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Comparing Performance Management in Business and Elite Sport – a conversation with elite sports coach Kevin Pickard
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What can business people learn about performance management from the techniques used by the managers and coaches of elite sports teams and athletes?
Kevin Pickard is an elite sports coach, a director at AP Race and host of the Rogue Monkey podcast.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Kevin and host Michael Millward compare the different approaches to performance management used in elite sport and business environments.
Their discussion covers
- sports working towards a very clear objective
- the role every team member plays in achieving that objective
- dealing with adversity and still performing at your best
- the need for agile systems
- analysis of performance
More information about Kevin Pickard and Michael Millward is available at abeceder.
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Transcript
Introduction: Independent Minds Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abusida and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abusida. And today I am joined by Kevin Picard, who works in elite sports and sports development.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hello,
Disruptive Approaches in Elite Sports
00:00:34
Speaker
Kevin. Hello. Thank you so much for inviting me in. It's a privilege to be here. Well, thank you very much. You work with some Team BGs, elite athletes, as well as involved in sports development. But please, could we start by you explaining a little bit about the work that you actually do, what that actually means? Okay. Well, I guess the the first thing is I consider myself quite a disruptive person and not from a noise point of view. but somebody who is constantly asking why is not afraid to challenge convention.
00:01:01
Speaker
And I think that aligns nicely in the world of elite sport because politics and historical stuff goes out the window and we're just trying to achieve a great performance. And I think that's in any field in sport.
00:01:13
Speaker
All of that takes, I guess, second tier to how can we get the best performance and whether that's a team sport or an individual sport, it's having that open mind to go, we're going to try anything and we're going to be as creative and disruptive as possible in order to get the best performance. So that's,
Transferring Sports Lessons to the Workplace
00:01:28
Speaker
I guess, my background. I've worked in sport now for 18 years, and but that overlaps quite nicely with ah some stuff in both education and the business space. And I guess that's kind of where our paths crossed.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yes, because I'm intrigued by what elite athletes do. And you've been working on learning the lessons from elite sport and transferring it into the workplace so that we can all learn and take some of the lessons and be better at what we do as well. So I'm intrigued and um I want to know more.
00:01:59
Speaker
Please, I want to know more. let's Let's find out what it is that you've been you've been doing So I think the first thing is is a level of patience. and Elite sport ultimately can be seasons long or even four years long when you're talking Olympic cycles. so very often you might be talking about 1% changes every day, but you don't actually see the big impact or the success of those until maybe four years down the line.
00:02:22
Speaker
And I guess, you know, a lot of businesses that perhaps are in startup phase, but I've got a fantastic idea. And they are actually quite cash poor for the first few years while they're burning through stuff to to get going. And hopefully they've got a long enough runway to get going. But I think that the thing that I picked up from Sport First has to be patience.
00:02:40
Speaker
And I guess It's not specific to sport. And what
Business Agility and Organizational Listening
00:02:43
Speaker
I would say there and just something to throw in that I didn't mention in the introduction is I also host my own podcast where I interview some quite unusual people from around the world.
00:02:51
Speaker
And I've interviewed sports people, but I've also interviewed, you know, elite people in other spaces. So people like fighter pilots, people who have worked in the health industry or in the military and and stuff like that were actually you know, again, you're dealing with a cutting edge, but it's a different field, if you like. And I think many of those lessons are transferable, but I think too often, whether it's businesses or anyone else out there, can actually get quite siloed in what they do.
00:03:14
Speaker
And that's what I try and do with my consultancy work is bring in just a completely different lens to say, hey, have you ever thought of it like this? Have you ever looked at it like this before? And I think sometimes you can start some really rich discussions and it's quite challenging. because ultimately we've all got an ego, you know, we all like to think we know what we're doing. and But one thing I've learned spending a time around the most successful people on the planet is that actually they're quite comfortable in the fact they
Structured Objectives in Business
00:03:38
Speaker
don't know what they're doing. They're constantly learning, they're constantly evolving, and they're willing to listen and learn to those around them because ultimately everyone within a team is looking to achieve the best performance for that individual or in a team sport, the team.
00:03:50
Speaker
So that's, I guess, some points to get us started. Yeah, I mean, one thing that jumped out at me from what you were saying there was this idea of patience and how it's important to be patient, not to expect overnight instant results, which I think is is we're all guilty of in business. We're all thinking.
00:04:11
Speaker
how much how quickly are we going to be able to get to our targets? And yet you're talking about it can take a whole year, it can take in the case of Olympic athletes four years and you're working towards something.
00:04:24
Speaker
So I'm wondering like patience is almost if with any objective, with whichever model you use, then there is that element where Time you know, the objective has to be timed. You have to know where the end point is in terms of there is a a date where you want to be doing the things that you've set out to do. You want to be able to complete them. And that seems to be very clear in sport, but I suspect in business actually isn't.
00:04:57
Speaker
We define it for ourselves. An elite athlete
Team Dynamics and Performance Analysis
00:05:01
Speaker
says, this is this is the date when I need to be at my best. I think also it's the tolerances. So, you know, if we take, you know, my sport of swimming as an example, you might be training for 12 years to get to an Olympics. And when you get there, you've got 60 seconds to get it right. You know, there's not much wiggle room to have an off day. So I think, you know, when we talk about patience, we're also talking about kind of foolproofing or actually giving an athlete the tools so that yeah under the worst conditions and they wake up, you know, with a ah head cold, You know, it's raining outside, they feel awful, the noise is really bad, it's really cold on the poolside, they can still get up and deliver a great performance. And I think when you look at people in the business space, actually the ones that can thrive under really challenging market conditions are often the ones that are not afraid to adapt and be creative. But also I think, like you mentioned there around the time element, if you look at what Google have done with the OKRs framework and actually you do have very specific targets that you're working towards. And I think you know that in sport is a given. you know You have very clear benchmark competitions across the season. You have physiological benchmarks in terms of your weight profile, in terms of your body composition, in terms of your power, your speed, et cetera. So I think there's some very clear measurables there. But I think very often, If you actually get a team of businesses together and actually ask them, why do you do what you do? And how is what you're actually doing on a day-to-day basis getting you there?
00:06:26
Speaker
You know, having worked at the extreme ends of the spectrum, if you like, in both big organizations all the way down to where I am now, where we're a very small team, I actually look at the agility that some businesses have to even change direction out of necessity. And some businesses don't. They're like an oil tanker. And they say, well, we're doing this because we've always done this, but we've never actually thought, is it actually going to achieve our goals? And that's where I guess there's a real challenge for a lot of businesses out there is how agile are they? How willing are they to say, actually, this isn't working or I need to be a bit more creative in my approach. And but again, it challenges egos. And I think that's a a huge challenge that a lot of business leaders have because ultimately they are steering the ship. So you have to have confidence that they know what they're doing, but equally you have to have the humility and the people around you to support you when it's not going well and allow you to then potentially change direction. And I think that's something you see in sport quite a lot.
00:07:18
Speaker
You see, you know, you think of football as a prime example, you know, if after three months the football manager isn't getting the right right results, they're out. you know If after a training block in the swimming pool, you know it's not going well enough, then we actually change up our training.
00:07:33
Speaker
So I think is that there is ah a clarity discussion to be had there around people actually understanding why they're doing what they're doing and is it going to achieve the outcome? And I genuinely believe whether that's sport, business or education, if you don't have a clear idea of where you're heading and map that route out, you might need to adapt and change, but ultimately it's going to be very easy to get lost along the way.
00:07:52
Speaker
I agree with you. I can see. i think I can see exactly what you're saying. And the the comparison between the elite athlete and the elite business person is that the elite business person can say we have a target. We have an objective. This is what we're going to do to get it.
00:08:10
Speaker
And everything is focused on that. And the elite athlete says the same sort of thing. But I know from listening to what you're saying, and I'm thinking about my own experience of being in business working with senior executives over my extensive career is that what you're saying about the elite athlete is that there is analysis after each time they jump in the pool, after each time they run around the track. each set training session, there is analysis of what they have done and if that is on track to leading towards the achievement of that objective in four years time. Whereas i think if we're honest, that analysis of ongoing performance is what businesses find very difficult and individuals within businesses find very difficult to achieve as well. i think also just to throw in there that there is a ah converse discussion there of talking about actually confidence in the path that you're on. So it might not be going well, but you've got confidence that you're laying the foundations.
00:09:15
Speaker
For example, go back to our business talk earlier of actually saying there are businesses that burn through cash at an exhaustive rate in the first few years, but investors have the confidence that they're on the right track. If we take care an Uber as an example, you know, i don't know how many years that's run without being profitable. but actually the conceptualization and the idea is something people can get behind. And I think in coaching, you see that of a coach saying, look, I know it's all going to come good in three months, six months, 12 months time. I've got confidence in that. So is ah it's a fine line, but equally, I do think there's a discussion in business that actually
00:09:47
Speaker
is everyone clear on why you're doing what you're doing? Because in elite sport, a team of 20 or 30 people that sit around an athlete, there is absolute clarity. And I do believe that sometimes people can feel like they're not part of a bigger picture. And that is where you get your lack of buy-in and then inefficient staff. Because if staff genuinely believe in what they're doing and it is making a difference, whether they're cleaner all the way through to the CEO, then actually you're going to get a much more productive, but also sustainable office culture. And you look at places like Manchester United as an example, the reason they had such sustained success is that that culture ran all the way through from the canteen to the football pitch. And I think that's something, again, that can people can get a bit lost and they feel like, well, they can't speak to board level people because they're the cleaner, OK, or because they're the part time admin assistant, whereas actually they might have an idea and something supportive that's going to allow that business to change gears. And I think, again, we get into that discussion around what are we here to do if the ultimate aim is to move forward from a performance perspective, whether it's in sport or business. Ultimately, everyone's ideas need to at least be taken into consideration. And I feel like hierarchical structures can get in the way of that. And that's why i think sport cuts through that. We're not fussed who has the idea. Is it going to help us win Olympic gold? And if it does, we're not fussed how we get there.
00:11:00
Speaker
We're open minded enough to listen to everyone who's around the table. Right, so it's every idea. It's surprising to imagine that there are behind an elite Olympic athlete, there are 20 or so people working on making sure that that person achieves their optimum level of performance.
00:11:19
Speaker
We don't do the same sort of thing or don't position or see the people that we have working with us in a business or work environment. We don't actually see them in the same sort of way. But the reality, that is what they are. If you are the top of the organization, you surround yourself with people who are the experts in what you can't do, people who you can trust. people who you respect and you get them to do their role, which is aiming to help you achieve your success.
00:11:50
Speaker
But do we give those people the information, the guidance, the support? Do we communicate with them effectively what our view of success actually is? Or like
Attention to Detail and Inclusive Culture
00:12:01
Speaker
you said earlier, are we allowing people too easily to operate in silos, both vertical ones where you you don't look across but also horizontal ones where you don't talk up or you don't talk down as well. Whereas the picture you're painting of that elite athlete environment is that it doesn't matter what level of it you are at, what your specialism is, what your contribution is towards the achievement of the end goal.
00:12:28
Speaker
You can have an opinion, you can have an idea and the other 19 people in the room plus the athlete will listen to that idea and treat it as an idea, not, oh, it's only that person's idea, so it's not worth listening to. They treat it every idea is equal, regardless of whose idea it was.
00:12:49
Speaker
I think also that people feel listened to because it's not necessarily saying that in this, specific say, a really specific technical business that the cleaner might have a fantastic idea, but equally they might have. And I think also it's it's about that culture that actually encourages performance from bottom to top. So a wonderful example of that would be someone like Toto Wolff on his first day at Mercedes walked in and there was yesterday's newspaper and a used coffee cup on the table in reception.
00:13:14
Speaker
And he was like, this stops here. And that's ultimately when you see these cultural shifts and people ask, you know, how were you so successful for eight years? Well, because people from the front door, when you walked in, understood that they were all part of creating performance. And, you know, if you take the example of a professional swimmer going to the Olympics in in a few years time, everything from the logistics to the room layout, to the earplugs that they're going to wear when they're sleeping at unusual times, to the mattress toppers that they're going to have, to the nutritionist making sure they've got all the food available when you're in an unfamiliar country.
00:13:44
Speaker
All of those sorts of things are your 1%. And actually, I think businesses can often disregard where they might find those 1%. Like simple little thing. And I know this isn't a simple thing, but let's take something like mental health.
00:13:56
Speaker
If all your staff are 5% better in terms of their wellbeing and mental health, your productivity of your workforce would increase significantly. And it's, well, if you look at what a 5% uptake in your sales, for example, would be, and actually look at how much profit you would make off that and then look at what it would cost to invest in getting every member staff's wellbeing up by 5%, then actually there's a discussion to have there of why wouldn't you do it?
00:14:19
Speaker
And actually that's the kind of thing when you see British cycling painting the inside of their transportation van white and people asking them, why do you do that? And they say, well, because if there's a single piece of dirt that gets into the gears, we're moving the bikes around and we can't spot it because it's not on a polished white floor,
00:14:36
Speaker
then that might impact on the race, which then ultimately impacts on our result. And it's that kind of thinking, that meticulousness, but also that understanding that every detail really does matter. You can't do everything straight away, and these things often take a long time to work through. And that's, you know, when I'm supporting businesses and organisations, some of our goals might be four years or eight years away, because actually it's not...
00:14:55
Speaker
feasible for a business that's in relatively early stage development and is burning a lot of cash to actually focus its efforts in other directions. But there has to be that vision of what we're actually trying to get to long term. You know, if you want to
Recruitment and Team Contribution
00:15:06
Speaker
fly high, burn bright and be gone in two or three years time, there's plenty of ways to do that. But if you actually want sustained success over a long period of time, and if you look at the athletes in any sport that have had a long and successful career, it's ultimately because they've managed themselves really well and had a great team around them that have allowed them to have that longevity. and the principles of that are genuinely believe is transferable into pretty much every single walk of life.
00:15:27
Speaker
and So yeah for me that's that's a really key thing to consider. Yes, i mean, you're talking there about the attention to detail and sweating the sweating the detail in lots of ways.
00:15:39
Speaker
But a little bit earlier on, you were talking about working with elite business people, elite athletes, where they accept that they don't know everything, that they that they're not always right, that they do make mistakes.
00:15:53
Speaker
How does that, you know, the attention to detail and sweating the detail, how does that connect with it being okay to know that you don't know the answer? I think some of that comes down to recruitment for a start, recruit good people.
00:16:05
Speaker
You know, give an example of my cleaners, you know, if you've got world-class cleaners in your office and that permeates all the way up, you know, people want to hire the best talent in whatever field they're in. So I think part of that comes down to having a good selection of people. But then I think the other thing is actually, it is around ego and being comfortable that if we knew everything and we could do everything, then you wouldn't need the team around you in the first place. And ultimately you'll hear that.
00:16:29
Speaker
of any elite athlete. Now, how many times have you heard ah Lewis Hamilton or whoever it is win a world title and say, it's the team. That's the reason I'm sat ending here is the team. And ultimately, although we hear the, you know, if you talk about your unicorns as an example, we hear about the famous faces. Ultimately, they can only do what they can do because they've got thousands of people that allow them to rise up really, really high. And I think it's important to recognize that and actually say that if you want to get to the top of Mount Everest from a business standpoint, ultimately you're going to need some guides to get there.
00:16:59
Speaker
Otherwise you do it by yourself. And I think that's, that's again, something that I picked up very, very much off the podcast. You know, i interviewed a guy from the SAS actually, who went up Everest a few times and now is a guide and he talks about extreme environments and actually the fact that it strips back egos. Because when you're faced with a choice of, I know the way versus if I get this wrong, I'm going to die, suddenly ego is stripped back quite quickly.
00:17:21
Speaker
So I think, you
Performance Management and Humility
00:17:22
Speaker
know, and I think that's where you see elite athletes go, it's not life or death. It's more important than that. That's their mentality. And I've watched, you know, people like, say, Steve Redgrave say to people when he had like S&C and people like that around him, are you going to help me win Olympic gold? If not, leave.
00:17:37
Speaker
very, very clear as to why you're there and everyone's on board with that. And I think you can often go into a business that might only have 10, 20, 30 people. But actually, if you ask everyone, how do they contribute to the business? How do they contribute to the aims and outcomes? And how are we doing?
00:17:51
Speaker
You know, other than our headline figures that we pop out every quarter to say, you know, we've we've got those sales or we've grown this much or whatever it is, how are we actually performing? Because things like reviews and all of that can often be just tick box exercises, but if they're actually done properly,
00:18:07
Speaker
and we do it in elite sport all the time, if you actually do a review and on honest self-assessment properly, you can make very, very rapid learning gains and actually accelerate your performance. And again, it doesn't matter whether you're the CEO or the person on reception when you come in. If everyone's on board with that and understands what they're good at and delivers world-class performances in what they do, ultimately your company is going to benefit from that. So I feel like there is some real big overlap there in the sports world.
00:18:32
Speaker
Yes, I agree with you. There is a huge overlap and the thing that the overlap isn't isn't active though at the moment, the connection has not been made by lots of people. But listening to you speak, I can see exactly where the connections can be made. And this idea that in business performance review is something that happens once a quarter, once a year, or it doesn't happen at all.
00:18:59
Speaker
You're saying that in elite sport it happens all the time and not only does it happen all the time but each person on the team is reviewing everyone else. It's a collective activity and also they're reviewing themselves. So it's like we all know what the target is, we all know what the goal is, we all know what the deadline is, we all know what we've got to contribute towards the achievement of that goal, that objective.
00:19:27
Speaker
And a lot of business people perhaps need to ask themselves whether they have communicated enough to the people they have on their teams can identify what it is that they contribute towards that team, towards the achievement of the goal.
00:19:42
Speaker
And lots of people in business, in work environments, if we're honest, we would probably have to say we haven't communicated well enough how people can define their contributions. But
Conclusion: Performance Management Insights
00:19:54
Speaker
there are lots of stories, the story of of JFK at Cape Canaveral, stopping a man who was sweeping the floor. We're talking about cleaners an awful lot, but he was sweeping the floor. And he said, what are you doing? And he said, I'm helping to put a man on the moon. Because you cannot run many places without the people who keep it safe and healthy and clean to work in the most important people in many organizations.
00:20:18
Speaker
They make it possible for other people to do their job. But it's that connection between my activity today and the overall goal that is the connection between or the difference between just doing a job and performing that job to the best of your ability, which is where it links in then with somebody has a very clear goal about sporting success where you've got to be at your peak performance at a particular time on a particular day.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, I genuinely believe that because the the tolerances, as I say, can be quite fine in something like maybe football or basketball where you're playing every single week. Obviously, you're looking for sustained good performance over a season, but if you have one bad day at the office, you know, almost most people can forgive you as long as it's not a sustained bad day at the office. Whereas in Olympic sport, You know, your trials come around once every four years and it might take you 12 years to get to those trials. And then if you happen to have the flu because you've been lax in terms of your health care, you know, you've been eating slightly the wrong foods, you haven't had that nutritional support, you've been wearing no beanie when you've left the pool with wet hair in the morning and you end up with a cold.
00:21:26
Speaker
and actually turn up feeling 5% under, those tolerances are the ones that dictate who makes an Olympic team and who wins the medals when you get there. And I think that level of resilience is something that ultimately athletes have had since they were young. You know, they're constantly trying to push the limits in in an ethically appropriate way. Obviously, with children and young athletes, you know, there is obviously a much bigger picture. But I think it's important for businesses to understand that actually there is a lot can be taken from sport. And sometimes you do have a bad day. and actually it's the ability for people to have a bad day was something I learned when I first started in my last job and I turned up at the national centre and the head coach said to me, fail fast, learn from it, move forwards and that was that the attitude of you are going to fail and the quicker you do it the better it is for everybody and the quicker you learn from it the better it is for everybody and your ability to let that go and move forwards is something that's going to allow you to ultimately have a long runway in this this field that you've ended up working in and I do feel like that you know I've done stuff since I've started working full time with my current athlete, and that actually I feel like, oh, that wasn't quite right. But it's fine. We acknowledge that. And there's there's no ah shame in acknowledging failure. You know, I've never met anyone who gets everything perfect. And I think that's where sport has a lot more humility. And that's a real challenge when you get into the business space, because ultimately, if you've got a business that's well established, it's been there a long time, there's a well established board, all those sorts of things. One of the things you'll hear is that's not how things are done around here.
00:22:51
Speaker
That's not the way we do things. And actually it's like, well, can you tell me why you do things then? Because ultimately if that's not aligned to your business objectives as a whole, you are, you're actually doing your company a disservice. You know, Netflix is a prime example of that. And they actually say, if you come here and don't deliver 10 out of 10, you are doing a disservice to the people who pay to watch Netflix.
00:23:11
Speaker
So everyone there has to be super high talented, super high performing, and they have a very strong severance package. where actually if you're there and you're underperforming and you're just not right, they just pay you off and ask you to leave and get somebody else in who's better. And actually that's as harsh as it sounds. Ultimately, that's what elite sport is like. Ultimately, if I've got a nutritionist or a psychologist that's given me 50% of their best, I'm sorry, that's not good enough. We're here to be the best in the world. And actually, that's the kind of thing where you then look at top to bottom culture within a business and say, hey, is everyone turning up and delivering their best? And like I said, it doesn't matter whether they're the cleaner, the receptionist or the CEO, everyone has to play their part because if they don't, that 1% might be the difference between hitting target, failing, and going off ah an absolute cliff edge when it comes to market share, whatever it is. And I do look at stuff like
00:23:59
Speaker
Apple as a prime example and look at some of the very bold and unusual things they've done over the years. Actually, a lot of the things they've brought to the market over the last 20 or 30 years have not been innovations per se. They've just packaged it up in a way that's fantastically accessible for their target audience. And they've not been afraid to change direction.
00:24:17
Speaker
You know, look at how many MP3 players existed before the iPod, but look at the success of the iPod versus any other MP3 player. And that ultimately comes from being able to let let history and let all of those sorts of things go. so yeah, another area that there's definitely some overlap in.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yes, but I think the the essence of the lessons that we can learn but as business people from the sporting world come down to performance management. It's how sport manages performance that is the key difference between sport and business and is the key lesson that business people at all levels in all types of businesses need to need to learn.
Closing Remarks and Invitation to Subscribe
00:24:59
Speaker
Kevin, that has been really very interesting. I've learned a lot. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. I'm always enjoying exploring these kinds of subjects and it's ah it's fascinating to kind of explore them specifically to business because like I said, I think there's a lot to learn there and it's an exciting time to be in the business space. So again, thank you for the invite. It's been fantastic.
00:25:19
Speaker
I enjoyed having you. Thank you very much. And thank you to you for listening to The Independent Minds. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with The Independent Mind, Kevin Picard, who is an elite sports and business coach. You can find out more about both of us at abasida.co.uk.
00:25:41
Speaker
There's a link in the description. If you have liked this edition of the Independent Minds, please give it a like and download it so that you can always listen to it. To make sure you don't miss out on future editions, please subscribe.
00:25:54
Speaker
And remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.