Perhaps it is the euphoria of the moment, but the Paris Olympics have reset the mood of many nations over the summer, including here in Ireland, where the centre of Dublin was brought to a standstill to welcome home the team with its record medal haul. What’s more, Ireland took golden glory in sports where it had previously not been particularly competitive.
Sport has much to teach us about business. There’s a lucrative post-playing career for many footballers and rugby players on the after-dinner circuit telling companies about their exploits and how they are transferable to the corporate world. Team sports are about inclusiveness and the strength of the group over the individual. However, what are the lessons that company leaders and founders, those tasked with making the key future decisions, can take away from the Olympics? After all, the biggest sports – athletics, swimming, gymnastics – are largely individual events.
The Olympics demand an incredible level of endurance and pain
Yet these athletes give over the totality of their lives to the goal of just getting there, setting a personal best, qualifying for a final and being in the hunt for a medal. The Olympics demand an incredible level of endurance, resilience and pain over a four-year cycle. There is no short-term gain to be had in many of the sports. For most of those who compete, there is no glory. There are simply the years of silent commitment culminating with success and failure visible to all.
Success on a shoestring
There are parallels here for chief executives and other leaders. Startup founders face years of struggle, hard work and toil, working out how to convince people their product or service is worth the investment and how to build it in the face of adversity. You can learn more from the young swimmer or gymnast who gets up early in the morning to train six days a week with few resources than from a Premier League footballer with all their club’s backroom staff and resources at their disposal.
One of the biggest takeaways from these young stars lies in dealing with failure. It is something those in business all have to face. Not every year can be about growth. Achievements take time to happen. Dealing with that – and, hopefully, overcoming it – requires strength and resilience.
The strength to return with success after a long and lonely journey is an inspiration
One of the highlights for Ireland was Rhys McClenaghan capturing our first-ever gold medal in gymnastics. His victory in Paris came after he went into the finals three years previously in Tokyo fancied for a medal only to finish second-last because of a slip of his finger on the pommel horse. How do you overcome that kind of crushing setback? That mental strength to return, and return with success, after a long and lonely journey is an inspiration – one similarly supplied by the US gymnast Simone Biles. How to recover from failure is a lesson we all need.
There’s one other lesson businesses should take from countries that have moved up the medal table, and that is looking at how they got there. For all of the raw talent of the individual medallists, it requires national Olympics committees to decide which sports to target, identify talented individuals, and nurture and guide them to success. We have much to learn from that process too.
