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Gold medal kick-offs

11/26/2012

1 Comment

 
Posted by Jon
The UKAPMP conference last month was an excellent event. Particularly memorable was the keynote speech by Olympic gold medal winning rower Katherine Grainger. Amidst much that was relevant to those of us trying to win business, there was one technique that really caught my imagination.
Before taking gold this summer, Katherine had won silver at three successive Olympics. After Athens (2004), her coach encouraged them to look at every little “margin of difference” that they could make, to every aspect of their performance, to help them to improve and hence to win.

The result? An improvement on their times – but silver again in Beijing four years later. After that result, they tried a different approach: “we’re good enough to be Olympic champions: what could stop us?” – and then worked on those weaknesses, from a position of confidence, capturing glory at London 2012.

I’m going to borrow those techniques for future kick-off workshops, I think. How powerful to routinely ask the team to reflect on:

- what other things could we do – even the smallest changes to the plan and how we work – to maximise our chances of winning?

- we’re the best bidder – so what could stop us winning?​
1 Comment
Peter
3/25/2016 03:11:12 pm

Nice post. As a Bid Manager I find ready inspiration and learning from sports and sporting stories – especially around successfully influencing and coaching bid teams. While I’m not a particular (Field) Hockey fan, I can recommend the books of current Australian Hockey Coach Dr. Ric Charlesworth (also an Olympic medla winner, former first-class Cricketer, former Member of Parliament and Medical doctor) “The Coach – Managing for Success”, “Staying at the Top” and “Shakespeare the Coach”. A lot of what has made Ric a success in life and as a coach has been attention to detail, instilling this in his teams and warning against focus on the end result to the detriment of the details required to get there… Planning a future post on somne of my favourite “bidspiration” books on my Australian-based bid blog at http://manvsbid.com/ – cheers, Peter.

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