by Ronald Bukusi
The book provides a scoped overview of global sporting as a context to understanding the competence of “winning”. Winning is a super-stride skill essential to survival, personal achievement and overcoming real life challenges. In his book Ronald presents Winning as a functional competence that can be developed, adopted and taught at all ages without gender, social or philosophical barriers. The book could be subtitled, “the Art of winning” aligning it with “the Art of war” and Robert Greene’s “mastery texts”. This will place the book into a larger readership space and allow it to be a comfortable reference away from its strong rugby title. Its principles are universal with sport simply providing a framework for discussion. The author takes the reader on a global tour from New Zealand to the heartland of Chicago Sirens. He travels with us on sports trips from the Home of Champions in Kenya to Malaysia, Wales and Argentina to traverse the Olympics, World Cups and enjoy dinners in corporate boardrooms of winning strategy formulation around the world. It is well worth the trip. If you are a player, coach, mentor or just sliding through life - get yourself a copy of this book!
Messaging
There
are five ideal places to quit; before the race, at the beginning of the
race, in the middle of the race, at the end of the race and after the race.
However, Winners never quit, they keep coming back - This statement summarizes the
books message. Its global referencing is used to bring home this point time and
again. The second message is “There are
no short cuts to winning… Being a winner takes time and by that I mean years!”.
The winning time frame in the book is called out in years, decades and in one case almost a century. Third, winning is about both
process and practice. The emphasis on technical process is not passed over,
but registers as core to the winning psyche. You’ve got to look at the numbers
(stats) to measure performance and progress in order to get better at what you
do and succeed. The only person who can write off a winner is the winner. Winning is a game of life. Paradoxical as it may seem, we
all determine how we want to turnout in life. Don’t worry. You will be broad-sided by economic down turn, COVID, sickness... you name it! It will come some day… The
way I see it, you have two choices; back off, back down and give up or back up, dust yourself off, retool
and reboot your engines! Simply put there are no guarantees for
anything you do. In life failure is an option and mistakes are part of the journey, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying. Just keep doing what you need to do to get better and up your game.
The book provides a blueprint for organization, order, growth, development, change and challenge in
all spheres of life.
Critique
I would have
liked to hear a little bit more about professionalism and the sports ecosystem
as environmental support structures to managing success and winning. There are
also a few “repeat passages” that might have been competently dealt with in one
section. Some concepts like “fundamentals”, “functionality” and “does pay equal
performance?” probably deserved more acreage. The interviews are great and
inclusive, but we would have liked to hear more of the authors understanding,
trials and interpretations. Some passages need reference listing like Donald
Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns. Nonetheless, with 100 pages to deliver the message
of winning, one may not have done better. The back cover needs some glinting. It
is too local for the books global appeal. The authors picture could be more
charismatic. The front cover should be about getting attention the first time
it is lifted off the shelf. The back cover should not let a reader put the book down.
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