Approaching your work like an Olympic event

Today I visited BAM Nuttall in Camberley, UK and, while waiting for the meeting attendees to gather, happened to pickup a copy of their newsletter “Engineering Matters”.

In it I found an introduction from Paul Emms Director, Engineering that spoke to me. Here’s an exerpt:

“As spring moves into summer many of you are looking forward to the 2012 Olympics. I found myself thinking about how an athlete prepares for such an event – how do become the best?

Athletes analyse what they do, identify small improvements, analyse again and so on, always focusing on improvement. There may be no big innovative idea but there is a 100% commitment to improve what they do.”

Paul goes on to use this as an analogy as to how we ought to look for small improvements that we can make in our work, put them into practice then DO LOOP. I think this is a good way to approach, and admit that I sometimes set lofty goals (Win the gold!) without defining practical incremental steps. The result is akin to a track star thinking that they can step on the track and make one herculian effort without preparing and working up to it. Paul is on to something I think.