As an assessor for the Midlands Excellence Awards, one of the perks I received was a complimentary ticket to the Awards ceremony, which I attended last Thursday. It was a great evening, which around 1200 people attended, representing many companies from across the region and beyond.
Awards
A variety of awards were given out, ranging from the specialist awards to the main Midlands Excellence Award (which was won by the Hanley Economic Building Society). Congratulations to the Hanley Economic Building Society and to the other companies that were highly commended, re-accredited and also to those organisations that were recognised as Ambassadors of Excellence. The awards represent a huge amount of hard work and resulting improvement by both the companies that won and by all the other companies that entered.
Keynote Speech
James Cracknell was an interesting and amusing keynote speaker as he gave an account of his Olympic experience and his subsequent adventures with Ben Fogle (which you may have seen on television).
The thing that struck me most in James’ speech was his honesty about both his strengths and his weaknesses. He was modest of his own achievements and very self-aware with respect to both himself and his own performance.
One of the observations he made that particularly stayed with me was his admission that his main failure during the Amundsen Omega3 South Pole Race was his inability to admit to the team that he was struggling as they were nearing the end of the race. Within a short race, such as James’ Olympic successes, he observed that it was possible just to push through the pain, whereas in a race the length of the South Pole Race, this just wasn’t physically possible.
Together, the team had agreed to help each other out if they were struggling; whilst this increased the load on the other teammates, it was actually the team that won or lost, not the individual. They were only as strong as their weakest member. James explained that by trying to be strong he had actually weakened the team (and potentially lost the team first place).
I respected his honesty, and also wondered what model of ‘performance’ we use within organisations. Is organisational performance about a sprint to the finish or does organisational performance actually have more in common with competitive team endurance races? I wonder if we have much to learn from these experiences.
Overall, a great night and one that I hope to be able to attend again next year.
