Tour de France update

Since leaving the cobbles of Belgium we have seen three flat stages, a couple of high mountain stages and some interesting lessons in leadership.

Each stage requires team work that delivers a specialist to the front of the race just at the right time. The first of these specialists is the sprinter, and the guy reckoned to be the fastest man over the last 200m is a Brit called Mark Cavendish. His total focus for the entire three weeks of the event is to win the stages that involve a flat out sprint after his team has protected him throughout the stage.

It’s not too dissimilar to the situation in business when, as a leader, you have a technical or functional specialist who is only motivated when they are involved in their particular area of work. We often make the mistake of thinking their excellence will translate into leadership potential, only to be very disappointed when this doesn’t happen. To avoid that trap, a diagnostic tool such as the CHPD High Performance Motivator Questionnaire, can be very helpful in better understanding and focusing these technical experts.
In the case of Mark Cavendish, it takes five or six members of his team to lead him up to the finish line. They have to sacrifice any chance of winning for themselves to enable Mark to hit the final few hundred meters in the prime spot to execute his specialism. So the team tends to be built about the capabilities of one individual. This presents risk to the team (and their sponsors) and makes the reward structures and development of other team members challenging. We see the parallels in business – do you develop a strong pipeline of capability to support strategic intent or do you buy in people to fill specific gaps. As we know it’s probably a mix of the both and the cycling team managers struggle with the same dilemma.

The race has also now reached the ‘high mountains’ requiring another specialism – the ‘mountain climber’. Many of the hills are over 20-30km long with gradients of 10 per cent or more. This territory is where the overall race is won and lost, with massive time differences developing between riders, and the peloton often being split over many kilometres as the hills increase in their intensity and duration. The teams are then faced with a massive logistics problem. Racing cyclist can burn up to 8,000 calories during a race and are often riding close the edge of physical exhaustion. So a well developed behind the scenes back room staff is required to get food, water and energy gels to the right place at precisely the right time. It’s JIT logistics in sport.

The British ‘Sky’ team pays as much attention to the marginal gains in performance in this area of cycle racing as to the performance of the athlete. It’s often an area overlooked in business, in making sure the processes, systems and development of the back room keeps up with the guys on the front line. Success in this area can of course provide real competitive advantage.