The World Cup is upon us and as a lifelong soccer fan and player, I reflected on a few insights that the soccer game taught me that can be applied to small and large businesses.

1. Embrace and live your culture

I started playing soccer when I was 5. We practiced twice a week and played each Saturday. Raised in Germany, our practice consisted of 90 minutes running and 30 minute playing time. Fairly insane when you think about it: forcing 5-year-olds to run for 90 minutes through the forest or doing laps after laps. But that’s the German culture for you. We were no masters on the ball but my team could outrun anyone. We won 90% of our games in the last 10 minutes because we never tired. (I hope there’s more balance in today’s practices in Germany, though)

Each country has a specific soccer culture: the playfulness of Brazil, the physical intimidation of England, the defensive discipline of Italy, the exuberance of African teams. While you need to embrace and live your culture to be successful, you shouldn’t fall in love with it and be always open to change. Brazil wasn’t a dominant force in the 70’s and 80’s because they focused too much on playfulness and not enough on execution. Once they added execution into the mix, matches and World Cup’s were won again.

2.) Hire entrepreneurs

Most soccer coaches last only for a few years. It’s a tough job to gather all your players from clubs all over the world, fight internal bureaucracies and deal with the press. Coaches, just like players, are superstars. They have to take huge risks in order to succeed and most of them fail. Just to rise on some other bench to try it again.

Soccer is a team sport but individual decisions make or break a team. The collective approach to soccer will always fail. Both coach and player are entrepreneurs, and the more creativity they display, the more leeway they are given. Coach and players have two different tools of influence to impact the outcome of the game.

The coach can create a cohesive, yet competitive culture that rewards creativity and innovation, build team spirit and nurture team culture. He has strategic tools at his hand (formations, substitutions, etc.) but his input won’t lead to innovation or moving the game to a new level.

This is done by 22 feet of 11 individual players. Players innovate on a daily basis to get a small but significant competitive advantage. They need to surprise other players with new ways of dribbling, moving, passing and reacting. The coach is there to create the right environment for players to innovate. Daily. With every move.

3.) Dramatic innovation is rare. Daily innovation a must.

As a soccer aficionado, it’s very interesting to watch games from the past and compare them to today’s sport. The game was much slower, formations not as fluid as they are today and positions have been redefined over the years. But, what’s even more intriguing is that these changes take years to really come to life. Franz Beckenbauer perfected the position of “Libero”, the “sweeper” before the goal-keeper, freeing him from marking a direct opponent. (Rather revolutionary, if you think about it: Instead of marking a person, you’re defending a zone.) He played his first World Cup in 1966, not really filling the position of Libero yet. In 1970, he showed massive improvements on this new style of play but it took him until 1974, when he crowned his career with a World Cup win and a performance that showcased his evolution from support player to innovator.

Innovation didn’t happen in one game. It happened over more than a decade. And influenced generations to come.

4.) Don’t blame technology. Don’t worship technology. Just use it.

Each time the World Cup comes around, there’s a lot of talk about the new ball. Some people fear it, some embrace it. Most players don’t care. The ball is just a tool they use to accomplish a task. Because it’s new, players will have to find the challenges/dead spots when handling or shooting it. Introducing a new ball right ahead of the biggest sporting event seems wrong. But it is a great way to determine the best playing team and the team that answered this challenge with a strong creative approach. There’s nothing to fear. And a lot to explore.

5.) Play. Hard.

I could write about the beauty of soccer, get all poetic and philosophical. But the real beauty of this sport is that’s it’s still a game. When players have a creative thought, they can implement this idea immediately. And fail. Or succeed. At the heart of American Football is strategy. Creativity is not rewarded. At the heart of soccer is creativity. (Based on a foundation of technical excellence, supreme conditioning and mental toughness.)

Tomorrow the World Cup begins. A clean slate. For all we know, North Korea might win it this time. Or South Africa. History exists only in the books and in our heads. On the grass, there’s no history. Just opportunity. Possibilities. The best playing team will win the tournament.

And, that’s the most important lesson soccer can teach business: Business is a game that reinvents itself each and every day. The basic rules remain the same, your team defines how to play with these rules creatively. As an executive, it’s your responsibility to assemble the best players, to lay down the rules and develop plans. At the end of the day, the players have to play to move your business. Let them play. And enjoy each moment of it.

Three years ago, an online conversation between Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton resulted in a collaborative writing effort by more than 100 bloggers from nine countries, titled The Age of Conversation. Today, 171 writers (I’m one of them) are proudly announcing the release of The Age of Conversation 3 – It’s time to get busy.

Age of Conversation 3 embodies the dramatic shift from Social Media as a hypothesis to its current state as an integral marketing tactic and the trickling-down into boardrooms, enterprises and governments. The 10 sections of the book speak to the pervasiveness of social into our daily work and life: At the Coalface; Identities; Friends and Trusted Strangers; Conversational Branding; Measurement; Corporate Conversations (my chapter talks about this topic); In the Boardroom; Innovation and Execution; Influence; Getting to Work; and Pitching Social Media.

As always, all proceeds of the third edition will be donated to a charity. Which should make it even easier for you to consider the purchase as a Kindle e-Book, Hardcover or Paperback.

You can meet all 171 authors here. And consider following them on Twitter.

Congrats to everyone for their hard work. And a big THANK YOU! to Drew and Gavin.

Consumer Reports just released their State of the Net survey and it underscores the privacy hazards associated with Social Networking:

• 40% had posted their full birth date, exposing them to identity theft
• Around 25% of users are not aware of or choose not to use the privacy controls

Compare that to the increased chatter about Facebook’s eroding privacy policy, people deleting their Facebook account, trying to find alternatives. (Reading about Mark Zuckerberg’s pranks doesn’t help their case either.)

Facebook has slowly removed the protective walls that made all of us trust them in the first place. It’s not inherently negative that people share their lives in public. There are other sites out there that are much more revealing and by default share more with the public Web. Facebook comes across as evil because they started on the other side of the privacy spectrum, just to move users slowly to the other side where all their data becomes publicly accessible. Reminds me of the movie “The Hangover”: It starts out as a nice, communal event and ends up with tigers in your bathroom. Or a cyber-predator in your credit report.

Social Plugins and Instant Personalizer, two new features just introduced by Facebook, could provide a more personal web experience. But, in their typical, sneaky way, Facebook didn’t explain the implications, people don’t really understand how it works and the majority still don’t understand how to turn the features off. Facebook’s opt-out norm is the ultimate insult to their users and clearly communicates: We don’t care about you. We care about monetizing your data.

Nothing wrong with making money. But it’s in Facebook’s best interest to provide context to aid the user’s decision: Visually represent how many other users (or types of users) might be able to access your birth date or see your kid’s photos. Do you think anyone would post their full birth date if they knew 1,453,432 other users have access to that data? Educate everybody what these users can do with your information. Give people access to their own data and let them decide what they want to do with it. Offer me an insight into the magnitude of data I created in my account and that is being shared.

I’m very certain that Facebook will implement these changes at one point. But, given their track record, it will be too late. As of May 2010, Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla. Their selfish, self-absorbed thinking will put them on a diet very soon and shrink Facebook in size to fit into the doghouse of Social Networking. At least, they have good company with the likes of Friendster, MySpace, etc.

Image: Courtesy of 8.media.tumblr.com

A NY Times article about the art of listening and the constant battle against noise caught my eye last weekend. One paragraph resonated with me:

“We have become insensitive to listening,” he said. “The most important thing you can do to become a better listener is to simply go to a naturally quiet place and allow your senses to open up again. When you become a better listener to nature, you become a better listener to your community, your children, the people you work with.”

I believed for a while that marketers get overpaid for talking and barely reimbursed for listening. It’s time to switch that model around.And, yes, many  companies are talking about listening or Social Listening. Am I the only one that feels this is just another excuse for brands to talk more?

Does anybody ever really listen anymore? Just look around at conferences, especially Social Media conferences. Is there one person really listening? Or are we all too busy talking, creating snarky tweets? How can we as an industry recommend listening as a #1 tactic for all brands to dive into Social Media while we are busy sharing our lunch place on Foursquare? Most often than not, instead of listening to what is being said to us, we are already listening to what we’re going say in response.

I think it’s time for us take a break from all the noise and signals and explore silence again. If you’ve experienced complete silence, you know it has the loudest voice. A voice we need to hear again.