I recently watched the Chris Hoy documentary, a good few months after it initially aired and felt genuinely moved by how truly inspirational he is as a person. As a parent with young boys, I couldn’t help thinking what a stark contrast this was versus many so called ‘influencers’ of today who are capturing huge followings amongst the young and whose activities and views seem to be anything but role model behaviours.

There were many messages in the program that stuck, I think the biggest being staying positive and being able to find hope and directing efforts to achieve positive goals even during extremely challenging times.

Another message though which resonated with me was hearing Chris talk about his career in cycling and what made him as successful. We often hear about the importance of focusing on the goal and on the outcome and at times talk of process demoted to some sort of second tier of importance, oh ‘you’re too process oriented’, ‘too rigid in your thinking’, ‘standardising things won’t work here’ etc. I heard this many times in my career and whilst it’s absolutely right to have outcomes in mind, process is inextricably linked and it’s importance should not be diminished’

Sir Chris was very clear in his view, and made several comments about having faith in the process, that you can control the process but you can’t always control the outcome. He met up with his trainer and they discussed the various exercises he did in training, before and during a race. Essentially the message was focus on the variables you can control to give yourself the best chance of achieving your desired outcome. His training, preparation and conditioning meant, when coupled with his huge desire to achieve, that his success was almost inevitable.

‘whilst it’s absolutely right to have outcomes in mind, process is inextricably linked and it’s importance should not be diminished’

Whilst there’s obviously some difference between sporting and business worlds there’s also many parallels, and Sir Chris’s outlook and approach has a clear application in the world of business transformation and business performance. Early on in my career, I became something called a Six Sigma Black Belt, essentially a process methodology that provided a recipe to tackle any business problem or opportunity summarised by a simple acronym – DMAIC which stands for Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control. Twenty years later it’s stuck with me as well as some of the tools and techniques. The bottom line is it correlates with exaclty what Chris Hoy is saying and considering the marginal gains which are so critical in elite level sport, having a structured approach is imperative

In my work as a consultant helping business improve operational performance to deliver commercial results. The approach of having a clearly defined goal, and then being data driven in order to design, lean, efficient ways of working to achieve those defined outcomes is paramount. It’s never a case of either process focus or outcome focus, the two things go hand in glove. If you need help transforming your business to better commercial performance, please get in touch, I’m confident i can help find ways to unlock the potential.