High performance professional

Working with sports for a long number of years, I could see the emergence of many champion athletes. I observed that they all achieved their success using the same components. I call them the Champions' key-factors. They are:

1. Planning: The beginning of everything; success in sport doesn't exist without good planning. Medals won at the Olympic Games were planned at least four years before.

2. Methodology: High performance sport doesn't happen without a methodology. There is method to everything: training, eating, competing, living.

3. Results measurement: Each training session,movement and performance is measurable. An athlete has to frequently measure their performance; it is the attest evolution of the athlete.

4. Focus: An athlete in preparation for the Olympic Games doesn't compete in all of the competitions. They choose those that help them achieve the most success.

5. Fail correction: Fails and weak points of the athletes are corrected during the preparation, and even during the competition. If they don’t do that, their opponent can gain a big advantage.

6. Commitment between athlete and coach: Total confidence in each other; complicity. Give it your all and believe that the other is doing the same.

7. Limits overcoming: An athlete has to really want to achieve success. This inside feeling is the one that will push them to overcome all the challenges and obstacles on their way towards great success.

Does work drive you mad?

We have probably all tried some magic fix at some point; a training course to learn new skills, a smart piece of software that will make everything better. The road to ruin is paved with such good intentions; pretty soon going back and working the same old process gets in the way of doing things differently. The cost of the initiative is lost and no benefits are realised and we default to engrained habits.

When the going gets difficult we batten down the hatches and do what we always did, but work harder at doing it. In most cases, doing what we always did got us in to difficulty in the first place and working harder never fixes the problem; at best it enables us to weather the storm until the problem arises again.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

Albert Einstein

The only real way to realise sustained improvements is to develop effective processes and good habits, and that involves identifying and managing what really matters. Setting and using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is an essential step; having KPIs is, however, of no value unless they are used to support and encourage those good habits. What adds value is not the act of measuring, but the adoption of an intelligent approach, one that uses the right measures to develop a continuous improvement culture and to eliminate wasted management effort.

A good kpi system does not cover walls with obscure charts, or simply present the same data as a flashy dashboard, but makes achieving excellent results easier and faster. Qualitin’s ICG approach does that; it drives ownership and accountability throughout an organisation, it empowers and obliges everyone to focus on what matters to customers and stakeholders and it saves significant management time; that is why I’m an enthusiastic Qualitin Partner.