A great couple of weeks for star performance: yes, the Tokyo Olympics has produced a round of heroic stories of fantastic achievement. Here in the UK, it also gives a great start to the day to see and hear about successes and watch all kinds of people – Sky Brown on a Skateboard, or Tom Daley diving, for example – making a name for themselves while entertaining and amazing millions.
I have not amazed or entertained millions – at least not this week. Yet I have been observing another ingredient of what makes for success.
Last weekend I was fortunate to be invited to Silverstone Race Circuit to the annual Silverstone Classic – a car show with races running through it. I was there courtesy of my friend & neighbour and his classic 48-year-old Triumph Stag, along with some 450 other Stags. A feature of this was a parade lap around the circuit. This was huge fun; you get to feel a tiny part of a F1 driver on the same tarmac that Lewis Hamilton and Sebastien Vettel competed on a few weeks earlier. This parade lap was so important that even the rain stopped.
Sitting in the passenger seat while my friend does the driving in a non-competitive parade absolutely does not make me a star – but I did get to observe directly what enables star performance. There was the huge number of (mainly) volunteer marshals.
Motor racing – like all the Olympic sports – is only possible because of the army of people who direct, enable, watch, encourage, police, fix, help and stop things going wrong. With race marshals at Silverstone this also involves sweeping up when a ‘star’ overdoes it.
This was bought into hard focus as news reached us that the previous day at Brands Hatch motor circuit, a volunteer marshal sadly lost his life as the result of car leaving the circuit. The event there was understandably suspended for the day, and that marshal’s service was universally recognised my many – including F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton.
Adds meaning to the term commitment, doesn’t it?
The TV Olympic coverage is rightly looking at the competitors, yet even without spectators there are huge number of ‘marshals’ and other volunteers putting in a huge amount of work so that stars can shine.
The stars get their medals, but for volunteers, they get the satisfaction of taking part and enabling. I even did a tiny bit of this myself at the recent Compton Verney Half Marathon.
For you and your work – who are your star performers?
Maybe more importantly, who are the ones who enable that star performance? Could it be the PA, the cleaning staff, friendly barista, intern, apprentice, or receptionist? At work they may not be volunteers, but that gives a clue – they may not be working just because of the money. They need some essential job satisfaction in serving to enable them to do what they do.
In the UK one group of frequently less recognised workers are now receiving attention, mainly because there are fewer of them: truck drivers. They often work out of the spotlight – unsocial hours, on the road, delivering ‘round the back’ and out of sight. Yet a reduction of available drivers is now causing some empty shelves and possible reduce shop hours.
One response has been financial – some supermarkets are offering ‘signing on’ bonuses of £1000 for new drivers.
How does your workplace recognise the contribution of the ‘enablers’? Is this through the satisfaction of the work, the working environment, the interaction with the people around them – or just the money?.
The stars get the attention and the recognition – but in your business who is really enabling star performance?
Buzzwords of the Week – Monte Carlo simulations
Definition – A Monte Carlo simulation is a model, usually on a huge spreadsheet, designed to predict the probability of different outcomes when there are random variables present. The simulation takes a variable that has uncertainty and assigns it a random value. The model is then run to obtain a result. This process is repeated and again, while assigning the variable in question with many different values. This can be assigned to other variables too. Once the complete, the results are averaged to provide an estimate.
Alternate View – Fabulous idea to predict the unpredictable and build the Sistine Chapel of spreadsheets too. These can entertain statisticians for years. While impressive in their complexity, there remains no guarantee that the predicted outcome is correct. Yet it is more likely – and this has been proved – to be correct that my personal guess work. Useful for defining the difference between estimate and guesswork.
Coming Up…
Online Learning – my online finance programme – How to Read Financial Statements. This is a series of 7 online lessons:
- How finance fits with Strategy
- The Language of finance
- Owning & Owing – using the Balance Sheet
- Measuring & Managing Profit
- Measuring & Managing Liquidity
- Budgets, what, why & how
- The most important part of all
Each last between 20 & 40 minutes and includes the slides and videos to help you understand what good looks like in financial terms.
For more details and to sign up now: https://mailchi.mp/92ada0829df3/htrfs-v2
HR Hot Topics is Friday 13th August at 1.00pm – when Peter Freeth & I with CIPD Coventry & Warwickshire will facilitate a discussion on the hottest HR issues. To join – it’s free – by signing up here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/online-cipd-cov-warks-hr-hot-topics-networking-meeting-tickets-165742563469?aff=ebdsoporgprofile