Written by Richard Corbridge, CIO, Segro
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-corbridge-fbcs-8b621b5/
I had the privilege of being able to listen to Sir Mo Farah speak earlier this week about his life, his experiences and his views on how we fuel ambition in the next generation of young people, it was a brilliant experience that I have tried to write up for others to enjoy.
He was first asked what was your inspiration for running
He was at secondary school and had no idea he was good at running and had no thoughts about being an athlete, his ambition was to be a footballer. He was spotted by his PE teacher who suggested he should join a running club and in return for trying out at running he would be given the opportunity to play football! He made it clear discovery can happen in the strangest of places and teachers have a big part to play in this then and now, he did add though that it is harder now for this to ‘just’ happen as there are way more distractions in the world and perhaps less opportunities for teachers and mentors to simply spot and then react to talent.
We all need that one person in our lives to be that inspiration, to offer us motivation and encouragement. That’s what a great mentor can do, but now living in this hybrid world this is much harder to achieve, noticing the kid on the football pitch who can run so much better than others is harder now than ever before. He called us out as an industry as one that he can see as trying to get this right, trying to build talent of the future.
The moment when running was going to be the thing he could be extraordinary at was at 15 years old when he was asked to represent the south of England and then the UK and then a letter through the post to go to the USA for a training camp.
That was his moment where he knew that’s what he could do best.
A really fascinating journey of self-discovery to get to the point where he had self-belief and how far on the journey he had to go before that landed with him. Something that struck me was how hard so many of us find it to build that self-belief and how we need to really protect it when we have it.
Turning dreams into reality can be a strategy for the future – Set a goal for the short term that you can continue to evolve and grow and make this how you personally evolve. Keep learning and create a timeline to achieve the goal that allows you to test yourself along the way. In many ways for me Mo described why my adoption of OKRs has led me to be so much more thoughtful about my goals and also so much more planful in how near term ambition can be used to drive longer term goals.
Day to day targets gets you from here to there. Reward yourself as you ‘run’ too, this has been his strategy for years now. Giving yourself the reward you have earnt whilst you are in flight creates enthusiasm to keep going, a key way we can provide ‘live’ motivation to the teams we have.
An evolved mindset needs to be created so that you realise that you always have a bit more in the tank than you think you have, how do you access that reserve to achieve what you want to achieve. Use your brain to argue with your physicality, thinking you can do it is the battle and once you win you can do anything. He really does believe in the empowerment of anyone to make them successful and I do think its something we can do more of as technology leaders.
Technology in athletics is about augmenting the opportunity to do more.
A great example is adding more carbon plate capacity in the running shoe allowing more training with reduced physical impact. Understanding the technology means that you can add value from it to what you do, very similar to what we are trying to do with AI in the technology industry in reality.
Leaning more on your coach is becoming more normal as they have access to the data, they are turning data into simple insight that you as an athlete need to be able to do more. This feels like the corner stone of so many data strategies I am hearing about right now. Sad in some ways the data to information to insight chorus has been sung for so long but maybe now is the time it becomes a hit song, I hope so.
His mission now is to get kids more active, not to find the next champion necessarily but to make sure that the people of tomorrow know how important activity can be. The parallels though were easily drawn around getting kids of today to be technology aware and it becomes simply part of the fabric of living here. He also called out the way physical activity improves mental strength and maybe is even needed more as technology advances are made and perhaps has the opposite effect on the mental strength of the UK today. A great excuse to push harder to be more ‘outside’ and more focused on the moment.
Confidence and how to improve who you are he believes is linked to learning from failure, this became a theme he really went after.
Its very hard to just be a parent or mentor, its ok to make mistakes its important to be honest, make the mistake and learn from it. Learning from mistakes helps build confidence, practice with the help of coaching to get the best from yourself and make sure we really do learn from mistakes and try hard not to make them again was his view of the way we need to work together. I found it interesting how he suggested we should share our mistakes to create a shared learning to avoid mistakes, with the plethora of cyber security issues hitting the UK at the moment it made me wonder if we are really learning from those mistakes, I hope so.
He spoke about Nike as a technology provider – why them he was asked. They listened, they had an ear to their customers even their fans. After all the customers are the ones who use their product every day. How can technology firms find the right brand ambassadors, the super users that they can listen to, the room suggested that they need to look to see who is trying the hardest not who is wining the most to get the best insight which I really liked.
He concluded the session with a comment on learning, when we have lessons to learn then we need to ensure that we have the right frame of mind to share what the learning means to us, to share success and to know what is next as a team is a very rewarding thing.