South Africa's Rugby Champions Reveal Winning Playbook for Corporate Leadership

What the Springboks can teach South African workplaces about winning

Author PJ Claasen has identified a striking institutional success story in South African rugby. The Springboks have emerged as one of the country’s most consistently successful organisations, and in his book The Bok Way, Claasen examines how their operational model offers lessons applicable to businesses, schools, churches and other organisations far beyond the sport itself.

The transformation has been substantial. Claasen, speaking to CapeTalk, described SA Rugby as one of the country’s best-run institutions and pointed to the dramatic reversal in the team’s fortunes over the past decade. A period when the Springboks struggled on the field and the organisation itself faced difficulty gave way to a remarkable shift following the return of Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber. “Just eight or so years later, it’s a massive shift,” Claasen said.

What makes this turnaround relevant to workplaces beyond rugby is the simplicity of the mechanism driving it. Claasen argues that the central lesson centres on trust, built through surprisingly straightforward behaviour. When he interviewed players about the biggest difference they noticed under the new coaching regime, the answer consistently pointed to transparency. “They tell you the truth. When they say something, they actually do it,” Claasen explained.

The practical application is direct: if you make a promise, keep it. Team selection serves as a concrete example. When Springbok management tells a player he will play that weekend, he plays. When he is told he will start in three weeks because the coaches are planning ahead, that commitment holds. This contrasts sharply with environments where promises are broken in attempts to keep everyone satisfied, undermining trust in the process.

Claasen identified another trust-building mechanism within the organisation: bringing people into the fold and ensuring everyone receives the same information directly rather than through intermediaries. This approach to communication creates consistency and prevents the distortion that second-hand information can introduce.

Trust, however, does not eliminate accountability or the right to question. Claasen described this balance as “trust and transparency”, where people can ask questions while respecting the responsibilities and expertise of others. A player may ask the physiotherapist why a certain treatment is being used, but the question comes with respect for the physiotherapist’s role. Personal accountability follows naturally from this framework. “It is asking yourself whether you are actually doing your best,” Claasen said. “And that is a big, difficult question for us to answer. But we know deep down inside whether we are taking shortcuts or we’re actually doing our best.”

Beyond the team’s internal operations, Claasen sees significance in what the Springboks represent for South African society more broadly. The team provides a visible example of an institution that works, something he believes the country needs to see. The players are people South Africans can identify with, making their success something that can be emulated rather than viewed as unattainable. “They show us that we can do this sort of thing if we get our act together,” he said.

The lessons Claasen identifies need not remain confined to corporate settings. They apply wherever people work together, whether in schools, churches or other organisations. Meanwhile, the Springbok brand’s ability to bring together people from different walks of life signals how much has changed. Claasen recently observed the diversity of people wearing Springbok hats and jerseys while travelling. “That is a thing that shows everybody has bought into this, which I absolutely love, because it was not always that way.”

Whether other South African institutions, public or private, can absorb and apply the same principles of consistent communication, kept promises and genuine accountability remains the open question his book implicitly poses.