Can the new training techniques that are helping American athletes achieve record medal results be applied to small and mid-size businesses to improve their own form of gold medal: profits?

In a Fox News feature this morning, commentators noted that American training techniques have dramatically changed and that this change is responsible for record medal performance. The changes fall into two areas: all-body training vs. single movement training, and the heightened emphasis on balance and recovery training.

All-body training refers to conditioning muscles as they interrelate in movement. The opposite of all-body training is the classical core or single movement training  in which individual  muscles – like biceps – are exercised independently.

Balance training is aimed at helping the body achieve recovery after extreme movements.

To get a picture of what this looks like, think of a downhill racer and the need for the entire body to respond and recover. In effect, we are seeing the synergy effect- when all muscles are integrated they perform better than the sum of their parts.

This is a compelling concept for small and mid-size business; rather than over-build individual skills, departments, or functional areas (the muscles of any business) business can chose to build up the way skills, departments, and functional areas work together. In this way they support and sustain each other to achieve balance and to react to extreme business disorientations.

Of course, if a business lacks skills, talent, knowledge, or experience in an area critical for success, it must first gain them. In the words of Peter Drucker, only strengths produce results. However, the key is how to manage the development of the entire organization and not to overemphasize one area to the detriment of the total organization to produce results. This may mean, for example, that it is more productive to invest in coordinating marketing and sales rather than simply increasing the marketing budget for lead generation.

Part 2 of Managing by Harold Geneen deals with the outcome of management, and that is performance.

Performance is Your Reality.

Performance is the basis of evaluating management. Geneen defined performance as growth and accomplishment over a protracted period of time in an ever-changing business world.

Not every problem can be solved. In this situation you change the business environment. You cannot continue accepting inadequate results and explaining them. “The acid test is not the explanation, however logical and reasonable. The test is whether or not you as a manage accept as satisfactory those unsatisfactory results, without doing enough about it.”

Performance does not come from a theory. You cannot run a business, or anything else, on a theory.  “We are always buying nostrums of some kind, even in business, where we call them concepts, because we are always looking for simple formulas that will solve our complex problems. Business theories are like that.”

On performance, Geneen and Drucker agree. “The function of management is to produce results.” And, “The ultimate test of management is performance.” (From The Daily Drucker.)

See all the posts on Geneen’s book, Managing, by clicking on “Geneen” in the tag cloud, in the column on the right side.