What Can Olympians Teach Us?

A Wonderful Spectacle…

The London 2012 Olympics was a wonderful spectacle in many ways. The opening and closing ceremonies were fantastic, the atmosphere and support from the crowds at each of the events was fantastic and the ‘espirit de corps’ amongst the volunteers, games officials and the athletes was also fantastic. The systemisation needed to run such a Global event is immense. It truly was a spectacular event on all counts.

One of the lesser recognised spectacles that is a lesson to anyone prepared to watch and listen was the spectacle of the athletes who were constantly attempting to beat their ‘personal bests’ – ‘PB’s and this is a wonderful attitude for business owners and their teams to adopt to enhance a pace of change in your own business.

Just as for Athletes, in business, It’s not always about being the best in the world, although that maybe something you do want to strive for and achieve. It is about always striving and searching for ways to perform at your best, to get that little bit better each time so you have given it ‘100%’. What can Olympians teach us? How to triumph over ourselves, our own limitations and achieve new milestones by focusing on our best, competing with ourselves, without having to worry as much about competitors around us.

Strive To Achieve ‘Personal Bests’ Is As Important As Beating The Competition!

Just like Athletes, in business, identifying and recording your ‘PB’s in many areas of business can help you set targets each day/week/month and put in a little competition not just amongst your team, but for each individual who can compete against their own previous individual performances as well as their teams.

What are some of the ‘personal bests’ you could identify to strive to improve in your business? Here are some examples measured per day/week/month to get you thinking:

• Number of prospects or customers spoken too
• Number of leads created or handled;
• Conversion rate from lead to customer;
• Number of Customers served
• Average value sale per customer achieved
• Items sold per product/service range
• Number of attendees at events/seminars
• Total sales
• Profit Margin per day/week/month per team member

Imagine if you had half a dozen areas in your business where you identified your ‘personal bests’ for each of your team members and set up a competition for them to beat them each day/week/month. Imagine what that could do for your business?

Setting Up Your Dashboard & KPI’s!

Let’s take a look at this from a different perspective. When you last drove your vehicle driving from ‘A’ to ‘B’ you probably checked your vehicle dashboard several times during that trip to make sure your vehicle was performing properly to get you from ‘A to B’ in a safe and timely manner. It is that motor vehicle that you are reliant on to get you from ‘A to B’ as long as you operate it competently and manage the vehicle assuming all the normal lights and dashboard indicators states the vehicle is doing what it is supposed to be doing!

Well, the same situation should be happening every day in your business too…just think about this for a minute. Your business is the vehicle you are wanting to provide you with all the income and success you are wanting for you, your family, your team, their families, and it is to provide a great service of real value to your customers, etc. Yet how do you assess on a daily basis how your business, as a vehicle’ is performing? Do you have a business dashboard for your business?

Setting up your Key Performance Indicators – KPI’s is critical to measuring, testing and reporting your businesses level of success on a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly basis. If you want to read more about setting up KPI’s, I can recommend a great book ‘Working with winning KPI’s by David Parmenter.

Expect The Best To Achieve The Best!

As an Entrepreneur, you should expect nothing but the best from yourself and your team and your suppliers so your business, in turn, can supply your customers with the best as well. To achieve the best, you must set standards and expect yourself and others to achieve them. To do this you will need to have a level of ‘Numerical Mastery’ discussed in my last Blog post and a number of KPI’s for your personal bests –‘PBs’ and the PB’s of your team!

In order to achieve the best levels you and your business can achieve you also need to focus on other key factors as well. You may find an E-book I wrote interesting – ‘7 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make In Their Businesses’ To avoid making these seven mistakes will also require you to achieve a level of ‘Numerical Mastery’.

Divide To Multiply Your Business…

So ‘What can the Olympians teach us and our teams in business? Well the implementation of KPI’s and measuring ‘Personal Bests’ in these KPI’s is a critical lesson. If you implemented ‘PB’s for every team member in half a dozen areas of measurement, specific to their individual roles, you may be surprised to see a minimum 10-15% in your business results – that’s right 10-15%! Is that worth implementing for you and your business?

So, regardless as to whether you want to be the best in the world, in your region, in your industry or just want to achieve personal bests, testing, measuring and reporting your business results is critical. Just like the Olympians, you can’t manage and improve results if you’re not measuring them and setting targets, I hope you agree the Olympians can teach you a lot about how to improve your business.