March 2, 2010
Lesson six: Opportunism
Winning gold takes talent and hard work, but there’s often also an element of luck involved – the trick for athletes is to maximize the impact of skill and minimize the element of chance. Having said that, winning athletes know they can never eliminate the role of luck entirely – all they can do is position themselves to capitalize when opportunity presents itself.
For instance, in the finals of the 500 meter speed skating competition at the Salt Lake Olympics, Australian Steven Bradbury was trailing when a collision wiped out US favorite Apolo Anton Ohno and the other leaders. By being opportunistic, Bradbury claimed the first winter Olympic gold of any athlete from the Southern Hemisphere.
The same applies to financial advisors. You can have a great plan – but you still need to be adaptable and flexible and open to opportunities that present themselves.
In an article last year on capitalizing on corporate layoffs, I wrote about an advisor in a mid-sized community in which the biggest employer announced layoffs on a Friday. This advisor spent the weekend going through the company’s termination offer and pension plan and talking to an accountant and lawyer she knew.
The following Wednesday, just five days after the layoffs were announced, the three of them were offering lunch-time and after-hours workshops at a hotel across the street from the company’s office, attracting laid off employees through email invitations from a client who worked for this company. This advisor spent much of her time in the next six weeks focused on this and got great results. That’s an example of seizing an unexpected opportunity.
Click here to read the article on turning corporate downsizing into opportunity.
Lesson seven: Teamwork
Today’s Olympic athletes are supported by a phalanx of trainers, nutritionists and psychologists. For instance, U.S. skier and gold and bronze medalist Lindsey Vonn travels with her “vonntourage” of two trainers, a ski technician and her coach (who’s also her husband).
While there will always be individualists - in 2007, New Hampshire’s gold medalist Bode Miller announced that he was leaving the U.S. ski team to race as an independent – even athletes who race in individual disciplines almost always operate as a team. He rejoined the US Olympic team last October – and ended up winning a gold, silver and bronze medal in Vancouver.
In the same way, it’s essential for advisors to have the right team behind them. That team can be your assistant and associate, it can be your manager, it can be resources within your firm or externally, or it can be other advisors in your practice who you meet with on a regular basis. Whatever the composition of your team, in future few advisors will be able to succeed on their own.
Lesson eight: Confidence
There have been many upsets at the Olympics, but perhaps none greater than the 1980 U.S. hockey team’s “Miracle on Ice” defeat of Russia for the gold medal. Crucial to their success was their coach Herb Brooks – “Herb made us believe we could win” one player said “and that conviction carried us through the moments of doubt along the way.”
Advisors need the same conviction to achieve their long-term goals. In any long path, there will inevitably be disappointments – a sense of realistic optimism and confidence are critical to carry us through those periods.
A growing body of research has identified strategies to maintain confidence and optimism. Once of the leading experts in this field is Martin Seligman of University of Pennsylvania, who outlined some specific strategies to stay positive in his book Learned Optimism.
Lesson nine: Perspective
After a successful Olympic career, Norwegian speed skater Johann Koss founded Right to Play, with the goal of using sports to foster development in children around the world. Many Olympic athletes have embraced this charity – at the Torino games, American speed skater Joey Cheek donated his medal bonus.
Many advisors can embrace that perspective. Like Olympic athletes, it’s easy to become fixated on doing what it takes to succeed – but it’s important not to get so caught up in our own goals that we ignore the broader world around us and the other things in life that bring us satisfaction.
As you reflect on the last couple of weeks while you were glued to the screen and cheering on your athletes, ask whether there are some important lessons you can take away to achieve important goals of your own.
Applying some of those lessons to your business could end up being your most enduring legacy from the 2010 Olympics.
* Dan Richards conducts programs to help advisors gain and retain clients and is an award winning faculty member in the MBA program at the University of Toronto. To see more of his written and video commentaries and to reach him, go to www.strategicimperatives.ca.
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