Humphrey Walters is a motivational management guru and was part of former England Rugby union head coach Clive Woodward's back-room team for the 2003 winning World Cup squad.  In today's Daily Telegraph, he talks to Simon Hart about what needs to change to get England teams winning again.

In “Cheer-up.  We can win again in ‘07“, he says that “winning businesses ask “why” all the time.”  Walters gives as an example Stuart Rose's current era and leadership at Marks & Spencer.  Walters identifies five core ingredients of a successful team:

Leadership.

Structure.

Mentality.

Technical Expertise.

Physical Skill. 

Mentality is where England is most deficient.  Waters believes many of England's sports need to sit down together and examine why it is that our winning mentality is not as developed as, for example, the Australians’ and the New Zealanders’.

Walters highlights with examples:

The importance of not following wisdom learnt in an earlier era, when such wisdom is still relevant today.

Attention to detail in planning and execution.

A sense of mission underpinning everything, which requires coaches (aka business leaders) to have the hearts and minds of their players (aka staff). 

In referring to his work with Clive Woodward, Walters explains that “what we had to do was create a cause, because people will fight for a right, but they will die for a cause.  We came up with the idea that our duty was to inspire the nation.  That was our cause and everything sprung from that.”

Waters believes that generally all the ingredients are in place in English sport, but as “in business, you've got to go out and make things happen.”  How true.