The Olympics are ready to begin. The athletes who showed potential for a given sport were provided the opportunity to grow and develop their talents and now they show the world their capabilities. CEOs and businesses share many traits with Olympians. Korn Ferry developed an interesting article comparing the two entities.
The info-gram has some interesting information; the ratio of male female Olympians vs CEOs and the age range. There are 4 times as many CEOs as Olympians in publicly traded international companies and they don’t last as long in their roles It probably takes as long to achieve CEO status in these companies as it does to reach the Olympics and it certainly takes learning, practice and persistence to achieve either goal.
Here’s the deeper message. Just as most of us will never achieve either the status of an Olympian or high level corporate CEO we can apply the processes and reach our goals.
Step one is knowing who you are and what you want. If you are building a company have you created the strategic plan, ( more on that in a minute), do you have a mission, vision and set of values?
Your mission includes why you are pursuing the objective, what problem it solves and what is your purpose for doing it. If your mission is just to make money stop right now you probably won’t succeed. Aligned with the mission are your values; what do you represent, your beliefs, standards.
Time to create the strategy. This is the planning. If you fail to plan you plan to fail, a true statement. What are your resources; people, money and tools? Do others understand your message and can they share it to help you grow? In strategic planning you look at where you are now and where you ant to be, identify the gap and how to eliminate it by when.
When you have the long range plan it is now broken down into the 3-5 year vision, 1 year tactical plan and the daily operational actions. Not to burst your bubble, but nothing happens overnight. Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers claims it takes 10,000 hours to excel, It also takes potential and opportunities to be able to do the work.
Another component shared by athletes is the focus of the goal, the end result. In business it is important to be aware of what is happening around you and not to be so narrowly focused that you miss opportunities that can move you forward. Athletes learn new techniques, get better equipment, different coaches and whatever else they need to move forward; business is the same.
We may never achieve the gold medal or be the CEO of a giant company, but we can implement the tactics they use for our own goal success As they will be saying in Paris bonne chance
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