I once met Arnold Schwarzenegger. A-list Hollywood celebrity, Governor of California and possibly the greatest bodybuilder of all time. A lifelong hero of mine…..but all I could think as I shook his hand was, ‘I thought you would be taller?’
And that is the problem with hero’s; we build them up so much in our minds, that often the reality of meeting them can often be something of an anti-climax.
And so it was with trepidation that I found myself about to meet another long term hero, Sir Steve Redgrave. Five Olympic Games, five gold medals. A feat achieved by no other British athlete and one that could remain unchallenged for a very long time.
It was an afternoon in late June when I knocked on the front door of Sir Steve Redgrave’s house, as it opened it revealed his 6ft 5inch frame. A good sign, I thought, he appeared bigger in real life than I had expected.
Accompanied by a small film crew, I had one hour and half a dozen questions, the brief was to get the inside track on his Olympic glory and have him share some stories on self-motivation. In due course the footage would be edited into a VT that was to be aired to an internal audience for an automotive client.
Inevitably the hour passed all too quickly but Steve was brilliant. Honest, self-depreciating, good humoured and utterly engaging. He was, in short, the perfect interviewee. Steve was happy, the client had some great material and my hero had remained intact. It had been the perfect afternoon.
It was a few days later, sat in the edit suite reviewing the footage that I had the chance to properly hear Steve’s responses to my questions. And it was this closer inspection that revealed an amazing insight into the mind-set of one of the greatest athletes this country has ever produced. The question that prompted one of the most intriguing responses was ‘how did you remain motivated during an Olympic career that spanned 16 years?’ This was Sir Steve’s response…
‘Human nature is that we like to do things we are good at, but we shy away from the stuff that we find difficult, but you have to practice the tough stuff if we want to be the best. Sometimes the dream of standing on the podium having a gold medal put around your neck helps keep you motivated…..but often it’s just too far away. You have to bring it to the here and now, bring it closer.’
‘So sometimes when I am training, even when I might not be performing to the level I would like to be….I focus on the next stroke on the rowing machine. Less than 2 seconds, making sure that I make that stroke as perfect as it possibly can be. Then I focus on the stroke after that…and so on and so on…until I have done ten, twenty, fifty strokes….and then eventually I finish the training session and I think, well I’ve done that session, let’s do another…..and before you know it you’ve worked through the bad times and your performing well again’
I thought a lot about what Steve said and I think it has many parallels with our own business. If you talk to ‘the grown-ups’ in our industry, the designers, senior engineers, product planners, CEO’s and MD’s they will share with you there plans for 3, 4, 5 even 10 years’ time. They have a vision, a goal, a clear picture of what the future will look like. And that is all fine and dandy, because you need to have people thinking long term, but it’s not necessary for everyone to do that.
To the technician in the workshop, sales person in the showroom and service adviser on the front desk a vision of how the business will be in 3, 4 or 5 years’ time is just like focusing on the next Olympics games (or even the one after that!). It can often feel too far away.
What they need to do is bring it to the ‘here and now’, so that they can execute the very next task (the stroke) as brilliantly as possible. For them that next stroke could be a test drive, a hand over, the explanation of some work, the completion of a service. It could also be those tasks that many of them shy away from; picking up the phone to prospect, running through an unexpectedly large service bill or admitting to damaging a customers’ car.
If you want to be the very best, then you have to capable of switching between that long-term vision and the ‘here and now’.
If you, or your teams, are struggling to get motivated by the big picture, then perhaps it’s time to think like an Olympian.
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