It's time to confess. July 2005, when we learned we would be the hosts of the 2012 Olympic Games, I wasn't that fussed. I wasn't anti. But not being much of a sports fan, the excitement mostly passed me by.
Little did I think, 7 years later, I would be cheering Team GB along and delighting in the fantastic achievements of the winners and empathising so much with the losers.
In case you're wondering, I haven't suddenly become a devoted sports fan, but I couldn't help being swept up by the interest we all have in seeing truly remarkable individuals succeed. And the L&D bit of my brain couldn't help be fascinated by how this group of people had achieved so much stunning success.
Actually, my interest started a couple of weeks before the Olympics with Bradley Wiggins winning the Tour de France. (Another confession - I'd never heard of the bloke until about a week before the Tour de France started).
In the deluge of press coverage following the competition, we started to get some insights into how that fantastic win came about.
Several things grabbed my attention. First, when Wiggo and team announced their ambition, most people thought they were bonkers. Second, not only have they proved those doubters wrong, they have done so far sooner than even they had imagined they could. Finally, 2011 had been a truly abysmal year for them and anybody looking on from the outside would probably have laughed even louder at the possibility of them achieving their stated ambition.
So what changed? What turned things around so rapidly and so decisively?
I can't claim to have the absolute scoop on all this, but here's what I gleaned from watching interviews on TV and reading articles in the press.
That truly abysmal year I just mentioned was the catalyst for change and, ultimately, success. It was reaching a terrible, crushing low in their performance that forced the team to step back, re-asses and re-think their entire approach.
They went against conventional wisdom. From what I can understand, the conventional wisdom in the cycling world is that you get better by being in lots of competitions. That seems intuitive doesn't it? Practice makes perfect, after all.
They decided to go for the counter-intuitive. Cut back on the number of competitions and focus instead on training and preparation for competitions they were going to enter.
They completely re-engineered their approach to training and preparation. This involved breaking the entire process down, examining every aspect in detail and squeezing performance improvements out of every last bit of it.
This, it turns out, is the secret of Team GB's success, too. They refer to it as 'the science of marginal gains'. Dave Brailsford sums it up nicely in a recent BBC interview:
"The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together. There's fitness and conditioning, of course, but there are other things that might seem on the periphery, like sleeping in the right position, having the same pillow when you are away and training in different places. They're tiny things but if you clump them together it makes a big difference."
The Japanese were the pioneers of something very similar in the world of business - you may have heard of kaizen. It's the 'continuous improvement of working practices'.
Two things strike me about all this. First, most employees in most organisation are taught to fear failure in their day-to-day work almost as much as they fear receiving a redundancy notice. In fact, for many, the two are inextricably linked. If the first happens, the second will almost certainly follow.
Yet, as the example of team Wiggo shows, failure is sometimes the most powerful motivator for subsequent success. Nobody wants or sets out to fail. It feels awful when it happens and it can be soul destroying. And I'm certainly not suggesting organisations should go around encouraging their employees to fail.
But, I'd bet a fairly large sum of money that organisations which take a grown-up view of failure are better places to work and, overall, end up being more successful.
Second, because employees fear failure so profoundly, most follow conventional solutions. So in many organisations, everyone just chugs along in quiet desperation. Everyone knows it could be so much better, but who's going to rock the boat and suggest outrageously unconventional change? Only a brave soul, but oh boy, the ones who do are likely to reap the benefits.
Little did I think, 7 years later, I would be cheering Team GB along and delighting in the fantastic achievements of the winners and empathising so much with the losers.
In case you're wondering, I haven't suddenly become a devoted sports fan, but I couldn't help being swept up by the interest we all have in seeing truly remarkable individuals succeed. And the L&D bit of my brain couldn't help be fascinated by how this group of people had achieved so much stunning success.
Actually, my interest started a couple of weeks before the Olympics with Bradley Wiggins winning the Tour de France. (Another confession - I'd never heard of the bloke until about a week before the Tour de France started).
In the deluge of press coverage following the competition, we started to get some insights into how that fantastic win came about.
Several things grabbed my attention. First, when Wiggo and team announced their ambition, most people thought they were bonkers. Second, not only have they proved those doubters wrong, they have done so far sooner than even they had imagined they could. Finally, 2011 had been a truly abysmal year for them and anybody looking on from the outside would probably have laughed even louder at the possibility of them achieving their stated ambition.
So what changed? What turned things around so rapidly and so decisively?
I can't claim to have the absolute scoop on all this, but here's what I gleaned from watching interviews on TV and reading articles in the press.
That truly abysmal year I just mentioned was the catalyst for change and, ultimately, success. It was reaching a terrible, crushing low in their performance that forced the team to step back, re-asses and re-think their entire approach.
They went against conventional wisdom. From what I can understand, the conventional wisdom in the cycling world is that you get better by being in lots of competitions. That seems intuitive doesn't it? Practice makes perfect, after all.
They decided to go for the counter-intuitive. Cut back on the number of competitions and focus instead on training and preparation for competitions they were going to enter.
They completely re-engineered their approach to training and preparation. This involved breaking the entire process down, examining every aspect in detail and squeezing performance improvements out of every last bit of it.
This, it turns out, is the secret of Team GB's success, too. They refer to it as 'the science of marginal gains'. Dave Brailsford sums it up nicely in a recent BBC interview:
"The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together. There's fitness and conditioning, of course, but there are other things that might seem on the periphery, like sleeping in the right position, having the same pillow when you are away and training in different places. They're tiny things but if you clump them together it makes a big difference."
The Japanese were the pioneers of something very similar in the world of business - you may have heard of kaizen. It's the 'continuous improvement of working practices'.
Two things strike me about all this. First, most employees in most organisation are taught to fear failure in their day-to-day work almost as much as they fear receiving a redundancy notice. In fact, for many, the two are inextricably linked. If the first happens, the second will almost certainly follow.
Yet, as the example of team Wiggo shows, failure is sometimes the most powerful motivator for subsequent success. Nobody wants or sets out to fail. It feels awful when it happens and it can be soul destroying. And I'm certainly not suggesting organisations should go around encouraging their employees to fail.
But, I'd bet a fairly large sum of money that organisations which take a grown-up view of failure are better places to work and, overall, end up being more successful.
Second, because employees fear failure so profoundly, most follow conventional solutions. So in many organisations, everyone just chugs along in quiet desperation. Everyone knows it could be so much better, but who's going to rock the boat and suggest outrageously unconventional change? Only a brave soul, but oh boy, the ones who do are likely to reap the benefits.
