The Double Double? Treble Treble? GB’s best performance in over a 100 years? Fiji’s first ever Olympic Medal… and a Gold! Determination, Dedication, focus, hard work. There was so much to celebrate including the humility shown by all the winners of medals no matter what the colour.

Just getting to the Olympics sets you apart and you become part of a very small percentage of the worlds population that attain that accolade. But what makes you a medal winner?

• Luck? Perhaps in the BMX – who would’ve predicted that Liam Phillips would’ve been caught up in that pile up and miss a second Olympics through injury. 
• Hard work, determination? Of course but all of the competing athletes work hard that’s how they got there. 
• Dedication? Late nights, early mornings, juggling work, home life and just about everything else! Of course.
• Focus? Perhaps this makes the biggest difference, as focus brings perspective and if things aren’t going exactly the way you want them to go, you re adjust change things around a bit. Mo Farah is a great example of this, a very talented runner, making sacrifices and achieving good results. However taking the decision to change coach, move to America for large chunks of the year and embrace new training methods transformed him into the best distance runner the UK and perhaps the world has seen at this time. 

My firm belief is that sport and business are linked, improvement, performance and achievement are key. I have been privileged to have heard from some great speakers through my career and two stick out. Jeff Grout spoke about how Adrian Moorhouse and his coach prepared (from a young age) to win a Gold medal.

The medal was the Ultimate Goal, locked away no need to think about it until the time comes which is a minimum of 4 years away. He then sets Performance Goals linked to improvement towards the medal, then fundamentally the largest part of the plan is the Process Goals, these are the actions and activities that need to happen in order that performance and improvement have a chance of coming to fruition. If you were to draw a diagram this would be a pyramid with the medal the Pinnacle and a huge solid base that is the actions and activities. The second person who put this into perspective from an SME point of view was Andy Barrow and former GB Paralympian. He said that business, from a sport point of view is flawed as SME’s are competing every day, that could never happen in sport people would simply burn out. Do you know any businesses who have burned out trying to achieve the gold medal every day? His take away was to take a step back and review your business, redefine your goal and how you go about achieving it.

I’m a huge sports fan, have loved the Olympics and can’t wait for the next games in Tokyo 2020, where will your business be? Same as now, performing well, or will you have moved it from Good to Great?