copyright: TETE (Tomasz Tomaszewski)
PART 1
WO: You run a profitable education and sports business. How did you start?
Michał: We were always interested in sports and very active. We practiced sports together. Everyone in our company was somehow active in sports.
Kuba: It’s important to stress that everyone we work with was very active in sports. People who run the school and manage our projects were all very active in top-level sports for at least ten years.
WO: Is your business not a bit like sports?
Szymon: I think the two are very much alike, mainly in terms of cooperation. At the Gortat School we are a group of individuals who would not be able to do certain things on their own. Because all of us have been involved in sports since early childhood, we know how to cooperate. In every business, just like in sports, we have successes and failures, and when these failures occur, when we fall, we need to know how to get up and go on. Resistance to stress is key, and you can easily compare the value of this ability in everyday life, either in business and in sports. When the game starts it’s easy to play well or make difficult moves on the playfield. But when each time scores 23 or there is a tie break, when the end of the game is close, stress levels are obviously much higher. If you learn how to deal with this in sports, during many games and practices, it’s easier to capitalize on this experience in your personal life and in business.
WO: What sports do you teach at the School? I know that the list is long…
Michał: We have football, basketball, volleyball, hockey, figure skating, handball, rugby. Only yesterday we struck a deal, and now in Kraków and Łódź we will try to introduce American football. We’ve been also actively developing curling. As for individual sports, we have judo, karate, badminton, muay thai in Kraków, tennis and table tennis, cycling, horse riding, and water polo.
WO: So, you have both individual and team sports. What does each type of discipline –individual and team one – teach players?
Kuba: Both teach persistence, I think. How to fight and win with yourself, plus the responsibility for the final result.
Szymon: The differences between the two are mostly about team work, which we think is of key importance. Still, those who practice individual sports also work in teams, they have team competitions in cycling, badminton. There are games and tournaments between clubs, where individual results affect the final outcome of the whole team in the competition.
Kuba: On a team, with a bit of luck, you can somehow hide a player who is in poorer shape that particular day, like one of eleven footballers (not the goalie, though), or one of five basketballers. It can be done, you can always pull a weaker player out of the game or replace them. In tennis this is not an option.
WO: What in your view is a guarantee of success? Personally, I think you can only identify elements which contribute to success but there are no guarantees. The only thing you may know for sure is failure, and the rest has to be earned.
Kuba: We could easily show you ten players from Łódź who played basketball over the last twenty years and had much more talent for the game than Marcin Gortat. But Marcin is the one who plays for the NBA, not them. There were players who had the same physical capabilities but this changed nothing because they did not have his work ethic.
Michał: Success is built on character, physical capabilities, psychological strength…and some luck.
copyright: M. Blachon
copyright: M. Blachon
PERSISTENCE, QUICK WINS AND PLANNING
WO: A quick win or persistence – what counts more in sports? Can this experience be used in business settings?
Szymon: Persistence, definitely, just like in life. What does a quick win actually give? Quite often people would stop striving to be the best once they’ve become successful. In my opinion, you can only build yourself and your future thanks to hard and long-term work. This is relevant for sports and for business as well. Nothing of short-term will bring success because it will be over here and now. Our goal is to build a person through sports. So, long-term work is key.
Kuba: I think becoming successful quickly is OK, there is nothing wrong in it, but it’s always harder to keep your championship than to win the title for the first time. Your success may come quickly, but then, in the next season or year, you will only be able to repeat that success if you work hard. A quick win happens only once, and in order to repeat it you need to invest a lot of effort.
Michał: Definitely persistence. Our record of experience shows that you need to work hard, and if success comes your way you are very satisfied. Nothing is given forever or taken for granted, whether in sports and in business. There are always ups and downs, so we work hard, and then those successes will last longer.
Tomek: It’s a lot of fun because in many ways it’s all about pure statistics. With art or music things are very subjective; someone might say Kraftwerk is the best, someone else would prefer Guns’n’Roses. But in basketball it’s all about pure statistics. If you score thirty points in the top league you’ll attract the attention of foreign teams. You can like or dislike a player, his ego or his behavior on the court but if he scores thirty points every night then he is the best, period.
WO: In business more and more people would say that “shots from the hip” do work. But still there is some “strong excel work” behind them. A balanced business, with stable income, can guarantee a safe market position and steady growth. I get the impression that in sports you have many opportunities to test the value of persistence versus quick wins.
Szymon: You can really see that at our school. We only admit those who are the best in the city of Łódź or in the region. The basketball team that we’ve been building is made up of players who fare the best at the school or in regional championships. They win all the games but things get less rosy when they go to play in other places across Poland. We teach our “Gortats” that short-term successes don’t really matter. This is a key task for the coach. It’s the coach who shows them that a high school game, even with a one hundred to twenty win, means nothing if they lose a game at the regional level. For us this is a really important value. Our coaches teach young players who are about to graduate and start their adventure in business that things won’t always be rosy and wonderful.
Sometimes we do come across students with an overinflated ego; they often come from small towns where they were true local stars and for a couple of years literally everything went their way. Then, they join a team made up of twelve other kids just like them. Some deal with this well, others don’t, and some go back to their local communities because being a star is what counts most for them. This is particularly true for young teams; we try to teach players that they won’t always be stars.
WO: And what motivates them – a success or a failure?
Michał: The failure, definitely the failure. If something does not go well in sports or in business it will stick in your mind and will push you to look for solutions. You get angry that things are not going according to the plan, as they should. Sometimes you find the reason for this setback in yourself, and sometimes in others. You ponder how it’s possible that despite so many discussions and suggestions your employees still don’t follow the rules. You start wondering whether they are the problem, or… maybe you are the problem. In sports it’s exactly the same; you try hard, you win on the playfield, but you see that others on the team take a totally different approach. Is this the reason for the defeat? You’d simply look for solutions. If there is only success, your business is growing, the team keeps winning, your senses are dulled, your responses slow down, and you are no longer ready for analysis or for growth.
Kuba: If the defeat does not drive you, you are not a true athlete. Success is not something that can be achieved overnight. If you get broken by your failure, you will never succeed.
WO: There are athletes who would say that it’s not about how many times you fall, but rather that you rise up this one extra time…
Kuba: People work all the season to win the league championship or to be promoted to a higher level in the tournament. I remember when our basketball team was fighting to advance from one level to the next, and once they got it they played and fought again, to go even higher. They got success but it only lasted a couple of minutes. Chemical reactions kicked in, everyone was euphoric, but two hours later emotions were gone.
WO: So how would you motivate a team that has won everything, that’s the best? Is it ever possible, in sports, to feel that you are the best and that’s it? Or is it natural to look for new challenges all the time?
Kuba: You look for new challenges. Do you know any team that has achieved everything?
Michał: You can find many cases like that in professional sports, in basketball or in football. It seemed that Real Madrid achieved everything that was up for grabs, that they won all the prizes. Nothing on the team actually changed, the club worked as usual, but all of a sudden they started losing. They dropped out, they lost twenty points, even though nothing special happened. In sports nothing can be taken for granted, nothing is given forever.
Tomek: This is all so complex… The core of the team is the same, but one player leaves, a new one comes in, and the chemistry between the players will change: the team as a whole is ruined. Every member of the team is a professional, top of the top, the best in his class, but suddenly something starts going wrong. Another example is when a player gets injured and suddenly the whole team has a problem, even though they are all champions. Isn’t it the same in business?
CPART 2
copyright: M. Blachon
WO: What have you learnt from sports? What lessons do you use as leaders in your business, as team members or in your personal lives?
Kuba: I’ve learned how to live with stress. I started practicing sports at a very late age, so I was always a newcomer who had to learn a lot. When I managed to catch up and made my way through it, I moved on to stronger teams, and the story would repeat itself. It was very stressful. I had to cope with this all on my own, learn to tackle the situation my own way. I started off as a non-athlete, and after two years I was at the senior level. It was never easy, and it was a really big deal. I learned that in a work environment there are figures of authority and you simply have to listen to them. It’s obvious that you need to listen to the coach and believe his words; it’s a basic rule to follow. I learned that every day someone could be critical of me. The coach is not there to be nice, he is there to make things work better. It took me a while to handle criticism well, but I got used to the fact that every day I could hear some critical feedback, and I needed to draw conclusions from such assessment. The last thing I learned was that from the moment I became an athlete my day would no longer look like it did before. All my friends from the high school were done with school at 2 p.m. and had lots of free time. My days were very different: school, practice, games, sometimes with travel to other locations. All this taught me to use my time to the full, every single day. There is no such thing as 8-hour days on the job – you need to work as long as it takes to get everything done. Sometimes this means from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m., sometimes just from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Tomek: Sports give you self-confidence that makes you stand out. Sometimes genes do help. For example, if you’re tall you will stand out at a business meeting. I owe my whole life to basketball. There were two things that influenced my career: my English skills and basketball. Ever since I was a young boy my father took me to practice skating, swimming. I played tennis, but it was basketball that stole my heart from day one. I started practicing and playing right away. I also stood out at school. Athletes are usually very much liked, so if you do sports in elementary school and next in high school, and you win games for the school, people like you and admire you, you become popular. You practice a lot so you look good and you’re popular with girls. All this builds self-confidence, and it’s great. You also learn to take care of your belongings as sport equipment is quite expensive. You appreciate the fact that your mother takes you shopping to buy an expensive pair of sports shoes. They cost half her monthly salary, so you take good care of them.
Szymon: First of all, sports taught me to cooperate; in particular team sports will teach this, and I’ve been playing volleyball all my life. Second of all, sports teach you to be on time. Every time someone was late for a practice or for a local game he got a series of penalty throws. If the team was traveling to a game and someone was late, the coach would decide to leave without them. So, if someone was not on time once they learned the consequences and were never late again. Another thing – although I am not sure whether this is key – I learned personal hygiene. Some people are taught this at home, others aren’t. Some players didn’t take a shower after the practice. They got one warning: they were told “please bring a towel next time”. If they didn’t, they had to take a shower in their clothes, and that’s how they learned. So, in general, yes, playing sports teaches many things.
WO: What’s in your view behind the statement that practicing sports “teaches” you something?
Szymon: Practicing sports teaches discipline, humility, and, from a very early age, how to win and lose. When I started playing at the age 13 I learned that when you lose you can’t break down, you need to get up and go on, get back to practicing and keep working.
WO: At some point, each one of you was more or less a professional athlete. One of the basic questions I ask myself in business is what makes people go on. So, what motivated you to want more?
Szymon: There is one thing my wife doesn’t understand to this day – this concept of competing and wanting to win, which drove me from the very start. I finished my career as a professional athlete and moved on to non-professional sports but still, whenever I am on the playfield, I want to win. My wife still doesn’t understand that I want to get up at 7.00 a.m. on Saturday, because I have a game at 9.00 a.m. and I need to get there on time, play and win. I want to win!
Kuba: Rivalry, competition. First, we competed with each other: one-on-one, three-on-three, five-on-five. In jogging you compete with yourself. Athletes who have had great and successful careers usually go on to compete in casinos. It’s better to be active in the amateur league than playing casino games, with our salaries…
Tomek: When I was a young player I used to think that I would play top level, in the NBA. I was sure that this was going to happen. In the end it didn’t but now I work quite closely with the NBA, which gives me a lot of satisfaction. This also means that I still move around, I feel like I have done something, made a change. I come back from a practice and say: “Things are good, I did some jogging, and nothing bad happened”. I used my time well, my outlook on life has changed. Competing makes you feel like you are doing something good for yourself.
Michał: We felt this and now I see that other players at our school feel the same. When our students are sick, parents will call to excuse their absence, but if there is a game the following day they will show up, no matter what. This sense of competition, the possibility of watching a game even from the benches, makes them want to go on. Practicing without the possibility of playing and competing would not be the same…
WO: So, passion is not everything. It’s also the pleasure of winning and the drive to win that makes you get up early and practice?
Kuba: Winning takes character. People who fear competition don’t go into sports.
WO: What is the role of sports in organizing your life as a whole?
Szymon: It’s a very important role because sports help organize life both in the case of young and older players, who have already discovered what sports can give them. Without the values that you learn through sports – for example, getting up at 7 a.m. regularly for practice – you can’t do well in your adult life, when you need to get up for work in the morning. I think if you learn the basics of humility in junior-level sports it’s much easier to succeed in sports at a more senior level.
PART 3
copyright: M. Blachon
WO: I once heard a well-known athlete say: “If you need to convince your child to go for a practice, if you have to wake them up, help them get dressed and so on, they will never be an athlete. Let it go and focus on something else.”
Kuba: I was a teen and all I could think of at 2 p.m. was that I had a practice at 6 p.m.
Szymon: Practice was the most important part of the day.
Tomek: I remember senior years in my high school. It was the hardest time for me. I was at school until 3 p.m., then I went to a very advanced English-language course, which lasted until 7.30 p.m., and after that I had a team practice from 8 p.m. till 10 p.m. This is how my days looked like four times a week, and then I had the game every weekend. At the time it was no big money, other students did lots of things in their free time, and I was busy four times a week, until 10 p.m. Weekend games, which often involved travel, ruined my weekends. This went on for years. Money is a benefit that you can wait and hope for if you do well, but it doesn’t come all on its own from the very start.
WO: Let’s talk about a sports team and the way it is organized. How do you build your teams? Do some of you watch young people during practice. Do you check the performance of the class and the team against the class, and next evaluate players and define their role on the team? Do you know any formula for success or do you rely on your intuition when building a football team, or any other squad?
Kuba: The first thing we’d look at is involvement, engagement, and the willingness to work; this is ninety percent of what a successful team is about. Having a star on the team is not that important. What you need is a group of people who are built to work hard. Success is when you have a mix of people who work hard but are also predisposed to being team players, who do function well on a team.
Michał: We follow the developments in the sports market very closely, as you do in any other business. We know where we are. We support collaboration with partners and sports clubs. Because we have our own idea of sports clubs that we would like to work with we may take a lot of risk sometimes. We realize that collaboration will not always be easy, but we do work to find solutions to show our partners what benefits they can get from working with us.
Failures do happen sometimes, and we need to part our ways with some clubs we have worked with. So we look for new partners, like in any type of business. We relay our philosophy: we tell people how we want to build the school to make sure it will work to its best, what counts to us and what our values are. We tell them that we don’t run a factory but an institution which works with young people, with kids. We don’t want to partner with those who don’t look at things the same way we do. Unfortunately, in the world of sports there are still lots of people who would only look at grants to be won and points to be scored to get more money in the end. We want to have a team which may not necessarily score as the best in some areas but is built from scratch, according to our standards and beliefs rather than in line with the wants of someone else. We have a very consistent vision of what sports should be like at the Gortat Schools, and we try to stick to our rules when recruiting clubs and people. There are values behind what we do.
WO: People believe that in extreme settings, like the army, the Navy Seals, team members should be think as follows: first the mission, next the team, and my ego comes last. Do you also think that way? Do you believe that thinking within a team, in this order of priorities, is the best way to go? First the mission, then the team, finally the ego?
Kuba: The order that you’ve mentioned is great, of course. I think we do it exactly this way, intuitively. No one on our team has a huge ego. No one would put themselves first, before the mission or the team, we’ve never had such issues. I think we’ve implemented this model precisely because we all think that way, and we try to prioritize our values in this particular order.
Tomek: We go back to the basics because we’re athletes, and sports are like the army. The mission, the team, and the ego at the end. If someone is unable to be a team player, they can play table tennis or practice martial arts instead.
Kuba: Someone have organized things smartly, and this way of doing things suits us very well.
WO: What about new players? What’s the role of other team members and the coach in recruiting new people? You all say that the team is important: one person disappears from Real Madrid and there will be no more championship, and no one knows why the dynamic has changed. How do you build new teams?
Szymon: It’s often intuitive.
Kuba: I think we are not a typical business with standard recruitment; we don’t advertise and look for employees. We’ve built the company based on a group of people that we’d known for years.
We spoked as a team:
Michał Feter – principal of the Gortat School in Łódź for the last 4 years. Previously, for 10 years Michał worked as a coach and management advisor (including project management), and was responsible for prospecting external funding for projects, evaluation, and coach competencies. He is the author of over 200 grant projects. From an early age he has been fascinated by sports. Spain is his hobby.
Szymon Nowak – occupational therapist, teacher and publicist by education, who has been active in volleyball for his whole life. He loves working with people and for people. Before joining the Gortat School he worked for the Dziewczynka z Zapałkami and JiM Foundations. At the School he is responsible for marketing and for the development of the volleyball project. Coordinator of the Gortat School Business Club. He does what he loves by working in sports.
Tomasz Solarek – graduate of the University of Łódź with a degree in English. He used to play basketball for the ŁKS sports club and the University of Łódź, and worked for 7 years for the Marcin Gortat MG13 Foundation, where he was responsible for coordinating the Marcin Gortat Camp project. At present, he works for the Gortat School and the Gortat School Business Club. He is responsible for collaboration with American colleges to prospect sports scholarships in the U.S. for Gortat School students.
Jakub Urbanowicz – graduate of the Łódź University of Technology with a degree in Management. He used to play basketball for the ŁKS sports club and the Łódź University of Technology. He is responsible for the development of Marcin Gortat Schools in Łódź, Kraków, Poznań, and Gdańsk. Co-creator of the Gortat School Business Club. President of the ŁKS Male Basketball Association.
Waldek Olbryk – Believer in the development of organizational culture by working on aspects which may have a shaping effect, based on the client’s and the user’s perspectives. He believes in the “life-long learning” concept. He loves the P2P (People2People) approach in all business-related areas, even in traditional B2B (business2business). He is open to exchanges between cultures and industries.
Passion2Value The concept of conversations and projects based on the combination of passions and values from various fields. By working in a specific setting, exercising or developing your passions, e.g. in sports or music, based on broader knowledge and skills from other disciplines, you can learn something as an academic discipline. You can create valuable things and enjoy yourself at the same time.
