"I've done the same thing in the world of business that winners do in the game. I watch them, admire them"
About this Quote
Marcel Dionne draws a straight line from the ice to the boardroom: winners succeed by studying winners. The verbs matter. To watch is to analyze, to break down timing, positioning, habits, and decisions. To admire is to suspend envy long enough to let another person’s excellence teach you. It is a humble, practical stance that turns greatness into a curriculum rather than a threat.
Elite athletes live by this. Film sessions are not passive; they are laboratories where small edges are discovered. A scorer like Dionne knew the value of seeing how the best prepared, recovered, and read the flow of a game. The lesson transfers cleanly to business. Market leaders and master operators leave patterns in plain sight: how they structure incentives, craft offers, set standards, and treat people. Studying them is not mimicry for its own sake; it is a way to compress learning curves and avoid paying full price for every mistake.
Admiration here functions as fuel and filter. Jealousy narrows attention to status. Admiration widens attention to process. It asks what routines, constraints, and choices produced those outcomes, and how they can be adapted to a different team, market, or temperament. That word adapted is essential. Dionne’s phrasing rejects cargo-cult copying. Winners do not photocopy; they translate. They take a practice that works under one set of conditions and refit it to their own realities.
The comment also nudges against the myth of the solitary genius. Even a Hall of Fame center became great by apprenticing himself to the craft, first through watching veterans and rivals, later by observing top performers in commerce when he built his post-hockey ventures. The deeper message is a posture toward excellence: keep your eyes open, keep your ego light, and let respect do the heavy lifting. Success becomes less a stroke of inspiration and more a continuous act of attentive learning.
Elite athletes live by this. Film sessions are not passive; they are laboratories where small edges are discovered. A scorer like Dionne knew the value of seeing how the best prepared, recovered, and read the flow of a game. The lesson transfers cleanly to business. Market leaders and master operators leave patterns in plain sight: how they structure incentives, craft offers, set standards, and treat people. Studying them is not mimicry for its own sake; it is a way to compress learning curves and avoid paying full price for every mistake.
Admiration here functions as fuel and filter. Jealousy narrows attention to status. Admiration widens attention to process. It asks what routines, constraints, and choices produced those outcomes, and how they can be adapted to a different team, market, or temperament. That word adapted is essential. Dionne’s phrasing rejects cargo-cult copying. Winners do not photocopy; they translate. They take a practice that works under one set of conditions and refit it to their own realities.
The comment also nudges against the myth of the solitary genius. Even a Hall of Fame center became great by apprenticing himself to the craft, first through watching veterans and rivals, later by observing top performers in commerce when he built his post-hockey ventures. The deeper message is a posture toward excellence: keep your eyes open, keep your ego light, and let respect do the heavy lifting. Success becomes less a stroke of inspiration and more a continuous act of attentive learning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
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