I had the privilege to do a facilitated discussion with a group of athletes recently. They were young, focused and dedicated. We were chatting about what it took to be successful as an athlete and how that carried over into everyday life. Some said they were planning and training to be Olympians. So I asked two questions. What are you willing to sacrifice to make it happen and what are you willing to do to reach your goal?

The conversation that ensued surprised me. Some didn’t feel they had to give up anything because they knew what they wanted. There was no real sacrifice because everything you wanted was part of being an Olympian. Yet others (most of them) said the usual things like giving up boy/girl friends, a social life, and maybe less video gaming time. They understood that to be a champion meant to sacrifice. I think that was the first lesson learned.

As we chatted further I was reminded of a blog I wrote some time ago about what it takes to be an Olympian and how it could apply to our professional and business lives. I have always admired the strength, flexibility and endurance of an Olympic Athlete. Actually of all athletes.

It takes a lot of dedication to become a successful athlete. Olympians are at the apex of perfection. The fact that they get to go to the games is amazing, but to win makes them champions. There are secrets in training and preparations that Olympic Athletes have that increase their potential for success. As business leaders we can learn a lot from Olympic Athletes and young athletes to help us become business champions.

As we chatted further we discussed 11 Tips from Peak Olympic Athletes on What to Do to Be a Champion. Here are the 11 Tips we discussed to be the best of the best.

1. Have a Plan: It is amazing how many business leaders do not have a plan–they just wing it. The reality of being a top athlete is that you must have a plan. From diet, to workouts, to rest, there is a plan of focused intent. Know what it is you want to accomplish and why it is so important. Have a strategic road map for your business success.
2. Create a Routine: A routine is everything. It is part of your plan. Routines require an emphasis on high value activities. Focus on those things that will make a difference to you and your business. Schedule them in and make sure you do them.
3. Take Care of Yourself: Top performers usually have off-the-chart energy. How do they manage this? They take care of themselves through a healthy dose of proper eating and rest. Even the greatest boxer who ever lived, Mohammed Ali, ate well and rested. He took one day off a week to relax and ease his body and mind.
4. Proper warm-up and recovery: If you are going to work hard then you need to ensure you have proper warm up and recovery. This includes creating a natural rhythm to your business, as well as building in agility and flexibility. This is something that should be part of any good business practice. You and your people need to ensure they take the time needed to remain limber and prepared.
5. It’s all in the Head: Mental preparation is all about psychologically preparing for the big events. It is easy to get psyched out and think you or your people are not good enough. You need to tell yourself and your team they are the best at what they do. Create mindful rehearsals, read inspirational books, or count your blessings daily. Whatever it takes to build the mindset of a champion.
6. Have a Trainer and Coach: Great athletes have coaches–we all know this. Business leaders who want to mix it up know they need help. From motivation to accountability, a coach can make a difference.
7. Be dynamic on your business: You can’t just focus on one thing in your business. You need to consider all the moving parts and train yourself in those parts. Olympic Athletes switch things up using fixed to variable equipment; they run, jump, throw, row, and do a lot more. The key, they mix things up.
8. Engage your People: Olympians have a team of engaged people who are rooting for them. It includes many key stakeholders including family and friends, sponsors and vendors, managers, coaches, trainers and peers. Engaging your team is important for your business as well. It is important you find a way to connect your people to what it is you want to accomplish. Engage the people that are in your corner.
9. Prepare for Heavy Lifting: All champions need to build their strength and endurance. Find ways to build your ability to deal with the events that are the heavy lifting of your business success. Build core competencies in yourself and those around you. Part of an Olympic Athlete’s heavy lifting ability is having a strong, engaged core. The same is true in business: businesses without a strong core tend to have more challenges. Make sure you have engaged your core.
10. Train Early in the Day: Common wisdom says to train early in the day. Most Olympic Athletes do. Create an early ritual of getting focused, reviewing your strategic plan and the work plans that you have laid out. Focus on building up skills that will take you to where you need to go.
11. Build your Training Team: A dedicated team is everything for a Champion. You must have a team that will not only work with you, but also train with you. Olympic athletes are known to train together for years before they turn to competing against each other. Therefore, a training team can include your peers, your team and your competitors. Olympians train with their competition so they get better.

We can learn a lot from athletes on how to succeed in business. In business we ultimately want to be the best at what we do—we want to become champions. One of the best places to look for inspiration is at our Olympic Champions and the hard work and dedication they put into being the best at what they do. Like them, the first step to becoming the best is to think and act like a champion. Something that I think is very important. The mental and physical capacity to see ourselves as champions is an important one. Even more important is to train everyday to be the best of the best. Good luck.

It is important to note that strategic planning is an exercise in gathering and documenting requirements about the past, present, and future of your business. It helps determine where you want to go over the next few years, how you are going to get there and how to recognize when you’ve arrived.

The most common strategic planning approaches use a strategic triangle and seek to align strategic agenda items with the tactical reality of the organization.

Starting from the top use the following seven steps: 

1. Identify your mission statement. It is amazing how many organizations don’t take the time to develop this declaration. A mission statement is foundational to all strategic planning work. An effective mission statement describes what the company does, provides insight into client value and captures the essence of your business.

2. Create a vision of the future. A vision statement should look to the future. After all, you can’t get to where you want to go unless you know where you want to go. Think ahead to three to five years from now and write your story. What is it that your organization has achieved? Tighten that story into a clear, crisp sentence and share it.

3. Develop core values and guiding principles. Core values and Guiding principles are foundational to your entire organization. Guiding principles are a set of standard guidelines formed by the business that captures how your people act, work, make decisions, set priorities and conduct themselves. It is imperative to set and communicate core values and principles or else they will set themselves over time through employee habits.

One Day Strategic Planning Training Workshop with Richard Lannon

4. Create long-term goals and smart objectives. Goals are general statements outlining what you want to achieve to meet your mission and vision and address any issues you are facing. For every goal, it is important to identify strategies to achieve them. Objectives should be SMART; that means specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. It is important that you make a distinction between long-term goals and smart objectives for those aims.

5. Establish an action roadmap with timelines. An action Roadmap is a visual representation of your strategic planning items. It includes high-level agenda items, initiatives, champions and key elements. It includes the key areas that your organization will focus on to achieve its goals and objectives.

6. Build a communication plan. Communication plans should not be complicated and should be within your organization. It is important that time is spent determining the best approach for getting people informed as to what is planned and ensuring that they know impacts of not achieving the objectives. Consider printed plans, maps, high-level visuals, town hall sessions, etc. It is all about communication. Be visual, be creative.

7. Establish an implementation and monitoring plan. This is important to be successful. Organizations and teams fail because they don’t assign a top-notch resource to put together an implementation plan. Consider using a highly-skilled program manager or director to translate the strategic plan into tactical reality. Ensure that the rules of engagement are established and build a robust monitoring process that engages people in open dialogue centered around the actions that must be taken to be successful.

There are many Benefits

Strategic planning is an important part of every organization’s success. There are many advantages of any strategic planning approach that a business leader must consider. This means selecting the best framework for your organization and involving key stakeholders in the planning process.

Working together, as a team, your clarity of vision and purpose should be established: mission, vision, core values and guiding principles are part of that process. Linking to these items allow your people to set realistic goals and objectives that are consistent with the business requirements and organization’s needs.

This connection helps business leaders and their teams to identify strategic and tactical plans that need to be carried out in a defined time frame within the organization’s capacity. The key is to build a strategy map and road map that will be implemented. This requires the thoughtful integration of leading and lagging performance indicators that act as milestones, so you know if you are on track. As you move forward, work and communications plans must be established to enable the organization’s plans. These plans help you know where it is you want to go and develop your approach to get there.

These are the things that create value for the business leader when it comes to strategic planning. It is part of the S.E.T. Approach where business leaders and their teams formulate and prepare their strategic direction.

Final Thought

There are key elements that must go into strategic planning; if you do not have all the items to start with, then you must start with the strategic planning triangle. Everything that you do as an organization will come from your strategic plan. There are options: consider strategic planning training for your people on or engage a strategic facilitator to assist in the process.

Canada has a diverse economy. We enjoy the fruits of that diversity with opportunities in all business sectors; agriculture, oil and gas, forestry and mining, to name a few.

Recently, I had to opportunity to interview Georg Nickel, CEO of Multicrete Systems about the Mining Industry in Canada and the impact resource prices on service companies. 

As I started to prepared I wondered about the Mining Industry in Canada and the World. I was fascinated find out that Canada’s mining industry has come a long way since the discovery of coal on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, nearly 350 years ago.

There are now approximately 800 mining operations in Canada, and many Canadian communities can trace their roots back to mining and exploration activities.

Click for the Show: @680CJOB Show Link the SPAR – Guest Georg Nickel

Canada is now one of the largest mining nations in the world, producing more than 60 minerals and metals. This means the Canadian mining industry contributes nearly 5% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product with production values of approximately $42 billion per year.

Mining in Canada also accounts for 19% of the country’s total exports with direct employment of around 400,000 per year. We rank first in the world for the production of potash and uranium, while ranking in the top five for the production of nickel, cobalt, titanium concentrate, aluminum, magnesium and platinum group metals, gypsum, asbestos, cadmium, zinc, salt, molybdenum, and diamonds.

This means that the mining industry accounts for approximately 1 in every 46 Canadian jobs, while in the goods producing sector, mining accounts for one in every ten jobs. This makes the mining industry is an integral part of the economic fabric of our country – – Canada.

I have wondered about this business sector and the companies that support its success. On the S.P.A.R. for building business champions @680CJOB Georg Nickel, CEO of MultiCrete Systems Inc shared their experience with the ever changing landscape of the mining industry.

He talked about his business journey, their community involvement and three business champion tips of focus and diversify, existing customers and investing in continuous improvement as a means to business success. All tips are grounded in the experience within the mining industry.

Take a listen to the interview for more information from a great Canadian Business success story.

Click for the Show: @680CJOB Show Link the SPAR – Guest Georg Nickel

This Weeks Red Question: What adjustments do you need to make in your business to ensure your success?