Olympic competition

As I sit in a hotel tonight I have the Olympics on the tv while I do some computer catch-up. They interviewed the American women's snowboard team a few minutes ago and the athletes were talking about how their toughest competition is from their teammates who are also their best friends, whom they travel with, train with, live with. Yet they strive to do their best knowing that if they win their friend does not win. Despite that competition, they love their teammates. The do not 'hate the competition'; they do strive to be the best and do their best.

It was a very good interview in my opinion. One of the things that irritates me enormously in the business world is when so-called experts like Jack Welch talks about things like 'don't fall in love with your team because some of them are turkeys' as well as things he and others say about seeing the competition as the enemy, 'kicking butt' (but more coarsely said than that), and the like. Coming from the likes of Jack Welch makes it all the more irritating. Here is a man who lied to and cheated on his wife, running off with a younger business colleague. Here is a man who played all the same kinds of financial shenanigans as Wall Street did to inflate GE earnings that have since imploded just like Wall Street, which is to say he lied to investors just like he lied to his wife. A friend of mine once told me that a man who will lie to his wife will lie to anyone. Welch is a good example of that truism. So we should listen to him on how to treat employees when he clearly doesn't know how to treat family and investors? I think not.

Any leader that does not love his team even when they are not performing is not a leader, just a tyrant. Welch got it wrong, the snowboarders got it right: we must love our people, but we must also insist on good performance. I think I have read about that somewhere else as well: the gospels. I have been very displeased with much of what goes on in the name of athletics, which has mostly been about extreme narcissism of the athletes and coaches. This group of snowboarders, though, got it right.