Will it Make the Boat Go Faster?: Olympic-winning Strategies for Everyday Success

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Additionally, liberating ourselves from the influence of other people's opinions is essential. Society often pressures us to follow the herd and opt for the perceived "safer" choices. However, taking the same path as everyone else might not always lead to the best outcomes. To take the right kind of risk, we need to be independent thinkers and trust our own judgment, even if it means deviating from the norm.

In another organisation, a restructure meant that a team leader was promoted and was now in charge of the department. They were a bit nervous, and wanted to do some team development.It’s worth taking everyone towards some of those taboo conversations about the way you work together, the conversations you never have as a group, because whilst all focus is on work, and not on individuals, it’s hard for them to be engaged.

Create measurable milestones and rewards—How do you keep motivated when the main event is months or even years away? Focus on closer goals, such as testing or less important competitions as a way of getting you through. If you want to be a winner, set your goals right and set them from the start! And never forget that whether you’re going for a gold medal or for an employer of the month award, that it’s a marathon and not a sprint. So, split your goals into smaller chunks. Lots of potential experiences and events don’t happen for people because — once they get the idea, they mentally note it and forget it. They don’t give themselves 15–20 minutes to write it down and really think about it to validate it, and then if validated, consciously create it. Very few people are thoughtful about their future. Meditating on this story, Spartan Race founder and author of SPARTAN UP!, Joe De Sena, said… this type of thinking may seem extreme or extensive to some people. But the question is, ‘Do you really want to achieve your goal?’ If you do, then there are no excuses. The choice is yours, average work, yields average results. In today’s competitive economy it is easy to think you cannot change anything and to act like victims of circumstance. But in this current business climate, we are all in the same boat, some boats just go faster than others, so use the pressure to set the bar higher and to improve your focus. Choose your attitude and get the right mindset.Role models—Who else has achieved what you want to? Are they that different than you? When I was doing bobsleigh, I was terrified of my first run down; what if we crashed? But I looked at everyone else—athletes from other countries—and decided, if they could do it, so could I. They developed a one-question response to EVERY SINGLE DECISION they made. This one question allowed them to measure every situation, decision, and obstacle — and to not get derailed where most people do. How can we, as coaches and athletes, drill down to what actually delivers results and avoid spending time and energy on that which does not enable us to be successful? This mental model or story alone makes it worth the time to read the book. Use the 10-minute rule—Some days, I get to the gym and I don’t feel like being there. By committing to doing 10 minutes, I almost always complete the full session. Anyone can do 10-minutes of work. Chapter 6 Take Risks Will It Make the Boat Go Faster Summary Notes The Layered Approach to Setting Goals: How Olympians Divide Their Aspirations

And that brings us to the fourth and last layer: the everyday layer. Just like the second did for the first layer of your goal, the third does for the fourth one: it makes the control layer more specific. You can train every day, but now decide how much you’d train daily.

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Do what you need to respond—Get on with it by putting it out of your mind initially. Control the controllable in the short term; reflect and learn. Changing how they measured success—We often measure success by whether we win or not. This can be misleading: you can win but perform poorly, and you can lose but perform well. Across the course of a competitive season, by focusing on how well you completed the process, you’ll be better set up for performance when it matters. If you focus on whether you’ve won or lost your tune-up races, on the other hand, you might get misled. But, while doing it, make it at least somewhat entertaining. For example, training five hours a day is boring, but training with music isn’t. Dieting is not as much fun as eating chocolates, but signing up for pole dancing is fun and will help you get fitter as well. The crew also used three key sources for their beliefs, which we can copy and paste into our own contexts: Will It Make the Boat Go Faster” builds on this and itmay be a useful book for anyone building a business strategy. But, ultimately, it will be more interesting to those who dream of becoming Olympic champions. About Ben Hunt-Davies and Harriet Beveridge

Getting curious about the recipe—What are the key constituents of success in your event? Are you improving on all of these? How? While the concrete layer should be precise and clear, not every element in this layer is under your control. The control layer thus helps you identify exactly what you can control when working toward success. For example, you certainly can’t control the weather nor the speed of your competitors, but you can control how much you practice. Building on the huge success of the original, this second edition includes two completely new chapters - on high-performance conversations and performance under pressure - as well as a general update based on the successes people and businesses have reaped from the first edition. Make Your Boat Go Faster helps people get clear about problems and opportunities, and if you run the conversation in the right way, you bring the team together, and give permission for people to stop doing some things, and make clear what they should be emphasising – so it’s really good modelling.

We can't help but have goals. Goals are just destinations and whatever we're doing with our lives right now, our actions are taking us somewhere. Have a conversation about how you ‘cut the anchors off’, and how you ‘make the most of the wind’ ie what are the things that are stopping your team moving forward and what can you do about it?