In the C-Suite: Be a Decathlete
Continuing on my athletics theme from my earlier post….
I enjoyed watching the European Championships. Finely honed, laser focused athletes putting themselves on the line.
I thought wouldn’t it be great to have that level of focus in the work/life place? But the parallels with work/life are surely weak given the number of conflicting and sometimes unrelated targets we are chasing?
Then I thought of the decathletes. They have 10 primary KPIs that are also conflicting (eg 100m (speed) versus 1500m (endurance) , high jump (light) versus discuss (heavy)), They somehow need to master 10 events in the time that sole practitioners master one. Of course they typically would lose against the sole practitioner but their performance would far exceed their ‘measly’ 10% commitment to the event.
Perhaps the steps are to:
- Identify what are the 10 most important matters you are committed to: personal health, profitability, family, market share etc and assign one KPI measure to each
- Set your targets and deadlines accordingly
- Establish where the synergies and conflicts lie in your objectives
- Plan realistically.
- Execute ruthlessly
- Monitor regularly
- Celebrate successes / analyse failures.
We live in a world where we are pulled in many different directions. If you have to change your objectives then do so but do not omit the steps above.
But what happened when your key objectives exceed 10? Well that’s the time to start delegating to other decathletes.
