Posts Tagged ‘Sailing’

Message to the Sporting World - Do it your own way!

OK - the Olympics have finished.

Now comes the “GAMES”…………the junkets and fact finding missions the Sporting leaders from most countries are about to embark on to find out what the USA, Germany, Great Britain, South Korea, China and Australia are doing to be successful in the Olympics.

The logic seems simple enough.

“Our country didn’t win any medals at the Olympics” says the Minister for Sport.

“Country XYZ won lots of medals at the Olympics”, says the CEO of the Sports Commission.

“Therefore if we want medals and we copy them we will win medals”, thinks everyone in the room.

“Hooray!!!! Problem solved - let’s buy some air tickets”.

Seems like common sense.

Waste of time.

Waste of money.

Waste of energy.

If the past has taught us one thing it is that high performance systems, structures and models do not work outside of the culture that created them.

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Beijing Blast Number Five: 10 things to include in your Beijing Review

So Beijing 2008 is over.

Now is the time to start planning to win in London 2012.

Or World Championships 2009.

Or Commonwealth Games 2010.

Or the next World Cup.

All sports in all nations will do some sort of Beijing Performance Review in coming months.

Some will do it well - many will just do it as a “tick the box - we have to do a review” exercise.

How many athletes, coaches and support staff will actually use the review process as an opportunity to improve their performances in future major competitions? 

How many will just see the review as a pointless waste of time enforced on them by the Funding Agencies or the Board?

So what are the 10 most important things to include in any Beijing review?

Reviews are critical in assessing three key things:

What did you do that WORKED - WENT WELL?

What did you do that didn’t WORK - WENT BADLY?

What did you learn and you can introduce to improve your performance NEXT TIME?

A good review asks questions - the trick is in knowing what questions to ask, why to ask them and who to ask.

Even more importantly, is knowing what to do with the answers to those questions.

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