Business Lessons from the Edge: Learn How Extreme Athletes Use Intelligent Risk Taking to Succeed in Business - Rilegato

McCormick, Jim; Karinch, Maryann

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0071626980 ISBN 13: 9780071626989

Casa editrice: McGraw Hill, 2009

Riassunto

[BACK COVER]

DISCOVER THE WINNING MIND-SETS OF EXTREME SPORTS ATHLETE-EXECUTIVES

Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk jump-starts the world's hottest skateboard company with businessman/skateboarder Per Welinder, who recently sold his share of the company back to Hawk to focus on his thriving clothing line.

Freestyle motocross star Carey Hart discovers that backflips in the boardroom don't fly, but sharp entrepreneurship turns his tattoo venture into a multimedia enterprise.

Rodeo rider Ty Murray, “The King of the Cowboys,” turns his passion for bull riding into a professional sports empire.

Olympian bobsledder Gord Woolley prepares himself mentally every morning, whether polishing his runners or running his communications firm.

Alpine climber Mark Richey learns to rely more on skills than tools to build his architectural woodworking business.

Marathoner Quang S. Pham uses visualization techniques to go the distance as a runner and as a CEO in the pharmaceutical industry.

Mountaineer Guy Downing climbs some of the world's highest mountains and makes a fortune on Wall Street.

PLUS more career-building lessons from sports television CEO Gavin Harvey, skier and bobsledder Kirby Best, polar explorer Bill Baker, mountaineer and CEO Kevin Sheridan, skier and law firm founder Julie Pearl, CEO and race car driver Don Bell, and others

[FLAP COPY]

No guts, no glory.

What does it take to succeed in business? Risk taking. Preparation. Self-confidence. The same principles that drive extreme athletes to the highest peaks of performance. This action-ready guide shows you how to capture the winning mind-sets of champions-for extreme success in business and life.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull'autore

Jim McCormick is a full-time professionalspeaker, record-holding skydiver, and former COO for an architectural firm. He is an accomplished skydiver with five world records, and over 3,000 jumps to his credit.
Maryann Karinch is a literary agent andauthor of 15 books, as well as a certified personal trainer. She has over 650 skydivesto her credit and is one of the few women to complete theinaugural Eco-Challenge in Southern Utah.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

Business Lessons from the Edge

Learn How Extreme Athletes Use Intelligent Risk-Taking to Succeed in BusinessBy JIM McCORMICK MARYANN KARINCH

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-162698-9

Contents

Chapter One

Grow Up to Be a Cowboy: Honor Your Passion

Passion: a person's deeply held desires, concerns, and beliefs. This is not exactly the dictionary definition of the concept, but it is the one I want you to keep in mind as you read this chapter.

TY MURRAY, PRESIDENT of Professional Bull Riders, is "King of the Cowboys." He is to rodeo what Wayne Gretzky is to hockey or Michael Jordan is to basketball.

Ty was not one of those kids who wanted to be a football player one week and an astronaut the next. In a fifth-grade essay about what he wanted to do when he grew up, he wrote: "I want to beat Larry Mahan's record," referring to the six All-Around World Championships of the rodeo legend who was his hero. Ty realized that dream on December 13, 1998, when he earned a record-breaking seventh All-Around World Championship title.

The passion for rodeo pumped through his body like blood, as it did with all of the other men in his life. His father and uncle, grandpas, and great grandpas—they were all cowboys and men Ty looked up to. His grandpas put on Wild West shows in the 1920s, so they knew the entertainment value of rodeo as well. It's a realization that drove Ty to form Professional Bull Riders, an athlete-owned organization that is successfully bringing "America's original extreme sport" to homes in America and abroad through Versus (formerly Outdoor Life Network) and Telemundo.

Ty has no trouble summing up why he has honored his passion ever since he can remember: "I have loved the cowboy life—everything about it—since the day I was born. There's no other feeling on this earth like making great rides on great animals." But it's more than that. It's not just what he does but what he is: "I don't care about going down in history as a great bull rider or bronc rider. I hope people will remember me as a great cowboy."

Leverage Your Passion to Build Success

Activities we care deeply about will often correlate with things we're good at. People who can craft an occupation that leverages their passion have an enormous advantage because they are now doing something they have invested themselves in as a part of their livelihood. That's tremendously energizing.

Mark Richey is an Alpine-style climber who has done first ascents as well as climbed famous and well-established routes on mountains like Everest. First ascent refers to the first modern recorded climb to reach the summit of a mountain or to pioneering a particular climbing route. Climbers and mountaineers who do first ascents are true explorers; their risk factor and the level of challenge they face is much greater than for those who follow.

Mark is president of Mark Richey Woodworking, a $20 million operation, and he sees a distinct correlation between the two worlds he explores:

"In the middle of the night we were still going up, and it was calm. Not a cloud in the sky. The stars came out—there were shooting stars. It was relatively warm for 20,000 feet. Steve [Swenson] and I were climbing in the darkness with our little headlamps. There was not another human being for who-knows-how-many miles around us. It was an extraordinary place. I will never forget that.

"How does that relate to my business? From day one we focused on the highest-end work. That came from training as an architect, but also from making fine musical instruments. I was attracted to really well-made things—things that displayed the utmost tradition of pride and great craftsmanship. Just to look at things that were well made—to hold them and touch them—gave me a great sense of fulfillment to know that I could make something that someone else could enjoy and appreciate.

"So from day one we built a culture in our company of producing the highest-quality objects and interiors and staked our reputation on that. We always come back to quality as one of the hallmarks of our mission in business. I'm as passionate about woodworking and architecture as I am about climbing."

Identify the things you are passionate about and then, to whatever extent possible, incorporate them into your career. If you can't do that, then at the very least find ways to incorporate them into your life. My father has loved trains since he was a boy. His father didn't see much future in a life on the rails, though, so he encouraged my father in a different direction. After finding ways to feed his enjoyment of trains, from books to trips, my father made a bold move when he retired and invested in a private railcar. He launched a whole new career by offering "rail excursions on the Scottish Thistle," which is more than a business that reflects his passion—the car actually symbolizes his passion.

When you don't find a way to incorporate your passion into your career, you can still achieve satisfaction as long as you have focus and direction about what you are doing. I have a friend who built a financially rewarding career in real estate; it's questionable whether he's even any good at what he does, but he does make money at it. He sends his kids to private schools, takes his wife on exotic vacations, and lives in a gated community full of McMansions. And I'd have to admit that he's probably happy, even though he didn't pursue his passion of serving in the ministry—which would not have given his family the prosperity they enjoy so much. He engages his passion for religion through service to his church and the way he raises his family. Is he as happy as he could be? No. He made the choice that his wife's passion for raising a family with everything they could need or want would take precedence over his own.

If you're conscious of a choice like that, you can make it with no regrets. But don't self- sabotage by accepting that situation rather than choosing it.

People might look at my career and conclude that I have a passion for public speaking, but I don't. Speaking is a tool to express my real passion, which is helping people recognize potential in themselves that they didn't realize they had. It creates a sense of fulfillment for me. Writing this book arouses the same passion.

Maryann is writing this book too, but the process of doing it engages a passion related to mine without being precisely the same. She is thrilled with learning and subsequently imparting that knowledge to other people. She has a student/teacher relationship with the world and has structured her career such that she can maintain it and enrich it.

Trust That the More Your Work Engages Your Passion, the More Successful You'll Be

Plenty of people have thriving careers and never feel a passionate connection to their work. They are not as successful as they could be, no matter how much they earn or how much corporate power they wield.

Skier Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions at Microsoft Corporation, is firm about the connection between passion and success: "A person without passion cannot be successful. No matter what you do, you need to be thinking about how you can change the world, how you can touch people who come in contact with your product."

Leadership requires passion, too, he believes, because leaders have the opportunity to change the lives of people they lead. The job of a leader is to help other people grow to a better state, to give them guidance on the road toward self-actualization. "You need to be passionate about that and thoughtful about how you can help them get ahead in their personal and professional life." How you help them succeed is both an enormous privilege and a responsibility for a leader.

What if you have no passion for what you do? Kirill advises you to "do something else."

For many of us, the skill set we have naturally has nothing to do with our passion. Some of the athlete-executives casually noted that they had degrees in engineering or some area of science or humanities, but that did nothing more than serve as an entrée to finding out what they really cared about. They were good at something they had little or no interest in pursuing.

Put your skills into a matrix and rank them according to competence and fulfillment—that is, how good you are at something versus how much you enjoy it.

Think of it like this.

You might find that some of the things you do best are the things that give you the least fulfillment. I hate accounting, but I aced those courses when I got my business degree. I have an undergraduate degree in civil engineering because I have an engineering brain, but I never wanted to be an engineer.

On that matrix, you know you've scored big when you see a skill show in both "high ability" and "high fulfillment."

Skills relate to your passion, therefore, but they don't define your passion.

You don't want to force yourself to try to be good at something you're not good at and, realistically speaking, will never be good at. Why frustrate yourself that way? It's one thing to know that you have a lousy golf game and may never improve much, yet go out every weekend and enjoy it, and quite another thing to drive toward being a professional golfer when you've never once made par on a hole. There are few things sadder than watching someone struggle to succeed in an area where he has no innate talent. Even if you have the best gear and the best coaches, there will always be serious limits to what you can accomplish. You might reach your peak performance; but don't quit your job and try to join the pro tour unless your best can realistically hold up against your would-be competition.

It's great to be raised with the mind-set that you can do anything you set your mind to. There comes a point, however, when you either identify your innate gifts and cultivate them to create a career aimed at self-actualization or delude yourself.

Some of the athlete-executives said that taking on extreme athletic challenges helped clarify for them what their innate talents were. The sporting challenges served as either validation of an area of competence as it related to their career or an eye-opener about their talents, depending on whether they made that discovery before or after they went into business.

Give Your Spirit a Megaphone

Troy Widgery desperately wanted to be the best, but he wasn't sure at what. He had stood on the line in midget football at age eight, pointed at the quarterback, and said: "I'd rather do that." And then he did. He had set regional track records racing his cart when he was also still in elementary school. When he connected with skydivers during his teens, though, something else happened. He liked the mental exercise, "soulfulness," and sense of independence of flying through the air. He found real passion when he connected with teammates, who actually were the best in the sport. Becoming part of a world-class team called Perris Airmoves put him at the focal point of skydiving—until the plane crash.

At 11:13 A.M. on April 22, 1992, a De Havilland Twin Otter carrying 20 skydivers and two pilots crashed seconds after takeoff. The 75-mile-an-hour nosedive into a dirt field instantly killed most of the people on board. Six jumpers—those closest to the door—survived the impact because they were hurled forward into the less fortunate people who happened to be up front. Among those surviving were three members of a nationally ranked four-way team: Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld, Tom Falzone, and Troy Widgery. Their teammate James Layne died in the crash.

Dan used to tell the team "Go slow, go slow" before exiting the plane as a way of reminding them to stay in control. It was a trigger phrase to help everyone keep body and mind at the same rate. But James would climb out of the plane and joke "Go fast."

After the crash, Troy went back to Colorado and started manufacturing the kind of helmet that could help make skydiving a bit safer. As a tribute to James, whose humor and spirit he missed, Troy told his production team to write "Go Fast" inside each helmet shell underneath the liner. That secret message helped remind them to stay focused while having fun; it became the inspiration for the Go Fast Sports product line that began with skydiving accessories and helmets and then grew to include an energy drink and energy gum.

Listen to the inner voices that shout out your passion and then respect and engage them as much as possible. And make this something you do at each stage of your career and each stage of your life.

Chapter Two

Flailing Means You're Not Good at It: Know Your Limitations

KNOWING WHAT YOU do well and what you show potential to do better will get you a lot further than trying to be superior at everything you attempt. You would be better off spending that extra effort finding people whose talents complement yours and getting them in your corner.

Skydiving assaulted Diane Leopold's sense of self. At the age of 16, having worked three jobs through high school to fulfill her goal of attending college in England, Diane had built confidence that she could be good at whatever she put her mind to. This is a person who admits she "wasn't very good at math," so she earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical and electrical engineering. She still didn't quite get it, so she earned a master's degree in electrical engineering. And then an M.B.A.

It came as a surprise when she started skydiving and, for the first hundred jumps or so, was awful.

In skydiving, Diane faced something unusual—self-doubt: "I went fetal, I flailed, you name it. Being hit with the realities of not being good at something when I was a pretty confident person was a rude awakening. How could I not be OK at a sport where all you have to do is exit a plane and arch? I had to work myself through that."

She didn't quit because she couldn't stand the idea of leaving the sport without having achieved some level of competence, but it did help stimulate thoughts about success factors that she relies on in her role as senior vice president, business development and general construction, for Dominion Resources, a $16 billion power company based in Richmond, Virginia.

"While I started out being poor at it, what ended up attracting me to it was the focus it took to do well and overcoming the mental hurdles. It was very challenging and rewarding. That's why I stuck with it. Those mental benefits certainly carried over into business.

"In business, I can't know everything. I have to surround myself with others who bring their expertise to the team. Skydiving reminded me I wasn't invincible. I wasn't going to quit until I learned how to do it, but it did provide a lesson that there are limitations to what's possible. Sometimes you have to work harder than other times."

A path to success, despite limitations, means "Get the right people involved. There are experts everywhere." And once you find them, "Promote healthy debate. Find a better way to get the job done."

Given that you will be drawing in different kinds of personalities to contribute their pieces of expertise to a plan, Diane also has guidance on how you elicit information from people who are not as confident as she is. These are the people who overestimate their limitations instead of underestimate them. For those people who fear discussion and debate, she says: "Pull them in through the discussion itself. Not by putting them on the spot, but by bringing up something that you know they have expertise in." Open the door to their information by making it clear that you not only have an interest in what they have to say, but you also need it. And then in the wrap-up on the meeting, reflect that you heard what they contributed; incorporate it into the summary. Whatever limitations you do have will be a lot less obvious when you absorb information from the experts around you.

Call on Others to Counter Your Shortcomings

Like Diane, the most successful people know what they're not good at, even though they probably hate to admit it. To the extent they find other people to contribute strengths that complement their own, they can set much loftier goals than if they went it alone.

A winning combination of talents often takes the shape of an inside person and an outside person. The inside person has the operational acumen and tactical skills. The outside one embodies the vision, develops and delivers the strategy, and serves as the public face of the company, government entity, or cause.

Richard Branson is an outside person, on the global stage building the brand of Virgin (Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Records, et al.). In a March 2007 interview as part of the TED Talks with heads of state, Nobel laureates, and corporate founders in Monterey, California, he said he was dyslexic, bad at school—which he left when he was 15—and "didn't know the difference between net and gross" when he started his first few companies. With a healthy dose of humility, he gives himself some credit for success, while he gives a lot of credit to other people: "I learned early on that if you can run one company, you can really run any company. It's about finding the right people, inspiring those people, and drawing out the best in people.... I love to take on the status quo and turn it upside down."

Industries are not the same when Virgin enters their territory, and part of the reason is that the persona of Richard Branson comes along with the new business.

In his attempts to build and navigate a hot-air balloon capable of handling the jet stream, he ended up being pulled out of the sea by helicopters six times. "Cynics might say this is just a smart business guy executing his particular style of marketing" is the challenge he got during the TED interview. Whether or not he intended PR value in these adventures, he certainly got it. He also has done many unconventional things as the "outside man" for Virgin companies that built his personal and corporate brand.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Business Lessons from the Edgeby JIM McCORMICK MARYANN KARINCH Copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: McGraw Hill
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0071626980
• ISBN 13: 9780071626989
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 256
• Contatto del produttore: Messaggerie Libri; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8.; Assago Milano; 20090; Italia