Like many people it would seem, I'm in a bit of a post-Olympics come down at the moment. Though I'm eagerly looking forward to the Paralympics, in which the UK is tipped as having one of the best teams its ever had. Still, in the interim it’s a good time to ponder lessons that can be drawn from these sporting endeavours. One highlight for me was the Olympic Road Race. Being a keen cyclist, this was always high on my must-see list and I did manage to make my way to Richmond park to see the riders come through.
Team GB's race plan, in the Men's race, was to assert control from start to finish with a high tempo that would wear down the competition. They would then deliver a fresh-legged Mark Cavendish (the fastest sprinter on the road circuit) in the final 2km or so to blow away the competition and claim gold. It was high stakes (gold or nothing), and ultimately it didn't work as the team failed to change their plan during the race when it became clear a different approach was needed (i.e. insertion of GB riders into the breakaway group). Still, it was one of the most heroic team efforts ever seen. Unaided by any other team, Team GB cycled at the front of the main pack for 5 hours and didn't give up until their bodies started shutting down (who expected to see Wiggo dropped to the back at the end of the race, a spent force). I was full of pride at the display of palpable determination, even though we didn't win any medals.
Taking this back to the ‘real’ world, I couldn’t help but think what this means for team effectiveness and talent in general. In terms of talent, Cavendish was considered the greatest asset in this case - the skills that were needed to make the plan work. But equally, the plan itself would only work given certain conditions (that there would be a sprint finish). With all the team resources being used up to make that happen, there was no spare capacity to manage an alternative situation in case things started going a bit pear shaped (for example, sending two riders out into the breakaway group, in case they couldn't be reeled back in). This demonstrates to the importance of your talent acquisition strategy and is a good example of how contingency planning should be a prerequisite for talent acquisition. Of course, hiring or nurturing the right skills for your growth plan is number one, but how will you cope if the market changes? What other skills does your team have, and should you also hire for breadth rather than specificity? What will be the major challenges and how quickly will you adapt when they force a change of course?
The other point is that team-think isn't always the best approach. Team GB was both an example of how a superbly functioning team can perform at its peak, and equally why a rigid team approach isn't always best to achieve an ultimate goal. If you took Team GB out of the road race and viewed their effort as an individual time trial, it would have been a gold medal winning team effort. But the circumstances of the race were such that this was misplaced. As many of the team were gold medal contenders in their own right, perhaps a more individual approach would have worked better (as it did for the gold and silver medallists). Cycling etiquette aside, the team could have formed sub-groups, or simply used individual tactics to position themselves better for a medal opportunity. As Susan Cain, author of “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” points out in the NY Times - in the workplace there will always be those who work best when given a bit of time and space, rather than forced into group-think activities. They ultimately make a bigger contribution to the team's drive forward. Part of the challenge of people management is to understand that approaches need to be fluid. Too many businesses say 'this is the way we will work, let's get everyone to work this way'. The more adaptive and impact-resistant approach is to say 'this is the way we're working right now'. Surely the original meaning of flexible working? The Women's race, by contrast a more individual affair, produced a silver medal for Team GB, a whisker away from gold. Well done Armitstead!
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