After listening to a speech from the CEO of the company I work for what really came to mind was how techniques that he was using to lead the company were essentially the same principles that rowers and coaches could use too to improve themselves and their clubs. After all, being competitive at anything in life requires the same fundamental rules, weather it be rowing or running a business. Some of the main key things that I heard were:
Learn from your competitors that are better than you.
This ones a no brainier really. If some one is better than you they must be doing something that you are not. Find out what it is and if you work as hard as them you should be able to be as good as them.
If somethings not working out( we're not making money), find out why, and do something to fix it, check if things are improving. Constantly monitoring will help us see trends developing.
If you are not getting better. Find out why. Try and keep track of your self/ your athletes training so you can analyse it and spot trends either good or bad.
If your to over stretched then step back a bit and see that your not doing too much.
Improve at the right rate. Too fast, you can burn out and not peak at the right time. For example if your goal is to win the most important regatta of the year, winning at the start of the year is not what you should be aiming to do.
Be passionate, and enjoy your work.
The same applies to rowing/coaching, enjoy what you do.
Focus on your weak spots. Work the most at the things you are the worst at.
This is especially true when it comes to rowing. If you have a weak core, work on it and you'll reduce your chances of injure. If you suck at weights, work on them and you'll see a big increase in speed if your technique is already good.
Keep setting your sites higher. By keeping your self challenged you are keeping things interesting for your self.
We should all be trying to challenge yourselves, be it as coaches or athletes. Push your self to learn new things. Be open.
Stay up to date with current technology.
The way we train for rowing and monitor our improvement in skills and fitness has changed greatly in the last 20 years. These days we have wide access to heart rate monitors, lactate testing, and even labs, which before might have been too expensive to visit to get your Vo2 Max and stats, are now much more accessible to clubs not only national teams.
From the above we can see that many rules from the corporate world can be used in rowing. This also means that many good CEO's of successful companies would make a good job of running successful clubs. This is the case in Germany, where Mario Woldt the Performance Director of rowing, came from the Steel industry where he had been in charge of a successful steel company. The same can be said for rowing transitioning from high performance rowing into high positions in businesses as can be seen below.
http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/when-the-road-ends-what-athletes-do-after-the-olympics/
http://www.thegrindstone.com/2012/08/02/work-life-balance/olympic-rowers-are-most-likely-to-have-the-best-careers-in-business-240/
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