'The Race Begins at 2pm on Sunday'
A powerful lesson from Richard West and the world of F1
As you saw in a previous article, one of my simple philosophies is L/C+10%.
Essentially I believe that success leaves clues and it saves time and makes total sense to continually learn from successful people, copy what they do and then add your own 10% to make it your own - to adapt it as required to fit the way you live, work and lead.
Why reinvent the wheel? (A nice link to this story 😎). This story relates to a couple of simple and powerful learnings from the world of motor racing that we can all benefit from.
I hosted a group at the (then) RBS/Williams F1 museum and conference centre. During the day, the guests had undertaken a fast-paced and high pressure team exercise, called the ‘pit-stop challenge.’ A small team stood at each corner of a F1 car and changed the wheel under the pressure of a stop-watch.
The exercise was hosted by Richard West, who had a long, successful career in the commercial side of motor racing. Given we were both working the event we hadn’t met during the day. As I ushered guests onto the bus to head to the next venue, Richard rushed up to me saying:
‘We haven’t had the chance to meet today but here is a copy of my book as a GiFT of thanks.’
After exchanging business cards, I left with my guests. Richard is a superb relationship builder and shortly afterwards we met and a great business partnership and friendship started.
Richard has shared many learnings over the years, such as a ‘Plan, Do, Review’ approach. We spoke about how many people just ‘do’ without any effective planning and debriefing the results - analysing both the root cause & lessons from success as well as disappointment. Every practice session, testing and race went through this process with Richard acknowledging that you can not afford to standstill or else the competition moves ahead. Complacency is the first step to failure.
Richard is the consummate professional - he is immaculate in his own planning and preparation, he is always punctual and his ability to achieve tight deadlines is impressive.
When I asked him about this ability to deliver under pressure, his response was clear:
‘In F1, the race starts at 2pm on Sunday & if you aren’t ready, the race starts without you. You can not move the start time back to suit your own needs.’
This winning approach creates urgency and a decisive, action orientated, highly focused mindset. Yet in business and life, deadlines seem to be moved too easily, for example projects stay ‘green’ as milestones gets pushed further out. In other examples targets get readjusted too quickly:
‘The race will now start on Monday at 4pm.…wait we are not quite ready, how about starting at…….Tuesday at 10am.’ On it goes. This thinking breeds mediocrity.
Instead, set 'impossible’ deadlines - it’s what winners do to ensure pace, urgency, decision making and focus. It forces a conversation about what to do and equally about what not to do. It focuses the team on what really matters.
Questions for you and those around you:
What can you learn from the plan-do-review approach?
When do you set focused time to plan your own life and think about your goals?
Equally as important, how often do you set time aside to reflect, review and debrief?
How do you set deadlines?
How could you sharpen this process?
How would it force you to act differently? What would you start? Stop? Do differently? Do more of?
Have you ever moved deadlines without true need to make life easier for yourself? Why?
3 actions:
Set an ‘impossible’ deadline for your next key task or project.
Reorganise your activities to ensure you focus enough time to deliver what needs doing.
Revisit the High Value v Low Value exercise:
Adopt the Plan-Do-Review approach for your next key project. Create Mozart time to be both think about how you are going to do the task and continuous review/debrief sessions to ensure you are capturing learnings/insights to ever refine your action.