Like most people, I enjoyed a lot of the Beijing Olympic games coverage over the past few weeks. But the 4 x 100 relay races were painful to watch. In an unfortunate coincidence, both lead US runners in the men’s and women’s races dropped their batons, losing their chances for a medal.
I can only imagine how disappointing it must be to lose, after all that long and hard training. What’s worse is they seemed like they were running a good race before it happened. It all came down to the handoffs.
We often think of business as a game of individual performance. We do individual performance reviews, reward the star performing salespeople, identify the “high potential” managers. Yet no matter how well an individual performs, business success still comes down to handoffs – from sales to customer service; from engineering to manufacturing; from account team to customer; from headquarters to field; from one geography to another.
What does it take to have a successful handoff? It seems that the basic ingredients are having clear, mutual expectations of what needs to happen; having team members who are capable and motivated on both the handing off and receiving sides; a climate that supports collaboration; and lots of practice.
I don’t discount individual performance, and much of the joy of the Olympics is celebrating individual talent and effort. But the lesson from the relay races is that you can have the best runners in the world and still lose to slower ones – unless you make the handoff.
How does the baton travel through your company? Where are the handoffs smooth? What causes the baton to fall?
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