Sports and Business Have Much in Common

Sports and business have much in common. Each is about teamwork, graft, discipline and success. And each can learn from each other by sharing knowledge of how best to get to the top.

In sport, motivation is important.

In business, motivation is important.

I have often seen ex-sports personalities give after dinner motivational speeches. Only recently, I had the privilege of seeing Sir Steve Redgrave give a motivational speech on his career and how he handled the successes and knock-backs. How he set goals and objectives, how he worked in a team.

Of course, Sir Steve Redgrave is not the only sporting hero to pass on his brand of motivational expertise to businesses.

Many bolster their pensions by offering their advice to sales teams and management groups.

Of the several I have seen, the one which sticks out, is by Olympic gold medal swimmer Adrian Moorhouse.

Adrian Moorhouse knew from an early age what he wanted from life.

From the moment he saw David Wilkie take gold for Britain in the 1976 Olympics of Montreal, he wanted one too.

It was a reward for many years of sacrifice and pain.

As a 16-year-old Moorhouse had just missed out on selection for Moscow in 1980 and in 1984 he went to Los Angeles as Commonwealth and European champion and suffered his biggest disappointment when he came in fourth.

Devastated

"I was absolutely devastated," he said. "Ever since I was a kid all I wanted to win was an Olympic medal.

"Swimming was my life. I was a bit of a `Billy No-mates' because all I spent all my time in the pool.

"It took me four or five months to get over the hurt of missing out but the failure made me tougher."

Moorhouse explained how he set about winning his medal in the Seoul Olympics of 1988. After failing at the previous games in Los Angeles, he was determined to win the next time around.

To do so, Adrian realised he would need to break the world record, which was then 2 minutes faster then his personal best.

It seemed an impossible task: who could improve by 2 minutes. But Adrian worked out that to speed up by that amount, he needed to reduce his time by 30 seconds each year. Thirty seconds a year meant 2.5 seconds a month; 2.5 seconds a month was 0.65 seconds a week and 0.65 seconds a week was 0.08 seconds a day.

That means, if he did two training sessions a day, Adrian only had to improve his speed each time by one four hundredth of a second to become Olympic Champion.

Adrian Moorhouse winning the Olympic Gold Medal

It’s easy when you look at it like that (or is it?)

Moorhouse’s point is that, as his experienced proved, little improvements accumulate into big ones, in business as in sport.

The power and clarity of his speech is still with me today.

Can you use Adrian’s approach and break down your goals / targets into daily ones?

Which sporting hero have you seen give a motivational speech?