What can managers learn from elite athletes?

The Race Across America is the ultimate endurance test for cyclists. They have a maximum of 12 days to cross the continent, covering approximately 3,000 miles.

Along the way, riders climb the Rocky Mountains, endure the excruciating heat of Mojave Desert, and battle with the endless plains of Kansas.

It may not be immediately obvious what managers can learn from this impressive feat.

Yet, business also requires stamina and staying-power. And both the athletes and managers (if they are ambitious) are striving to achieve what is almost impossible.

I talked with Kurt Matzler, who is one of just 388 people who completed The Race Across America as a solo-cyclist since 1982.

He actually is one of 116 riders who did so twice, helping to raise more than $4,500,000 to fight polio in the process.

To put this achievement into perspective, about 800 people summit Mount Everest each year.

Matzler is also a management professor and wrote two books – the most recent of which was released in March – asking what managers can learn from his experience. This is what he told me.

1 Know your ‘why’

"I could quit at any time. It's my decision”, says Matzler as he recalls a moment in the Rockies during the 2022 race.

He had been on the road for three days with only four hours sleep. It was midnight. He was exhausted and several hours cycling through freezing rain was a daunting prospect.

In moments like this, the temptation to quit can be enormous. That’s when it helps to focus on “why” you are doing this.

For Matzler, the personal ambition to do the impossible and finish was one motivator. Another was the bigger cause he was cycling for.

“Children who have polio, they don't have that option. They can't just quit." That thought was enough to get him back in the saddle.

When you ask retired CEOs what they are most proud of, few will mention earnings per share. The long hours away from home and the frustration with setbacks require a stronger justification.

As Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson, “the products, not the profits, were the motivation.” He was obsessed with design and creation. That’s what kept him going. Financial success was a consequence of that drive, not the goal itself.

It also helps to make your goal public. Everyone knew that Jobs wanted to create beautiful products. So that was how he was judged. It helped him to stay the course.

For Matzler, making his plans to complete the race and raise funds to eradicate polio public was a deliberate motivation strategy. “If you commit to something like that publicly, you naturally generate more pressure, and you can use that consciously,” he tells me.

2 Visualise your main goal

Matzler is a big fan of a techniques used by many athletes: visualising the moment your reach your target. He imagined exactly how it would feel, smell, and taste to cross the finish line.

During the dark moments of the race, he was able to call these vivid pictures to mind. It kept him going.

Executives can do that as well, by creating a vivid description of the company’s big goals.

This can’t be the kind of soulless PR document that is pitched as the company’s vision until it no longer seems profitable. It has to be a dream that is worth making sacrifices for.

President John F Kennedy’s goal of sending a man to the moon falls into this category. During a tour of the NASA Space Centre in 1962, Kennedy asked a janitor what he was doing.

The main replied: “I'm helping put a man on the moon.” That’s the kind of picture that motivates staff.

On an individual level, visualising what success will look and feel like can help each one of us to stay motivated, not just athletes.

3 Break your objectives into mini goals

Visualising the big picture helps, but Matzler is adamant that you also need to break it down into smaller targets. Instead of looking at a 3,000-mile race as one giant task, he identified smaller units.

“I broke down the daily stages into eight-hour units, because the support vehicle changed every eight hours. That meant fifteen minutes break” he explains.

“I broke down the eight-hour units into four-hour units, taking a five-minute break then. And I broke down the four-hour units into one-hour units. Because every hour I got a bottle of liquid nutrition to drink. That means in my head, breaking it down into so many small units.”

The combination of the big goal and the small steps to achieving it combined to create the perfect gameplan.

As Matzler suggests: “When it's difficult, think of the big goal, but don't think about how far it is, but in very small steps that you can easily manage.”

In a business setting there are frameworks that help to break down big goals. One example is defining‘objectives’ and ‘key results’.

The temptation is to default to numbers here. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this approach, but if the ‘why’ gets lost doing it this way, this becomes a problem.

That’s where managers can make a difference. If they acknowledge smaller wins which contribute to the overall goal, that makes a real difference. Informal weekly stand-up meetings can be a good place to do this.

4 Commit 100 per cent

Matzler reminds me of his late Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen and his ‘100 per cent rule’.

Christensen argued that it is easier to hold to your principles 100 per cent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 per cent of the time.

For Matzler that meant that during his training runs he would never deviate from his plan. If he was scheduled for a six-hour ride and came back 15 minutes early, he continued to cycle up and down the drive-way until the six hours were full.

This was not because the 15 minutes made a big difference to his fitness, but because he was worried about embarking on a slippery slope if he did not stick to the plan.

Once you make one exception, your discipline starts to erode. However, this commitment requires a lot of mental energy, so you have to apply the rule selectively.

Only apply it to what really matters on your path to the big goal you want to achieve. For other activities you can be more relaxed.

5 Review and update your goals

Fulfilling a long-term goal can lead to a sense of emptiness, a phenomenon observed with Olympic champions like Michael Phelps falling into depression after the games.

To avoid this, you need to identify your next project, before you achieve your current goal. For Matzler that was writing his book and sharing his reflections with executives.

It’s not just about personal satisfaction. As business leaders know only too well, when you stop making progress, you tend to lose ground on your competitors rather than remaining stationary.

Set your sights on a new horizon and who knows where the road will take you.

• This Core Insights article is adapted from a piece originally published by Forbes.

Further reading:

Five steps to change company culture, inspired by Maro Itoje

What does an effective leader look like?

Why The Rock trumps politicians for leadership

The risks of being a powerful leader

Christian Stadler is Professor of Strategic Management and teaches Strategic Advantage and Strategy and Practice on the Executive MBA and Global Online MBA.

Prepare to lead with renewed purpose, resilience, and adaptability with the WBS Executive Leadership programme.

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