With the latest edition of the Winter Olympics soon approaching its end, much of the focus right now is on tallying up medal counts and reviewing the performances of the various athletes in their particular events. However, this is also a good opportunity to look at some of the concepts leaders and businesses can learn from the Olympic Games.

While there are some obvious ones, like the importance of teamwork and understanding interpersonal dynamics, there are other valuable lessons businesses can learn from this international event. To help illustrate these points, let’s take a look at these three memorable stories from the Olympics:

Collaboration goes beyond borders

At the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics, Canadian skier Sara Renner encountered a situation I’m sure she never imagined would happen. In the middle of the cross-country team sprint race, one of her ski poles was accidentally broken by another skier, leaving her with only one pole to continue the race with. That is, until one of the ski coaches rushed out onto the track to give her his ski pole so she could keep going without any difficulty. Thanks to the quick response of this coach, Renner and her teammate Beckie Scott went on to win the silver medal in this event.

While it was a proud moment for Canadians, what really made it incredible was that Click here to continue reading »”Olympics Lessons On Improving Our Approach To Business”

While away on vacation, I heard a news report about the upcoming Beijing Games that, in addition to being responsible for causing a fair amount of head shaking, had me pondering about how the Vancouver Olympic Games in 2010 will be received. The report in question dealt with the announcement by Chinese officials that they will be putting in place a ban on the serving of dog meat, known in China as xiangrou (translation – “fragrant meat”), in all official Olympic venues during the Beijing Games next month. Apparently, like the 1988 Seoul Games, the Chinese Olympic officials want to make sure there won’t be any dog meat offerings on restaurant menus out of fear that it would upset the tourists. I don’t know about you, but I found this news rather disturbing.

Now to be clear, this isn’t about any issues regarding the farming or slaughter of dogs as a source of meat, nor is it yet another vegetarian’s attempt to demonstrate the evil behind eating animals since I’m not a vegetarian. Click here to continue reading »”Hello, Beijing – Hold the Dog, Please”