What rugby taught me about building teams

Throughout my career I've led projects whose north star was growth metrics, with many leadership lessons along the way, and among them I can without doubt name rugby.

It gave me lessons I didn't find in dashboards or marketing books, playing as a forward in Argentina, in Spain and even in Georgia.

I remember my time at UBA reading Bourdieu, who said that structures only take on meaning when they're embodied in the "habitus", that internal disposition that guides action without needing an instruction manual.

Exactly the same thing happens on the pitch. A scrum, the mud, a messy ruck... these aren't actions carried out by hierarchical command or to hit an indicator: you do them because individual commitment is fused with the collective. This happens in every sport, but in rugby you commit your whole body.

A team grows and scales when culture turns invisible work into the foundation of the system. When the effort of the person who absorbs the pressure and creates the conditions for someone else to finish isn't perceived as a sacrifice, but as the natural way of belonging to something bigger.

In managing companies and products the parallel is absolute: the fragility of depending on individual talent and working in silos leaves the system exposed as soon as the context tightens. Real sovereignty is built by creating the conditions for each person to have clear ownership, to feel the project as their own, and to work knowing that the person next to them will respond and that, from above, the conditions will be guaranteed.

The question is how much value and, above all, time we lose every day we put off building teams united by a real purpose, with its countless advantages (loyalty, productivity, lower team turnover, structured internal talent, etc.) and not just short-term metrics.

To close this reflection, I'll bring up Liverpool's motto: You'll Never Walk Alone.