When we wrote Business the NHL Way, our aim was to take insights from a successful global sports league and make them available to everyone, from industry executives to aspiring professionals. We wanted to share stories that might reveal optimal ways to grow a business or accelerate a career—all inspired by the fastest game on ice.
We understand that every industry is different and faces its own unique challenges, but we are convinced that hockey offers important lessons for any organization. Which leads us to ask, can a book about the business of hockey offer anything to the harried world of book publishing? At a time when consolidation by some of the biggest players in the industry is making it harder for the smaller ones, we think that publishers can certainly draw useful strategies from the world of hockey.
So, we offer our list of 10 things the publishing industry can learn from the NHL, from our new book, Business the NHL Way: Lessons from the Fastest Game on Ice, set to be published by the University of Toronto Press this October.
1. In a professional sports league like the NHL, the “game” takes place in a public setting. Publishers, like NHL players, live under a distinct microscope where results matter. Everyone in the publishing business has to “skate” as if every shift matters. In hockey, there is no “coasting” because every shift determines whether your team is successful.
2. Hockey is fast. Embrace the truism that speed is good. If your organization is not committed to timely contract negotiations, author engagement, accelerated delivery times, and easy-to-read copy, you’ll give up goals and lose.
3. Business may be fast—but it is also constantly changing. So is publishing these days. Self-publishing, audiobooks, digital delivery methods, and print-on-demand are part of this industry’s ongoing evolution. Readers are changing as well, and that means the game belongs to the proactive publishers who embrace change.
4. Hockey at the NHL level has historically been slow to respond to societal changes, much like the publishing world. However, contemporary responses by both entities make it clear that diversity, inclusivity, equity, and adaptability are key.
5. Fights happen in hockey just as they occur with publishing administrators, demanding authors, paranoid agents, and penny-conscious accountants. The difference is that in the NHL, the combatants draw penalties. Publishers don’t have time for five-minute major misconducts, but they do have to manage workplace conflict in ways that will keep the team from losing momentum and the day.
6. Coaching matters. The bottom line is this: good coaches develop frontline players. If your organization can’t identify the best “coaches” among its ranks, then the executive team is not doing its job. Players need coaches and coaches make a significant difference when it comes to winning and losing.
7. Captains matter. Captains are hugely important to the success of a club, and, in publishing, it is no different. In every department, on every floor, there are people who skate the extra shift, who inspire the fatigued, who protect/defend the ones getting bullied and ensure that projects get done on time, the right way. Many “captains” never seek the limelight, they seek only the success of the project. For a publisher, the delivery of that new author, the printing of a book on time, the sales success of a book—well, that might be because a champion stood tall as a team captain.
8. Team chemistry is real. Morale, camaraderie, team cohesion, and commitment to the goal are mandatory. If a publishing company’s team chemistry is poor, the results will reveal themselves on the printed page and, more dramatically, on the sales ledgers.
9. It is a constant and well known by all, but financial success today sets the foundation for sustainability and future success. As Business the NHL Way clearly reveals, the NHL has enjoyed incredible fiscal growth for three decades and last year set an all-time revenue record. Great teams, and the Tampa Bay Lightning and Colorado Avalanche certainly fall into that category, do the same. Winning, at every level, leads to more winning. In publishing, we need to embrace fiscal victories.
10. The reason people play hockey is because it’s fun. At the elite level, it is a job and a very serious one. But its roots, its DNA, are wrapped in the joy of sport, competition, teamwork, and comradery. For publishers, launching a new author or reaching a new audience of readers should deliver that same core enthusiasm for the “game.” We won’t suggest publishing can/should be treated as a game, but we do imagine winning is a lot more fun than losing.
Norm O’Reilly is dean of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Maine, and Rick Burton is professor of sport management at Syracuse University in New York.
