Business and financial lessons can be found in the most unlikely of places. This series will explore some of those places. Whether it is through a rereading of Harry Potter (no, twelve times is not enough), a Drew Carey show marathon, or a nonfiction book about plants, by remaining open to the possibility of learning from the things and people around you, you can expand your knowledge and improve your business practices.
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You never know where the next big insight might be found. It might be found in the details of a book giving you that slight bit of insight that can blossom into the next big idea.
Even Harry Potter can be a source of inspiration or to show that team structure and team building can be applied to company strategies.
The Game
In order to fully understand the example of quidditch as a business lesson, I will first explain the game in its most rudimentary form in case you either never read the books (like one of the authors of this blog) or have not seen the movies ever/ recently (like the aforementioned heathen that also contributes to this blog). The author also forgets that said heathen edits the blog for business content.
In the game of quidditch, there are three types of balls: the quaffle, the bludger, and the snitch. Each ball has a specific role in the game. Points are scored with the quaffle. The bludgers are magic balls that try to give concussions to teenagers, and the snitch is a tiny ball that speeds around and must be caught to end the game.
Now for the players. There are chasers who chase the quaffle to score points. The beaters who beat the bludgers away from delicate craniums with bats, and the seekers who seek the snitch to end the game.
The Business Application
Now for the business application. Chasers are your salesmen/ lead generators. They “chase” the opportunities to improve the business. The points they score help the bottom line or generate revenue. The facilitated transaction provides the best support and caters to the client to achieve a point. The team that fills that obligation will score a point or sale. They are typically the largest percentage of your workforce. To quote an article Without Sales There is No Business, without your sales team scoring points, there is no reason to have the other staff.
The beaters are your legal team/ policy writers. They “beat” away the issues that arise in the company- the big issues that have the potential to concuss the company and send it falling off its broom to the very hard ground below. Some examples of these issues that can derail a company are putting limitations on rewards programs to combat abuse and keeping employees from possible dangerous situations in safety first organizations.
The seekers are your competitive advantage/ business to business contracts. They are what take your business to the next level. They are your biggest customers; these are usually a subset of your customer base. The 20 percent make up 80 percent of your revenue. You probably see these rules as the Pareto Principle which is a very common business insight gained through very important research. Investopedia has a great article on this rule called 80-20 rule. These specialists are here to use the target ability to obtain and maintain these clients without falling.
There are many more business lessons to be explored in the 1,000s of pages of the Harry Potter series as well as numerous other forms of media. Have a book/ tv show/ movie that you want us to pull some business principles from? Let us know in the comments.
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