John Weeks is professor of organizational behavior at IMD, Lausanne business school. He teaches in the orchestrating winning performance and advanced strategic management programs. He will take part in an event with Usain Bolt 6 July 2009 at IMD in which the Olympic gold medalist will share his insights on motivation with a business audience.

Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt is the fastest man in human history after setting three world records at the Beijing Olympics last year. Reaching the heights that Bolt attained required motivation, critical thinking and focus. Even more important, it required turning early setbacks into advantages, turning weaknesses into strengths and developing the motivation required of a world champion. These three attributes are lessons that can apply to those working in business.

Play to one’s strengths

If a sports coach hadn’t recognized that Bolt’s special gift was speed when he was young, he might have stopped at being reasonably good at cricket, a sport he had been practicing in his youth. When coaches advised Bolt to concentrate on a 400-meter race, Bolt had enough self-confidence to realize that his strength lay in the 100-meter dash. The Olympics proved him right. Bolt was cognizant enough in his own abilities that he knew when to accept or ignore feedback.

In business, you often find a heavy emphasis on gap-analysis, encouraging executives to focus on improving their weak points. It is almost always the wrong advice. If you are a great writer, but a terrible speaker, focus on writing even better and get someone else to do the speaking. Often the things we are bad at are the things that we don’t really want to do. A recipe for success is to do fewer of the things we don’t like, and to concentrate on those that we are good at. I remember a salesman who was spectacular at signing up new clients, but terrible at following through. His boss finally fired him. It was a stupid move. Finding his special talent is extremely difficult, while it is easy to find someone to handle mundane details once the sale is made. His boss should have kept him on the job and hired someone else to handle the administration. You need confidence in yourself, and if you are not the CEO, you need an organization that will support you.

Turn setbacks into strength

After going professional Bolt experienced a series of injuries and setbacks that might have discouraged anyone. However, without these setbacks, he might never have achieved the focus, discipline and pacing required of a champion.

What distinguishes highly successful people is not that they face fewer setbacks. We all face obstacles in our lives. However, successful people have the ability to find a positive framing that allows them to learn from setbacks and use them as a source of motivation. Apple’s Steve Jobs likes to tell the story that had he not dropped out of college, the Macintosh would not have been as great a machine. He credits his current success at Apple to having been fired by that company 14 years ago. Facing death helped him focus on what he wanted to achieve in life.

Similarly, what distinguishes highly successful people is not they have no weaknesses. We are all human and are all weak. What distinguishes successful people is their ability to find ways to use their weaknesses to their advantage and to find strengths in themselves that others may not recognize. One of the heroes of the American Civil War was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, an English professor and poet but also a fervent opponent of slavery who felt he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t contribute to the war effort. Many of his colleagues felt he was too bookish to lead men into battle and too intellectual to be an effective field commander. But, when put to the test, the fact that he was different gave him credibility with men who mutinied against their more conventional officers. His ability to clearly articulate his vision of what the Union army was fighting for proved to be inspirational to his soldiers.  Their valiant defense of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg was an important part of the Union victory. Chamberlain was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Motivation is the key to everything

Bolt had trouble early in his career because he was so much faster than everyone else that he neglected training, ate the wrong food and failed to concentrate. That was enough for local competition, but becoming a world champion required more. The key was motivation.

Motivation is equally important in business, and often as difficult to maintain. Some executives feel passionate about the job, or they feel a responsibility to the people they know in the company. Others want to hold on to the influence that comes with the position. What is the incentive for an executive at a company like Microsoft who has already earned millions to stay at the top of his or her form? Executives who already have everything they want can continue to make maximum effort by not resting on their laurels, but find new challenges and other means of motivation to always be better. Many sport stars and executives share an intensely competitive spirit to win, which often has nothing to do with accumulating greater wealth.

What about the executive who sees his career at its limit with no prospects for moving further up the ladder, or is working for a company with a flattened management structure?  In some situations you may have to work at motivation, just as Bolt did. Even the most routine jobs can be made interesting by turning them into a game. The trick is to treat the component parts of the job as a series of challenges and then to set small goals. It is a question of identifying something that you want to do a little bit better, a little bit different and then working on it incrementally. Usain Bolt is only 22 years old, but he knows the way. He has already been there. You in your job can do the same.

Not once did I see any violence, any problems, or confrontations. All I saw was a healthy respect for each other’s country.

The arena was not just a place for fans, it was also a place where parents could feel comfortable about bringing their children too.

There were days when the downpours made the atmosphere more subdued; on others the fans cheered on in baking heat. Plenty of beer was drunk on the hot nights but there never seemed to be any over-drunkenness.

Some evenings saw the arena packed; at other times there were not many folk, but throughout it all there was a spirit of bonhomie. There was collective sighing and booing at the referees, frustration at missed shots and sheer joy when goals were scored.      

After matches the crowd often congregated around the railway station and it became a noisy, but fun place to be. The police were there but kept a healthy distance, with an eye on it all whilst smiling at the fun. The law about the tooting of car horns was completely ignored, they just let the fans celebrate. If there were any problems, I didn’t see any any. What I did see impressed me enormously.

The Spanish fans were in joyous mood last night around Nyon but those whose team didn’t make it still got in their cars to wave flags and be part of the celebrations. A fitting way for a town that has the headquarters of UEFA along its lakeside.

This is how football should be. The football fans of Nyon should be proud of themselves. 

With a clear sky, a warm night and lots of celebrating Portuguese fans congregating around Nyon railway station, the party atmosphere was infectious at the start of Wednesday evening. This encouraged the Swiss fans walking down to the UBS Arena for their big important match.

Eveyone looked hopeful and when Switzerland scored the first goal, and the celebrations continued, at least for the first 40 minutes or so.

Sadly, whenTurkey scored a second time, the atmosphere changed to desperation and frustration, and the walk back up the hill from the arena was a walk of real sadness compounded by the fact that the rain had now come on thick and fast, as if things couldn’t get any worse.

Being the cosmoplitan town this is though, there were bound to be some fans somewhere celebrating and true enough there were some Turkish fans in the centre of town chanting and waving flags.

The UBS Arena is a good place to watch the match with beer and food tents next to the 1,900 free standing places and a good atmosphere guaranteed.

It’s just a shame the right result isn’t guaranteed also.      

So when Graham Dunbar (GenevaLunch’s sports reporter) sent me an email saying that Nyon was doing rather well in basketball, in the cup and league, and there was a match on Sunday in le Rocher, with BBC Nyon against Fribourg, I was intrigued, so went along.

At 17:00 it was already busy in the lobby before the game started with a mixed crowd of different ages and a buzz in the air. Families with enthusiastic children, grandparents, supporters of the visiting team were there either chatting, snacking, drinking beer or sharing a bottle of Chasselas.

There were cheerleaders practising their dance moves and there were
also lots of very, very tall men. I read in the leaflet handed out with
my entrance ticket that the tallest in the Nyon team is 2.07m, and in
the Fribourg team the tallest is 2.09m. Now my own partner is not
exactly small at 1.95m, (just under 6ft 5"). Tall enough that when we
go to a rock concert there is a collective groan of "oh no!" from the
crowd if he stands in front, but at the same time, very useful to spot
in a busy street or for reaching stuff out of a high cupboard. But
these guys at le Rocher were positively enormous.

After a bit of rap/rock music before the game started to get the
team and the audience pumped up, the game began. I should really have
Googled or done a bit of research in advance on the rules of
basketball. When the referee awarded a penalty point, there was such a
protest from the crowd I had no idea what it was about but other than
that, the game itself was easy to follow and exciting.

Nyon started off doing quite well, if they had managed to beat
Fribourg it would have been a real coup as Fribourg are currently at
the top of the league. But there is a great atmosphere at a game like
this. On Sunday the crowd had drums, horns, they stamped their feet and
there was lots of cheering when points were scored. I looked around the
crowd and hardly recognized anyone I knew despite the place being
three-quarters full. I was delighted to discover a whole new world out
there.

Sadly Nyon lost the match, 54-73 but nevertheless it was a fun way
to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. I probably won’t go
to every game but I will certainly go again and recommend you try it
too. If like me your knowledge of the game is pretty basic, then a slam
dunk is a type of basketball shot that is performed when a player jumps
in the air and manually powers the ball downward through the basket
with one or both of his hands.

Fantastic when it happens, so keep an eye on our weekly events page to see if there is a match and a slam dunk near you.