David Samuel: Leader stories
Vision & Purpose
In 2004, UK Sport announced a “no compromise” pursuit of medals as the basis for its funding of elite sports. This directive was followed rigorously and we can all remember this strategy coming to fruition, with euphoria of Super Saturday on 4th August 2012, when Team GB’s enjoyed their most successful day at the Olympics for over a century.
Just over 8 years on, whilst watching Breakfast news last year, Chair of UK Sport, Dame Katherine Grainger was talking about how UK Sport now need to address some of the cultural challenges which have been raised following an extensive survey carried out by UK Sport.
One thing Katherine said which really resonated with me was “we need to look at not just how many medals we win – but how we win them”. On researching further, according to the BBC the Chief Operating Officer, Simon Morton was speaking at a media forum last week about how the strategy is to change. “We will aim to support the development of the person as well as the performer and we will have an ambition that athletes leave the high performance system feeling richer for their experience, irrespective of whether they have succeeded on the field of play,”
I started wondering whether the recent review of some challenging cases might have opened a Pandoras Box of greed, unhappiness and stress and if so, how much of this may have been caused either directly or indirectly by the overarching purpose to win medals.
In fact, it reminded me of a conversation I had with someone planning to open a new practice. It went something like…
“So what is the purpose of your business?”
“What do you mean? It’s to make money of course, isn’t that the purpose of every business?
Why did this confuse me ?
Firstly I would not for the life of me understand, that if your goal in life is to make money, why you would choose to open an independent optical practice and secondly is that compelling enough to attract the right people to help you achieve that ambition.
Sport and business leadership
Like sport, in business, the success and failure can usually be traced back to the how well or poorly the leadership of the organisation was able to galvanise and effectively deploy their team. It made me think about the leaders I have met in both sport and business, and what common traits have I seen which has lead to success… there are many, but here are my top 5.
1 A Compelling purpose
A lot has been talked about Purpose over the last decade or so and for good reason. Having a “cause” which all the people in the organisation can believe in, over and above the pay packet. Of course, taking home a wage is important, but going the extra mile will only happen when the team have a common purpose for making a difference.
2 They recognise the importance of breaking down their purpose into goals and tracking their progress against those goals.
There is an old adage “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”. Having a gift to be able to break down a large objective in to smaller, achievable bite-size chunks is something which great leaders do in their organisations. This allows the team to score small wins, which all contribute toward the achievement of the overall goal. As Michael Johnson put it beautifully when he said: “I craft my dreams into ambitions… I refine my ambitions into goals… I turn my goals into plans.”
3 Curiosity – They understand, that they don’t know what they don’t know!
Great leaders never stop learning and know the right questions to ask. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what the right questions are for your business, but they might look something like this …
What are you currently doing that is working – so I can do more of it ?
What are you currently doing that is not working so I can stop doing it ?
What don’t I know that might work that I ought to start doing?
The last of these is the “You don’t know what you don’t know” conundrum. This is best answered by speaking to people openly both within and from outside the organisation, to gain new insights and perspectives on your business.
4 Success is a journey not merely a destination.
Every finisher in the London marathon gets a medal. When I came 19735th in 2014, I wasn’t upset not being in the top 10. What I had learnt about myself during the training, the planning and the day itself was the reward. The support from the crowd when the cramp kicked in lives with me to this day.
The same can be said about business, the learning, growing, laughter and tears are all being part of the journey of owning your own business. Learning how to celebrate a great year is important, but so is leading your team through challenging situations like Covid; it’s all part and parcel of the learning process.
5 They examine what went right…
Successful business owners learn from their past performance, as Lord Coe once said “If you don’t know why you’ve failed, how can you improve and if you don’t know why you’ve succeeded, then it must have been an accident.”
Understanding what went right and why, is arguably more important than understanding what went wrong. Certainly, we know that focusing on positive outcomes fosters a positive mentality, so surely we need to spend more time looking at replicating the positive, rather than just trying to eliminate the negatives.
In business we never really know what success or otherwise looks like as recent events have highlighted the potential banana skins and curved balls which ca re-rail us. In truth good leadership is a journey of discovery and learning.
Going back to our sports example, it will be interesting to see what we can learn about business as we watch the story unfold over the coming months and years.
To find out more about how SightCare can help you take the step towards finding the right business coach to help you take your business forward please email info@sightcare.co.uk or call 01256 781522.
First published in Optician October 2021
