“Oh I miss it terribly. I miss the boys, I miss the training and I miss the preparation. What I don’t miss is the waking up like I’ve been in a car crash on a Sunday morning. I can now play football on a Sunday with my eight year old – it was about Tuesday before I could run about in the garden (after playing rugby).”

 

You’ve created your cafe chain Jika Jika – are you splitting your time between that and coaching right now?

 

“I like to pop in, be on the ground and meet people. Now Matt (Stevens) is in France at the moment I have a bit more input, but I tend to work on the people side of things whereas I let him deal with the numbers and day-to-day stuff.”

 

What are your plans for the next five years, for the coaching and Jika Jika?

 

“For the next five years at Jika Jika I think we’re going to grow, head towards London a bit more, but keep our base in Bath. I just want to get coaching as many people as possible. Sport has dragged me back in already. Initially I went well away from sport, but i’ve started doing some work with the Premier League in football and hopefully I’ll have a boot in both camps (business and sports) I try to practice what I preach, I have to do a bit of learning and it has to be helping people.”

 

So would you say you have an outlined five year end strategy of sorts? 

 

“Obviously I want to spend as much time with my family, so when I sat down and took a job it was about being around for those guys. I’ve still got a couple of bucket list things, I want to learn a language. I’m thinking French or Italian. My wife has an Italian background and I spent the 2007 World Cup in France, and with a lot of the rugby boys obviously playing over there. So I’d say my plan is to grow what I’m doing at the moment, but there are a few bucket list things in there.

 

Lastly we have to ask, the rugby World Cup – what are your thoughts? Was one of the factors of England’s exit not becoming a team perhaps? 

 

I think Stuart (Lancaster) has done well culturally to bring them together. When you’re not in the camp it feels as though you’re criticising from the outside, but it’s only your perception.  But I was involved in 2011 when we lost in the quarter finals to France, and we played a new centre partnership. Wilko (Jonny Wilkinson) was the man. Toby Flood was playing well, Jonny was having a bit of trouble kicking the balls and we wanted him in the team, but we also wanted Floody, so we basically decided to test the new partnership which had never played before in a World Cup quarter final and we came on the losing end to France. I think that sort of happened with England a little bit (in this World Cup) in that we were forced into using new combinations and at that level, in that pool that we were in, you couldn’t throw a game away and unfortunately we did. The boys will be hurting because the country has done such a good job – you saw how well we were in the Olympics, sport for England has been superb, but it’s been through no lack of effort.