Just Keep Pedaling

Having successfully completed my 3rd consecutive solo Race Across America, I’ve now had time to reflect on all of the learning that has taken place and I thought it might be worth sharing some of my insights and how it neatly fits with our every day challenges.

Cycling 3,000 miles non-stop is fairly tough and there’s a lot of training that goes into being able to finish what is considered to be one of the toughest races on the planet but it would certainly be a massive stretch and very much beyond comprehension without the family support I’ve had.

When I compare this to anyone who works long hours and misses the simple family routinues of eating together at night or taking the children to an after school event, that too requires the understanding of one’s partner and support to allow that pattern to continue. I guess my point here is, to succeed in business there is a certain amount of effort that has to go into achieving your goals, whether it’s the companies goals that you are responsible for of your own personal goals you are chasing for your career.

It reminds me of an old quote from Thomas Edison:-

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

It’s all just Learning

I’m not suggesting that you have to flog yourself to get great results, what I am saying is that you’ll have to put some serious effort in to do well. When I look back at the 3 seperate races and why I was able to continue to go faster each year even though I wasn’t getting any younger! I would have to put it down to being able to look back and reflect on what I’ve learnt from each race and then apply that learning for the next attempt.

Being more specific, I would look at what worked well and ensure that it was taken forward into my next race strategy. Probably where I had my biggest learning experiences from was when things didn’t go as well as expected, most of the time this gets labelled as failure.
This is where so many businesses miss the opportunity to overtake their competitors, there is so much fear of failure that a lot of companies are not even taking measured risks in the fear of any reprisal if something goes wrong or FAILS!

Being able to label these so called failures as learning opportunities is a much healthier way of looking at unravelling the situation, the energy behind the word failure almost has a paralysing effect on people and certainly doesn’t make the people involved feel particularly great either. Focusing on what can we learn from this situation is a much more positive way of moving forward and not getting bogged down into blaming people, it forces you to look at what options are available to find a solution.

The usual knee jerk reaction when something does go wrong in business is to immediately ask why and who’s to blame for it not turning out right! The amazing truth is that when something does go wrong within an organisation 94% of the time it’s not down the staff it’s actually down to the processes that are in place that cause the promblem, or I should say the lack of processes! How many times have you experienced a leader ask what was wrong with the system as their first response?

Roles & Responsibility

This has certainly been a key learn for myself when preparing for such a big race, being able to clearly brief all of the crew in terms of their individual rolls and responsibilities, if this is slightly wrong or misleading it can cause major problems during the race and cause major tension for all concerned and can have a massive impact on performance and motivation.

It’s amazing how these things will always show up if there’s been a lack of clarity, the same applies in any organisation when people aren’t completely clear about the direction the business is going in. Small degrees of seperation over a week or a month of being misaligned can end up meaning being way off target, causing a load of stress for all concerned.

Staying Focused

As the rider, it would be very easy to get distracted as you built your training for the race, there’s a lot of other things that need to happen in the background to ensure that everything runs smoothly for the race. Flights, accomodation, getting crew kit, cycle kit the list is a very long one! Without really good planning and briefing the crew regularly, you wouldn’t make it to the start of Raam. In fact that is a big achievement in itself, getting to the start line, so many people that set their sights on competing in this race as a solo rider don’t make it, usually this is down to 2 things:- A lack of crew or a lack of sponsorship!
Being able to delegate the planning aspect enables me to stay focused on doing the training and juggling the family and business.

Again this is very similar to a company who is attempting to increase their margins year on year, there has to be a very thorough plan in place to allow everyone to stay focused on their tasks that they need to perform on a daily basis. Interestingly, it’s those simple every day things that have to happen that allows you to achieve your goals at an individual, team and organisational level.

I guess this is one of my main points about completing & competing in Raam, it’s the aspect of Just Keep Pedaling, I have to stay on the bike and keep pedaling to achieve my goal, that’s my main task, of course I need to eat and drink and occasionally sleep but on the whole it’s about staying on the bike and pedaling.

Whatever your individual main task is within a company, if you can stay focused and just keep pedaling as it were, my belief is that you’d be more successful. Now here’s the challenge for all of us and it can easily bump you off track! Being able to handle the INTERFERENCE, so much stuff has the potential to take your focus away from the main task that you need to be doing and being able to manage these interferences is the key to staying on track and achieving your goals.

3 Simple Strategies to consider from a book called Gung Ho by Ken Blanchard

The Way of the Squirrel

The way of the squirrel is all about everyone in the organisation doing worthwhile work. Certainly within my crews for Raam everyone knew what their roles were and they all knew that it was critical to the success of the whole team and my success as a rider. There would be no way that we would achieve our goal if one of these roles was not carried out to the best of their ability, simple things like mixing drinks doesn’t sound that big a deal but if you get it slightly wrong, it can have a dramatic effect on my performance.

People in a business need to be made aware of the role they play in the bigger scheme of things, they need to be made aware that what they do does make a difference so they can take pride in what they do and that is at all levels!!

The Way of the Beaver

The way of the beaver is all about team work, when beavers build a dam, they all just get stuck in, they bring small twiggs and large sticks and get the dam built, you don’t ever see them arguing over where the stick gets put. The same applies with the crew for Raam, everyone has their own roles but if something extra has to be done, it just gets done by whoever is the closest person available to do the job so we can move forward.

This is an interesting one in companies, a lot of the time I’ve heard things like:- It’s not my job! I’ve already got too much on, I’m not doing that! there are lots of similar lines that get used which is not really what team work is about. It stands to reason that the more efficent you can be as a team the more success you are going to have.

The Way of the Geese

Have you ever seen a flock of geese fly in formation, it’s usually in a V shape and you usually hear them honking as they fly, the honking is considered to be them celebrating success, they are giving feedback to the one at the front of the formation to say that you are doing a great job. Interestingly, they all take a turn at the front pushing the wind, a great example of team work.

Celebrating success in Raam is probably an area that has been missed in each race, one on the main reasons is that we are all so tired that there’s not a lot of energy left to properly celebrate what we have just achieved as a team. Everyone who has been involved in this amazing event have all mentioned that it was a life experience that will stay with them all of their lives but unfortunately, I/we have still not got this aspect right!

It never ceases to amaze me that a lot of companies fall into this trap of not really celebrating thier successes, I have experienced this on many occasions where senior leaders say that it’s something they don’t do enough of. It seems that once a goal has been achieved, it’s all hands to the deck for the next thing.

I haven’t come across too many companies that can get these 3 simple things right!

My Final Point

I have learnt more than anything from the Race Across America and my role as a coach, that most people on the planet are barely scratching the surface of their own potential. I personally set out and used Raam as an experiment to see just how far I could push myself, I was attracted to the idea that this is meant to be one of the toughest events on the planet, I didn’t know whether I would complete the solo race but I did have an incredible mindset and belief that I would do everything I could to achieve my goal.

I’m in a position as a person where I’m luckly to have no physical limits, I have all of my limbs and sight and am very grateful to be able to do what I do. I continue to be massively inspired by other people around the world who push themselves well beyond normal human limits who have been perhaps involved in an accident or had a disability from birth, it’s their spirit that propells me forward in life. Here’sa link to one such person, I hope you enjoy it.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Leading Through Tough Times

On average there are about 2,000 business books written each year, most of which are attempting to come up with the latest strategies and models to help companies transform the way they do business or transform the people within the organisation they work for.
It’s no wonder that it gets a little confusing as a senior leader to decide exactly what direction the company needs to be heading in when there’s this overload of opinions!

Having read hundreds of books over the years there seems to be some common sense that could be applied to ensure that your business not only survives but actually thrives even when we hit an unexpected global down turn.

In Daniel Pink’s book he talks about the 3 A’s Abundance, Automation and Asia that have propelled us into the Consceptual age, most companies have been stuck for some years attempting to either innovate themselves out the current situation, or buy themselves out of a flat sales graph or even worse, they do large change programmes including changing their CEO in the hope that one of these strategies or a combination will see them through!!

Amoungst all this chaos it’s critical to focus on what made your organisation great in the first place, that means ensuring that all of the basic processes and operational procedures are being applied as standard across the whole of the organisation.

It’s very easy to drop the ball when people start looking to innovate their way out of this current trend, the same can be said when there’s a new CEO or there’s a big change programme being rolled out within the company. A lot of these activities end up interferring with everyday business instead of making those important calls or spending more time working on an important proposal.

Leading through tough times requires leaders to ensure that everyone within their teams are completely aligned and understand what is expected of them both collectively and individually. I have observed that most organisations are so busy attempting to keep up with this busy corporate pace that they miss spending time on reflecting back on a regular basis to see how they’ve got to where they got to in that previous month. They’ve become so focused on performance which in turn drives a culture of more is better, this shows up as longer working hours, people being burnt out and off on long term leave, staff struggle to be really present which means things get missed and the ball gets dropped!

How many companies are LEARNING organisations?

Is the FEAR of failure still driving the culture?

What happens if the ball gets dropped?

That question will help you understand whether fear is driving or should I say preventing growth in your business.

It’s time for TRUTH to become a key theme within daily business interactions, both internally and externally. Far too many organisations are having to 2nd guess whether they are dealing with the real story or the right story, the REAL story is the truth whereas the right story is the safe option, it’s the story one might tell because they are in fear of telling the truth and worried about any potential repercussions. When companies act on the right story, it doesn’t need to be too far off the truth but you can see how the ball gets dropped when this is a constant. Simple things like feedback are a classic example of this in action, athletes see feedback as an opportunity for learning but unfortunately this is not seen the same way in the corporate world!

Reflective Learning is where it’s at.

Incremental improving comes from being able to apply the simple and yet very powerful strategy of looking back at how you’ve just got the result you’ve got. Whether it’s a one to one session or an important pitch to a client or the board, it’s vital to look back and ask yourself or the team these 3 questions :-

What has worked well?

What did I/we learn?

What will I/we change?

You see most companies believe that they haven’t got enough time to embed this into their daily/weekly meetings. What usually happens if the pitch has been successful is at best the team will go out and celebrate, normally there’s a bit of hollering and it’s on to the next thing. If the pitch was lost, there’s usually a hunt for who dropped the ball!!