44 seconds. That was the difference between first and second place in a nearly six and half hour race. It was my 12th triathlon of the 2009 racing season and I came in second place. By 44 seconds…
Triathlons are a unique sport as there are no scoreboards and usually no coaches providing you any information throughout the contest. The nature of the event is that it is an individual sport and you are racing among your peers. However, you generally don’t know who your competitor, or “peers”, are during most of the struggle. You can pass others and/or be passed in the swim, on the bike, or in one of two transitions. This can happen and you may not even realize what happened.
This happened to me.
I was leading after nearly four hours of swimming and biking. Somewhere on the run, I was passed by one of my competitors. But, none of that is part of what I learned during this last race of 2009. I learned that when you don’t have any information while in the middle of a process, you need to keep your the plan and continue to move forward.
Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail
When I was at mile five of the 13.1 mile run that day, I knew I that was going slower than I wanted to. I knew I was in pain. And I knew that it was only going to get worse. I became discouraged. And rather than keeping a slower pace and maintaining steady progress as I had planned, I did the worse thing possible: I nearly gave up. I assumed that I had gone from winning to merely finishing simply becasue I had no information to tell me otherwise.
I allowed my default mental position to be a negative thought and didn’t refocus my thoughts on the careful plan and preparation that got me that point of success. I was considering giving up and didn’t even know that I was very much in the front of the pack. As a matter of fact, I could have won that race had I simply executed my winning plan rather than doubting it. Mistakingly, I focused on my pain and forgot that everyone else was in an equal or greater amount as me. All I really had to do was to gather information on my own to see that everyone was hurting on the run and we were all moving slow. Arghhh!
Leading Through Pain
Sometimes, our employees probably feel the same way. They may be in some kind of “pain” caused by frustration, inadequate resources, or confusing signals. Their work may not be going as planned and their leaders (us) may not be providing all the information needed. Or, perhaps the plan was just wrong. Just like my run plan in the race was wrong for the course I was on. as leaders, we need to have the level of communication with the people on our teams to be able to coach tem through the difficult times and be there to give them as much information and feedback as we can. We have to immagine that they could be feeling as though they are in an epic battle (internally) and need some help to get through it.
As leaders, we need to be smart, creative, and flexible enough to adjust the plans in certain situations. This is much better than abandoning the race.
Application
The next time you are responsible for a multi-phase program, make sure you have a good plan that takes into account your organizations capabilities as well as the terrain (physical, political, organizational) that you will be covering.
- Establish checkpoints along the course and objectively evaluate progress at those checkpoints.
- During those evaluations, be realistic with how the health of the team is holding up (are they pushing too hard?, not hard enough?).
- Evaluate whether you have all the resources that you need to be successful.
- Evaluate whether you can accomplish your goals when you cross the finish line.
Adjust your program plans as necessary to meet your goals, but don’t get discouraged along the way and end up losing by 44 seconds.
Have you ever second-guessed your progress only to see that distraction cause you to come in second place? Are you confident enough in your plans so that you can proceed and win? Do you have contingency planning in place that will allow you to change pace, or recalibrate your plans along the way? And what are you doing to insure that your team is getting enough information to help them keep their bearing along thier journey? I’d love to hear your stories or comments?
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Scott Archibald is a Managing Director at Bender Consulting.
Scott can be reached at [email protected]
Images Sources: zeeks.com, i97.photobucket.com
