A Youth Rugby Coach Just Described the $2.3 Trillion Corporate Problem in 60 Seconds

“We know that approach works,” the coach said, reviewing his team’s season. “But we’re always going to come up against teams that are better, stronger, faster, and more brutal.”

He wasn’t talking about technique. His boys had the fundamentals. What they lacked was something else entirely.

“I think next season we need to put a real focus on the mental side of the game. We need to build the boys’ internal belief and their confidence in their own potential.”

Then he named the real challenge: “The biggest obstacle is facing stronger teams in big moments — like finals. Those teams need to become just another obstacle in the way of our potential to be champions.”

His conclusion? “If we can flip the switch mentally and combine that with the fundamentals we built last year, the vision of winning competitions — and even going undefeated — becomes a lot more realistic.”

In 60 seconds, this youth rugby coach had diagnosed the exact problem that costs global corporations $2.3 trillion every year.

The Corporate Version of “Bigger, Stronger, Faster”

In the corporate world, the “bigger, stronger, faster” opponent isn’t another team. It’s the project that feels too big. The transformation that’s never been done. The deadline that seems impossible. The board presentation where failure is visible.

These aren’t capability problems. They’re confidence problems.

Global spending on digital transformation reached $2.5 trillion in 2024. According to McKinsey, BCG, and Gartner, 70% of those initiatives failed to meet their objectives. That’s $2.3 trillion that didn’t deliver — not because teams lacked knowledge or skill, but because capable people didn’t fully commit.

Why? For the same reason the coach’s boys struggle in finals: the challenge felt outside their comfort zone. They saw themselves as imposters — not ready for this moment, this opponent, this level of stakes.

The capability was there. The belief wasn’t.

The Switch That Needs Flipping

The coach instinctively understood something that most corporate leaders miss: you can’t train your way to confidence. You can’t communicate your way there either.

“Flip the switch mentally” — that’s the phrase he used. But how?

The standard corporate playbook doesn’t work. Leaders try to inspire action through vision statements, town halls, and motivational speeches. They invest in training programmes that build knowledge and capability. Then they wonder why teams still hesitate when facing the big challenges.

Here’s what they’re missing: confidence isn’t built by being told you’re capable. It’s built by seeing yourself succeed.

Psychology backs this up. Bandura’s research on self-efficacy shows that when people cannot see a believable path to success, they withdraw effort before they start. It’s not laziness. It’s a predictable human response to perceived futility.

The coach’s boys don’t need more drills. They need experiences that show them they can compete with bigger teams — and win. Each small victory against a stronger opponent rewires their self-image. The “bigger, stronger, faster” team stops being a wall and starts being just another step.

The Reframe That Changes Everything

Notice what the coach said: “Those teams need to become just another obstacle in the way of our potential.”

That’s not denial. He’s not pretending the other teams aren’t strong. He’s reframing how his boys see themselves in relation to those teams.

The same reframe applies in business. When a team faces a high-stakes transformation, the question isn’t “Is this hard?” — of course it’s hard. The question is: “Do we believe our capability can overcome this obstacle?”

When the answer is no, you get the knowing-doing gap. People know what to do. They have the skills to do it. But they don’t act with full commitment because, deep down, they don’t believe it’s achievable.

When the answer is yes — when teams see the challenge as “just another obstacle” rather than an insurmountable wall — something shifts. Effort unlocks. Creativity emerges. The switch flips.

How Leaders Flip the Switch

The coach asked the right question: “How do we train that mental side when we only have two 1-hour sessions a week?”

The answer isn’t motivation. It’s evidence.

You build confidence through incremental wins that expand what people believe is possible. Start with a challenge that’s achievable but meaningful. Let them succeed. Then stretch slightly further. Each success becomes proof: We can do this. We’re better than we thought.

At Henkel, I inherited an IT team stuck at 33% on-time delivery for ten years. They had the knowledge and capability. What they lacked was confidence — they’d failed so often that failure felt inevitable.

The fix wasn’t training. It was reframing. I showed them the structural issues causing failure, set incremental targets they believed they could hit, and let success build on success. Month one: 50%. Month two: 59%. Month three: 71%. By year end: 81%. Year two, the team set their own stretch target — 85% — and hit 91%.

Same people. Same projects. Different belief about what they could achieve.

The switch flipped not because I told them they were capable, but because they saw themselves succeeding against progressively bigger challenges. Those bigger projects stopped being walls and became — as the coach said — “just another obstacle.”

The $2.3 Trillion Opportunity

Seventy percent of transformations fail. Employee engagement has flatlined at 30% for 25 years. Project failure rates haven’t moved. The standard approaches — more communication, more training, more incentives — aren’t working.

Maybe it’s time to listen to a youth rugby coach.

The fundamentals are usually there. The approach usually works. What’s missing is the mental switch — the confidence that says “our capability can overcome this obstacle.”

Leaders who understand this stop trying to inspire action and start engineering the conditions where action becomes inevitable. They design paths that feel believable. They create wins that build evidence. They flip the switch not through words, but through experience.

A youth coach with two hours a week understood what billions in consulting spend has missed: capability without confidence produces nothing.

Make the path believable, and watch people move.

Written by Gordon Tredgold.