The vast majority of managers love to refer to sport as a metaphor for their quest for performance. Sport, and particularly high-level sport, can thus be a real source of inspiration for organizations (“The high-level athlete, a wealth for the company”, by Mireille Blaess, 2024).
Its universal language, transcending ages and cultures, makes it a model of excellence and self-improvement. But beyond speeches and symbols, companies can go further by drawing concrete inspiration from practices in the sporting world.
This is what Benoît Campargue’s journey shows us. Former European and world judo champion, now an entrepreneur, he then became coach of Teddy Riner and the French Olympic Judo team, before sharing his expertise with other sporting disciplines such as Formula 1. , figure skating, football and horse riding.
From his unique experience, here are eight valuable lessons businesses can learn to improve their performance:
Lesson #1: the illusion of the podium
The sooner an athlete sees himself on the podium, the less likely he is to set foot there.
Performance is only the consequence of an approach to excellence, of hard, planned and precise work. Great champions prepare for their competitions by conscientiously going through all the stages allowing them to reach the level required to eventually triumph. It’s impossible to get to your destination if the path is not the right one.
Benoît Campargue knows this well: “Before arriving on the podium, the champion must above all give himself the means to win. If the latter is lucky enough to succeed, he must know his next objective once he gets off the podium!”
Companies rarely know at what cost performance is achieved. Moreover, the budgetary framework aims more to negotiate the means than to verify their adequacy with the ambitions.
What is the point of pushing an organization to achieve ambitious results without working in depth on the quality of management or information systems? By paying more attention to means and less to results, leaders could increase their ability to win medals.
Lesson n°2: no performance without pleasure
All top athletes say it: mentality plays as much a role as physical abilities in a major competition.
To prepare their minds, athletes optimize their pleasure as much as their performance through moments of collective renewal with family or with other athletes, or through positive visualization exercises in order to reconnect with their best feelings.
Benoît Campargue remembers: “Above all, it was the pleasure of being together that united and motivated the collective of young people of which Teddy Riner was a part; for example in the mini-van which took them to Brétigny every Wednesday. These future champions relied on this solidarity to pass the harsh tests required by the high level. It’s called “sticking together” in the most difficult moments like the long internships in Japan.”
Rather than opposing performance and pleasure, or confining questions of well-being at work to the sole field of QVCT, companies could focus more on the questions of mental preparation and optimization of pleasure in the workplace. professional life.
Lesson #3: Talent is just potential
Successful athletes are those who manage to exploit the full potential of their talent. However, there are many great sporting hopes who have never realized their potential, due to lack of work, perseverance or even humility.
While he was director of the French Olympic judo teams, Benoît Campargue prioritized “those who were in full progress and especially in a process of progress, rather than those who relied on their past performances”.
Today, companies place great importance on the “talents” they seek to attract, retain and develop. By favoring the term “potential”, the company would naturally be part of a development approach, more engaging and less transactional with respect to employees. From a purely economic point of view, it is also interesting to ask whether the organization has already exploited its full “potential” before recruiting new “talent”.
Lesson #4: Practice Doing Together
Training takes up most of an athlete’s time. It is therefore an opportune time, freed from the pressure of competition, to take risks, observe others, learn from mistakes, improve and prepare calmly without getting injured.
“It is during training that an athlete’s confidence is built, the vision of his competitors as well as partners or coaches changes everything when we are in a process of progress. The more these competitors bully you, the more you progress” confides Benoît Campargue.
In business, we often observe a lack of time dedicated to training. Employees are constantly in a “match” situation, without the possibility of taking the time to experiment and learn. This can prove to be a hindrance to performance, because it is difficult to progress without ever escaping the pressure of daily work.
Implementing a company training program could prove to be an effective solution to maximize employee performance. For example, when it comes to teamwork, regular training sessions would allow you to learn without pressure how to give feedback, help each other, and collaborate.
Lesson #5: Failure is a springboard
Once the emotion of a defeat has passed, top athletes know that these are the richest moments for learning. It is therefore for themanalyze their failures and use them as a springboard to progress and motivate themselves.
“In judo, the first thing you learn is how to fall. By mastering falling, I learn to no longer be afraid of it and therefore to face risks and then not fall again. This is valid in any discipline, including the business world” explains Benoît Campargue.
In business, failure is too often synonymous with guilt rather than opportunity. By systematically formalizing the analysis of failures – or even celebrating them – companies would give themselves the means to make fewer errors than their competitors.
Lesson #6: “Deciding is winning”
In sport too, you have to make strategic and tactical choices. These must be as clear as possible to allow athletes to prepare and not have to think when they are in the heat of the action.
At the high level, making decisions also allows you to better analyze the reasons for your successes or failures without relying on external hazards (the referee, the field, the competitors, etc.). To achieve high performance, a decision – good or bad – is better than no decision at all. “Deciding is winning! In these conditions, we know why we won or why we lost” Benoît Campargue likes to say.
Companies want to make good decisions with a minimum of risk, documented at length, which can sometimes jeopardize the ability of teams to organize and progress – especially in a context of high volatility where non-decision means suffering the consequences. external hazards without ever learning anything from its own performance. What if the decision time was as much a criterion of success as the performance that results from it?
Lesson #7: The adversary is a partner
In 2022, in his poignant farewell speech, Roger Federer thanks his great competitors Djokovic and Nadal: “We pushed each other, and together we took tennis to new heights”. Even in an individual sport, the other is an inexhaustible source of development and performance.
Benoît Campargue also observed this: “Champions like Teddy Riner owe their success to their ability to constantly learn from everyone, from their friends and their competitors, like a sponge.”
As martial arts teach us, using another’s strength to your advantage allows you to achieve your goals using the minimum amount of energy. However, in business, a large quantity of energy is literally lost in the various clashes which destroy more value than they create: wars between departments, resistance to change, interpersonal tensions.
Viewing competition as a learning opportunity rather than a threat changes our perception of colleagues, including those with whom we have no affinity. If each employee strived to learn something from a different person every day, this could generate a significant accumulation of knowledge and know-how within the company.
Lesson No. 8: the coach and the captain
In team sports, leadership is distributed horizontally, meaning everyone is co-responsible. Collective action is therefore the result of the initiatives that each teammate will take for the good of the team.
Here are some particularly edifying examples:
- The coach and captain of a team have complementary roles and skills, one on the field, the other off it. The manager is often torn between the two positions.
- The attacker will not consult the coach or the captain if an opportunity to score presents itself, it is his responsibility which is engaged. In business, the question of autonomy is too often stifled by the bureaucracy of control.
- On the pitch, nothing prevents an attacker from coming back to defend, if the team needs it. In business, “job descriptions” often freeze everyone’s roles by reducing this agility.
- In a team, the quality of passing and off-ball play is as crucial as that of the players themselves. In business, cooperation is more often an injunction than an object of collective work.
Rather than designing static and rigid organizational charts, companies could benefit from mastering how matches are played.
In conclusion, high-level sport has much more to offer than simple symbolic values. In this Olympic year, companies have more than ever the opportunity to develop their practices by promoting examples and inspiring moments from sport.
2024-04-06 06:36:05
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