Life lessons from Michael Phelps

Posted on August 19, 2008

Life lessons from Michael Phelps
August 18, 2008 , Rediff News

At 23, Michael Fred Phelps has become an international sporting sensation.

The young American swimmer has smashed seven world records and won eight gold medals at the Beijing [Images] Olympics [Images], the first athlete ever to secure first place so many times at a single Olympics Games.

Given his success, it’s easy to slot Phelps into the ‘born achievers’ category — at 23, he’s established a glorious career doing what he loves best, he’s a millionaire, a world record-holder and the pride of his nation.

But hold on a minute — is Michael Phelps [Images] really a born achiever?

He may beg to differ.

At the age of seven Phelps, the youngest of three children, was diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. For those not familiar with the condition, ADHD is a childhood condition characterised by constant activity, impulsive behaviour and the inability to focus one’s attention on anything for a short span of time.

ADHD is treated with therapy and medication, but is not classified as curable — as per information on the website WebMd.com, about 60 percent of afflicted kids carry the condition into adulthood.

To help release his pent-up energy and to emulate his older sisters who were also accomplished swimmers, Phelps took up swimming, starting to outshine his peers right from the start.

At the age of nine, Michael’s parents divorced. His mother brought up all three children single-handedly, encouraging them to follow their dreams at all costs — one middle-school teacher even told Michael’s mother he would never be a success.

But successful Phelps is, and how.

Yes, there are the occasional set-backs. Like the time back in 2004 when Phelps, then 19, was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. He was under the legal drinking age limit of 21 in any case and to top it he was driving in an inebriated state. A repentant Phelps pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months probation, saying in court, “I recognise the seriousness of this mistake. I’ve learned from this mistake and will continue learning from this mistake for the rest of my life.”

So who is Michael Phelps? He was a regular kid who struggled with an irregular condition and the divorce of his parents. He’s young, he excels at what he does and like the rest of us, slips up once in a while.

And what life lessons do his struggles and successes hold for us?

Deal with your own issues effectively — Michael certainly dealt with ADHD and his parents’ divorce that way. His mother helped him cope up with his condition and channeled his energy into what he loved.

Cut out the drama — Michael’s story is inspirational but at the same time, neither the young man nor his family have exploited their experiences to sensationalise his life. They’ve told it like it is.

Zero in on your strengths and overcome your weaknesses — He was less than an average student at school, but Michael was a passionate and dedicated student of his sport. The young swimmer is known to have studied tapes of his races over and over, zeroing in on mistakes and working towards bettering himself constantly. Excellent is still not good enough.

Remain focused on your goals — At the Athens Olympics back in 2004, Phelps was beaten by teammate Ian Crocker beat in the 100m butterfly. He put up a poster of Crocker in his room to motivate him and keeps a list of his career goals beside his bed.

Pursue what you love with passion and put in a genuine effort — Phelps’ dedication to swimming was apparent back when he was nine and began to break national records in his age group. His commitment to what he does has grown with him.

It’s not just his career and his unbelievable performance at the Olympics that classify Phelps as a winner — it’s his story of inspiration that makes him a real champion, a youth icon, somebody to look up to.

No limits to excellence

Posted on July 18, 2008

No limits to excellence

The important lesson in the Nadal-Federer match is that people who operate at high levels of excellence pull each other up the scale.

V. K. Madhav Mohan for THE HINDU

CEOs and organisations can learn important lessons from the history that unfolded on Centre Court at Wimbledon on July 6, 2008. The gentlemen’s final of 2008 was arguably the greatest tennis match of all time. Noted tennis historian Bud Collins had no hesitation in classifying it as the greatest Wimbledon final ever (also the longest at 4 hours and 48 minutes).

What Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer achieved on that rain-swept day was unimaginable. As the rest of the world looked on in disbelief, they shifted the frontiers of excellence upward by an order of magnitude.

This was not just tennis, as Vijay Amritraj said during live commentary. The match had everything anyone could hope for: drama, fortunes swinging like a pendulum, brute power laced with consummate finesse, court speed fuelled by fighting spirit and above all, mental strength beautified by sportsmanship.

What has all this got to do with CEOs and organisations? Quite simply, the classic encounter reveals finer points that are as applicable to individuals as they are to organisations. Both Nadal and Federer competed on their own respective scales and yet propelled each other to the next level. They fed on each other’s performance and so transcended from good to great. That transition points the way for the rest of us, lesser mortals!

The important lesson that stands out is that people who operate at high levels of excellence pull each other up the scale. Peter Drucker posited that the difference between the top and the average is constant and so the way to shift the average upwards is to help the top shift upwards. The common practice however is to help the bottom shift upwards.

Both in academic and corporate environments, the focus is almost always on the weaker, poorer performers. More resources are lavished on them in terms of training and counselling; if the same resources were directed at the top performers, they would move even higher. Then the average would move upwards since the difference between the top and average is constant.

This has important implications for organisational performance. If more people improved their performance and if top performers went even higher the entire organisation would migrate to new standards. This is more or less what happened during the Nadal-Federer epic. Both have been top performers consistently as their respective ATP rankings of two and one in the world respectively, denote. On July 6 both pushed the other into a new zone of performance, a zone that that is the stuff of dreams.

Their achievement is bound to raise the standard of tennis on both the men’s and the women’s circuit because Nadal and Federer have demonstrated what is possible. This is much like Roger Bannister breaching the four minute barrier for the one mile run on May 6, 1954, with a time of 3 minutes 59.4 seconds; a month after this feat another runner, an Australian named John Landy, bettered Bannister’s record with a time of 3 minutes 57.4 seconds.

New performance zones

The CEO should think about ways to move his team into these new zones of performance. By focusing his own time and the organisation’s resources on the top performers (mentoring, training, new assignments, exposure, travel, scholarships) he can create an environment in which every individual pushes others up their own scales. A collective lift ensues, thereby scaling up organisational performance, much like the flight of geese in formation generates collective lift.

Wining formula

Coming back to the Wimbledon final, I believe Nadal won this time because of the following, each of which has lessons for CEOs:

His backhand is hit with perfect balance in all situations since he is a natural right-hander converted into a lefty. So Nadal actually has two equally powerful sides, his powerful lefty forehand and his backhand beefed up by the strength and control in his natural right hand. Organisations need to learn from this by creating and innovating new strengths while augmenting the existing strengths. This more than compensates for weaknesses.

Nadal’s swinging slice serve which curves away from the opponents on either side. Even the great Federer’s perfect ground-strokes were always under pressure on the Nadal first serve because the ball was always either going away from Federer (on the deuce court) or curving into his body (on the advantage court).

The lesson here is to develop one particular weapon to specifically neutralise a competitor’s core strength. That means understanding the opponent’s strength and designing a product, service or policy to eliminate its effectiveness in the market

Unrivalled court speed and unrelenting aggression. Nadal is probably the fastest man ever on a tennis court. That allows him to retrieve even impossible winners and forces the opponent to play interminably long points, thereby sapping his stamina.

Companies need to build reserves of cash and talent that will force opponents downhill with every competitive encounter. No matter what strategy or tactics the competitor employs, the CEO must always be ready with a counter thrust. In fact, the reserves of organisational stamina must be built up with contingency plans and resources, careful husbanding of cash and constant honing of talent

Continuous adaptation and evolution in his game. Nadal has made the crossover from a clay court specialist to a complete tennis player. From being able to hit mostly heavy top spin ground strokes he’s graduated to drop shots, sliced backhands, deft angles and serve and volley tennis. Similarly organisations must adapt continuously and develop all-round capabilities much like pilots with all-weather ratings. That calls for continuous market analysis and organisation development to map the market.

Mental toughness. Nadal’s mental toughness prevented him from wilting even when he had lost several match points. That strength is evidently practised and polished with visualisation exercises. Mental rehearsals are as important as physical practice. CEOs must develop this capability for personal visioning by repeatedly visiting the scene of future physical performance mentally and “seeing” a perfect performance every time. By encouraging everyone around him to develop this skill the CEO can make a very strong impact on organisational performance.

Supreme physical fitness. No other tennis player has demonstrated Nadal’s unremitting aggression, court speed or mental toughness. The basis of all that is his almost superhuman physical fitness which gives him the balance, breath control and stamina to deploy his technique and weaponry with devastating effect.

The peerless Federer revealed fleeting glimpses of fatigue only in the last two games of the match but that, sadly, was enough to make the difference between victory and defeat.

So too must CEOs , business owners and managers be committed to physical fitness. This is the key to mental toughness and clarity. Gym workouts, sports, walking, yoga, pranayama are all de rigueur for today’s leaders. Personal discipline leads to fitness, physical and mental, and that goes with the territory of leadership.

What the world experienced during the Nadal-Federer encounter was indeed a demonstration of possibilities for personal and organisational growth. The dynamic duo proved beyond doubt that limits to growth and excellence do not exist. For that we have be eternally grateful to those two great sportsmen.

TheLonelyCEO@gmail.com

The perfect imagemaker

Posted on July 3, 2008

The perfect imagemaker
Wednesday July 2 2008 08:42 IST Asha Prakash EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

He is the one who coined the term ‘Image Management’. This image guru of India, economist, journalist and founder of the country’s only children’s newspaper, is the man behind the success of many a political party and politician. Founder of ‘Perfect Relations,’ he’s always in the news for his lobbying.’ And there’s more to Dilip Cherian. Describing all his achievements in a single breath would be impossible.

A Malayali by birth, Cherian was on one of his rare visits to Kerala the other day when we caught up with him. “I would prefer to call myself an entrepreneur more than anything else,” he says. “I even started a restaurant once, it was the first stand alone multi-cuisine restaurant in Delhi. But once I feel a venture is in a stage to be handed over to someone, I do it.”

Cherian, who began his career as an economist, felt that being an economist was like being the conductor of a bus. “You have no real control over it,” he says. He thus decided to switch to journalism as he felt that the industry offered space for his own views.

At that point, in the early 80s, business journalism was virtually nonexistent, says Cherian, with all market reports being done by foreign companies. But they could rarely get the correct perspective of Indian markets, he says. “You need to understand the Indian ethos and the Indian pyschology to write informed reports.” Cherian was thus part of the team which created Business India, the first business newspaper of India.

So why the switch to image management? “More than creating something new, I think it was more of a response to the great changes that were happening in the market.” In order to survive, Indian companies were desperately in need of professional and result-oriented image building. Always a step ahead of the others, Cherian founded ‘Perfect Solutions,’ an image management company in 1992.

The clients of ‘Perfect Solutions’ belong to a wide spectrum of industries from corporates to prominent political parties and bigwigs to Bollywood personalities.

Political parties are increasingly opting for professionals to do their PR and literature. “Before long the majority of voters will comprise the MTV generation. Traditional methods like long speeches will no longer win their support. So we apply the basic rules of PR here too – study the audience and give them what they want.”

Bollywood is also a field where survival depends on good image making, he says. “We try to find out what is different or unique about the brand or venture and focus on that.” For example, when a movie is about to be launched, Cherian’s team studies the scenario and the right time for the launch.

“Today, one third of the success of a movie depends on the music,” he says. “By the time a movie is launched, its music should have already created an identity.”

The future of image making lies in providing specialised services, according to Cherian. “Today clients need people who know their industry inside out, not someone who has to study it from scratch.”

So what according to him is the secret to success in the field? “The ability to communicate well, a thorough knowledge of the Indian market, environment and psychology.” But having coming so far, the image guru has no plans to rest on his laurels.

“Our next venture is to start an exclusive training centre for image management, which will match global standards,” he says. Well, one more to add to his list of first’s.