In 1991, the Japanese football associations top level featured amateurs at a time when professional football in India was almost a century old. And at that point they decided they needed to change things. And they drew up a plan towards building football in their country....

The plan had two goals, of Japan having a 100 professional clubs, and Japan winning a World Cup. And the time frame - one hundred years! 100 years of work towards a goal. When you have time frames like that, two things happen. First you never do short term 'fixes' ...

And second, every person working on this goal knew that they would probably not be alive and definitely not in power if and when the plan succeeded. They had freed themselves of the rewards, they were just working to a goal that would be seen generations later

It's a very powerful way of working. Japan's currently ranked 27th in the world and No 1 in Asia, and have already won a Women's World Cup in 2011.
So much to learn about sport and about a life purpose from them.