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Celebrating 60 years

Time has flown by. In fact 60 years of time has flown by since I started my journey on this mortal coil. We had a celebration at home this weekend.  This is the scene set and these are the stories I shared with my friends and family.

[Note: I have added some detail which was not in the story - you will find these in square brackets]

Scene set.

I am sitting at home on Thursday and truck arrives from Absolute Party Hire. Somehow I do not think the marquee is being put up for Jeremy's christening party on Sunday. The cat is out the bag and 6 months planning by my lovely wife (Lorraine) comes into play. You see I turned 60 on June 19.

We had an amazing party with the marquee in the backyard decked out with a cycling theme. Two of my bicycles are hanging in the corners with an array of cycling jerseys and jackets that each tell a story of my cycling exploits.  The guests arrive and we settle into a few drinks under the setting sun in the back garden. The threatened heavy rain has not arrived [and does not arrive until Sunday during the night].

The Story

So here goes the threads of what I said totally off the cuff though I had thought about the frame of what to say while I was on my bicycle on Thursday.

I have been completely overwhelmed since I found out on Thursday that there was going to be a big party. I said to the guy in the bottle shop when I bought the beer today, "it is quite amazing to think that one has friends that can keep a secret for 6 months". It has been fabulous watching Richard [my oldest son who is 26] working with Lorraine these last two days doing all the food preparation. It is quite amazing to see so many of my Australian friends and family here.  I could talk for hours about the story of the last 60 years, most of which none of you will know anything about.  Rather than do that I thought I would take some slices of the story.

It all started in 1956 [born in Pretoria, South Africa]. I do not know much about that. I do know that 1956 was the year the Suez Canal was closed and Gamal Abdel Nasser became the President of Egypt, really the first truly independent state in Africa [June 23]. 

Rolling forward to 1966, I cannot say I remember very much either except England did win the football World Cup (we used to call it soccer). I had not learned to ride a bicycle by then. I got my first bicycle when I was 12. [it was stolen before I learned to ride it]. In 1966 my sport was boxing and we used to listen to all the fights on the radio, including listening to the great Muhammad Ali fights. Rest In Peace, champ [1966 was the year he refused conscription - so he made big headline news in South Africa too]

1976 sees me starting my first year of university in Cape Town. Sporting activity was focused on squash and field hockey and I played at league level in both sports. You would find me on a squash court 5 days a week and on a hockey practice ground or field twice a week. 1976 was a critical year in South African history as it was the year of the Soweto riots where the South African Police began the crackdown on rioting school children in Soweto. Two years later, I remember the police coming onto the university campus to deal with protests there.  My cycling journey began a little after this and the year of my final exams a friend and I cycled over the mountains with our panniers loaded and did a 1,000 km, 10 day tour. We did not know what we did not know.

Moving on to 1986. These were the dark days in South Africa. The President at the time was PW Botha. He used to wave his finger and berate us from the TV. And I remember his Rubicon speech. "There comes a time in the history of a nation when there has to be a choice between peace and war" [Speech was actually made in Afrikaans in August 1985]. In that time, I was watching the role of the Army being changed to that of a force acting to suppress the rights of people I thought had rights to be free rather than a force protecting the borders. I was not prepared to do that. I came home from work one day late in 1986 and told my wife (at the time) that I had bought tickets and we would be moving to England (in February 1987). Little did I know that in 1986 the government had started discussions with the ANC which ultimately led to the release of Nelson Mandela and the democratic elections in 1994. Had I known that at the time I made my choice,the story could well have been different. As it happens the day after the tickets were bought, call up papers arrived for 3 months service in Soweto starting on February 14, 1987 (I flew the day before).

Moving on to 1996. I had joined a bunch of friends and we had started our own consulting firm. We were driving hard to grow a sustainable and credible competitor to number one in our industry, McKinsey & Co [where I worked for 6 years from 1987 to 1993]. I was travelling all over the place and working every hour a man could muster. I remember flying into Zurich from Athens to have lunch with one of my Swiss Bank Corporation clients. I was wearing the London uniform of the day - a grey pin stripe suit.  Heinz says to me, "You look like shit. Your face is the colour of your suit".  That comment set my resolve to keep driving hard at what we were doing so I could get to a point where I could stop and enjoy the fruits. As for sporting activity, no cycling as nobody in their right mind becomes a keen cyclist in England weather. [I played golf instead]. 

2006 finds me in Australia. The business is sold and I am now not working for anybody. It was a big and a challenging year. I had started riding Audax randonneuring events, many with my friend Karen over here who I met sometime in 2002 after my first cycle ride across Australia. We rode the Alpine Classic in January - the jersey is the first one in that array of jerseys you see. The mountain on that jersey is Mt Buffalo. When we reached Bright with 70 kms to go (up that mountain) the temperature was 42C. I remember well the crowds lining the streets when I got back into Porepunkah and Bright - they were cheering madly. I made it with 20 minutes to spare and was one of only 35% to finish. Nowadays the riders are stopped in Bright if the temperature is above 38C. This was a big cycling year as I was preparing to ride the pinnacle of Audax riding - the Paris Brest Paris 1200 km event - you will see the jerseys on the wall. In this year, I rode 12,000 kms including riding across Australia for the 3rd time from Darwin to Adelaide.  2006 was also the year that Lesley and I separated.  And On June 21, 2006, my decision to leave South Africa was vindicated when my children's grandmother was murdered in her Cape Town home (aged 94).  Rest in Peace Granny.

Here we are in 2016. In between these years, I have added another 4 trips across Australia. In all, two on the bicycle on the right (Giant road bike) and five on the folding bike on the left (Bike Friday). That is nothing compared to my friend Peter Shaw in the back there who cycled all around Australia in 2013 starting in Cairns and riding with Cycle Across Oz to Melbourne and then doing the last leg back to Cairns supported by his wife Jan.  Back to the now, I am quite overwhelmed by the fact that you are all here [almost all of whom I have got to know in the last 10 years = the price of moving country a few times]. It is fabulous to see my two sons here. I thank you all for coming along to celebrate my journey. And I give all my thanks to Lorraine and to Richard for all the work they put in to put this together. 

Cycle Tour Australia Review of Cycle Across Oz

Leadership leads Organisation Culture - guest blog from Chris Edmonds

Over the last few weeks I have had the privilege of reading a pre-release of Chris Edmonds' new book The Culture Engine: A Framework for Driving Results, Inspiring Your Employees and Transofrming Your Workplace

I was a founding partner of an amazing management consulting firm, called Mitchell Madison Group, which started life in 1994. In 6 short years we grew MMG to a firm with 750 consultants in 16 offices across the world. Our main competitor, McKinsey & Company (where I worked for 6 years) had taken 50 years to grow to that size. What separated MMG out from the other firms I had worked in (Price Waterhouse, Deloitte, McKinsey and AT Kearney) was an amazing organisation culture. It was a culture that introduced talented young people and allowed them to grow really fast. It was also a culture where the leaders spent a large slice of their time with clients and with the teams - that is why our young people grew so fast and why our clients chose to grow our firm. 

As I read through Chris Edmonds' book, I was struck about how much we had done right. We created A Culture Engine that was unique and compelling and attractive to clients and staff. Many of my partners lived to a personal model that underpinned that Culture Engine. MMG was sold in 1999 and sadly disappeared in the aftermath of that sale and the 2000 dot com crash.  MY guess is we could have had a very different outcome had we followed Chris Edmonds prescriptions a little more specifically, rather than the implicit way we had done.  We had a vision of what we wanted to achieve. However, we never had a formalised organisation consitution. We did build into our evaluation systems all of the elements needed for a personal constitution as a continuum of skills (and culture) so that any member of the firm knew how to grow all the way through a career. Not all our partners had their own personal constitution crystallised. 

Chris has penned this guest blog about the very subject of job, career or calling

Job, Career, or Calling?

How do you view your work? Is it drudgery? Is it somewhat benign, somewhat engaging, or possibly even inspiring?

Most employees see work as a job, a means of funding life’s necessities. Some employees see work as a career, a profession they can contribute to for years. A very few see work as a calling, an avenue for meaningful contributions in service to others.

Jobs are a dime a dozen. People change jobs all the time. When one isn’t particularly engaged at work, there isn’t much lost when moving from one job to another.

A career brings a deeper level of commitment and engagement. A career requires long-term involvement, learning and progressing in skills over time. It’s a profession that requires investment of time, talent, and sacrifice.

Over the course of one’s career, one might work at a number of different companies that provide avenues for professional growth and development.

A calling is the deepest level of commitment and engagement. A calling is a purpose-driven, meaningful pursuit to improve the quality of life of others. It’s a service-oriented, heart-aligned, inspiring avenue. It may take years to discover your calling. Once you find it, time flies. Engaging in your calling recharges you and inspires you to your very core.

Some employees never find a calling in their workplace. They may find their calling outside of work – or they may never find their true calling, at all.

What causes employees to see work as a job, a career, or a calling? Leaders have a tremendous influence on employee’s perceptions of their work. Specifically, the leader’s plans, decisions, and actions, day in and day out, can make employees see their work as one of those three “levels” of inspiration.

Do leaders pay attention to their powerful influence on employee perceptions? Not really. Most leaders spend every waking moment on their product or service – developing them, marketing them, getting them into customers’ hands. Leaders put more thought into their products and services than into crafting a safe, inspiring team culture for employees.

Yet culture drives everything that happens in their organizations.

How can leaders ensure their work environment treats team members with respect and dignity, that inspires great performance, deep engagement, and WOW’ed customers?

Leaders do so through the creation of an organizational constitution. An organizational constitution is a formal document that outlines the business’ purpose, values and behaviors, strategies, and goals.

Once these expectations are mapped out, leaders must model, coach, and reinforce them. Leaders must invest as much time and energy in team values and citizenship as they do in managing results. By doing so, they create workplace inspiration – not workplace fear and anxiety.

If team members are consistently treated with dignity and respect by bosses and peers, they actively engage in the success of the business. They apply discretionary energy. They have fun. They love serving customers.

Employees who act like that, who are engaged like that, feel called to their work.

Workplace inspiration doesn't happen casually. It takes intentional effort on leaders’ parts, every day. 

About Chris Edmonds

Chris Edmonds is the founder and CEO of the Purposeful Culture Group, which he launched after a 15-year career leading and managing teams. Since 1995, he has also served as a senior consultant with the Ken Blanchard Companies. Chris has delivered over 100 keynote speeches to audiences as large as 5,000, and guided his clients to consistently boost customer satisfaction and employee engagement by 40+% and profits by 30+%. He is the author or co-author of six books, including “Leading At A Higher Level” with Ken Blanchard. His next book, "The Culture Engine:A Framework for Driving Results, Inspiring Your Employees, and Transforming Your Workplace"  will was published by John Wiley & Sons in September 2014.

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Dealing with a Closed Mind - Guest Blog from John Stoker

My guest blogger, is John Stoker who has just launched his new book Overcoming Fake Talk: How to Hold REAL Conversations That Create Respect, Build Relationships, and Get Results. John is an expert in communications who believes the human capacity to achieve astonishing results depends on the individual’s ability to interact with others

As with other guest blogs I have hosted, I will tell a little more of my story.  I grew up in South Africa and did all my formal education there. South Africans have a reputation for being straight talkers - and I have to admit I am no exception. We are basically taught to say what we think and not to pull any punches. That way you know where you stand and where I am coming from. When I moved to England in the late 1980s, I discovered a very different world. Straight talking was not viewed as a strength and I soon found that there was very little direct talk. There was always a sub text floating around which I was not very clued into - and not very good at grasping so I could act on it. I could have done with Overcoming Fake Talk right then. 

In the book John outlines the elements of REAL Conversations as follows:

• Recognising and suspending your thinking and judgment 

• Expressing yourself without creating resistance in others

• Asking questions to increase your understanding

• Listening and attending to the signals others are sending 

This framework would have helped me enormously as I grew my skills as a communicator and a consultant. The framework basically tells you to subsume your personality into the conversation until you have worked out all the cues and clues being sent by the other person - physically, verbally and emotionally. After all only 7% of communication is verbal, the 93% is below the line and under the radar. The straight talking South African was pretty clueless about all this subtlety and became even more exposed when the gaming about judgement and pigeon holing began. After all I was no more than a country yokel arriving in the big world.

Now for John's blog post - it is all about one of the big challenges in communication

DEALING WITH A CLOSED MIND

Q: My partner is one of the most narrow-minded individuals that I have ever met. If I try to offer a view that runs counter to his view, I get major push-back. He just seems to reject anything that is outside his experience or his way of thinking. How can I help him to listen and consider my ideas and experience?

A: What is difficult about this situation is your partner’s unwillingness to look at situations or issues from a different perspective. We all have mental models or hold assumptions that determine the way we see and interpret the events within our experience. Our mental models are important because they impact how we speak and deal with others. Your partner has the “I need to be right, not wrong” mental model.

 To Be Right, Not Wrong

To some extent, we all want to be right. Being right puts us in a position of power, where we feel great confidence, prestige, and self-assurance that we are “the expert” on something. After all, we are often rewarded for being right when our way of doing things leads to superior results.

Years ago, while teaching a critical thinking class, I had an interesting experience with an individual who was determined to prove to me that he was “right” about something. The interaction occurred because I said, “Even though we all have an interest in ‘being right,’ there are many ways of looking at reality. We really don’t know as much as we’d like to think we know.”

My statement caused a stir among the participants. About half an hour later Jay raised his hand and said, “I know everything about something!”

“You do?” I answered.

 “Yeah,” Jay nodded. “I know everything about writing my name.”

 “Are you sure?” I asked.

 “Absolutely,” Jay said.

 “Do you know how to write your name in Greek?”

 Jay thought for a minute and admitted, “No, I don’t.”

“Well, call me when you can.” I replied.

Another half hour went by and Jay raised his hand again.  “I’ve got it!” He said.

 I asked, “Are you sure?”

With confidence, Jay replied, “Yes. I know everything about writing my name in English.”

“How many times did you write your name in English last year?”

 With a frown, Jay responded, “I don’t know.”

 “Well, call me when you know,” I said.

 Yet another half hour went by. Being very determined, Jay raised his hand and offered, “I know everything about writing my name in English once.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely!”

 “Do you know how much ink you use when you write your name in English once?

 Feeling a little deflated, Jay said, “I don’t know.”

Everyone chuckled.

Notice that in order to be “right,” Jay literally narrowed the scope of what he said he knew, so he could claim to “know everything about something.” Being right is a wonderful place to be, even if you’re only right in your own mind! The challenge for all of us is to recognize that everyone has something to offer because their thinking, their life experience, and their view of the world is quite simply not our own.

 What Can You Do?

There are a number of steps you might follow to help your partner see the world outside his thinking.

 Recognize Where You Are

You must be aware of when your conversation is going below the line. The “line” represents the choice people have to resort to some form of “fight” or “flight” or to move above the line and engage in what we will call REAL conversation. (Fight and flight are both below the line.) 

When your partner starts to become agitated, express negative or “hot” emotion, or begins to disagree, you know you have to do something different.

·         Ask Questions

Stop thinking about what you would really like to say (or how you would like to tell him off) and turn the spotlight on him. Ask him as many questions as necessary to thoroughly understand his point of view. Here are some questions you might consider:

“What experience leads you to that conclusion?”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Why is that so important to consider?”

“Help me understand how that applies in this situation.”

Ask questions until you feel that you completely understand his view.

The power in asking questions and listening to his answers comes from allowing him to express points of view that are important to him. This is very validating to a person’s ego. When you listen to his answers, it communicates “I care enough about your thinking and experience to try and understand.” However, you must be sincere about hearing what he has to offer. If you patiently and honestly attempt to understand his concerns, you will take the ego—or his need to “be right”—out of the conversation.

·         Ask for Assistance

After asking questions and listening to his responses, ask him to assist by giving consideration to your experience as well. Use an “Attention Check” to begin part of the conversation.

An attention check is a statement of intention followed by a question that solicits his engagement in the conversation. It would sound like this:

“I really appreciate your point of view. I wonder if you would be willing to listen to my experience as we consider what would be best for us to do. Can we do that?”

Notice that this attention check affirmed his point of view and then asked for him to consider your experience.

Don’t worry that he will refuse: because you took the time to ask him questions and sincerely listened to his responses, you have built sufficient respect that he will be more willing to hear you out than if you had tried to push your ideas or opinions first.

·         Be Pervasive, Not Persuasive

Persuading always seems to feel like pleading, convincing, or winning someone over. Being pervasive, on the other hand, is about establishing credibility, exerting appropriate influence, or using facts or data to bolster your ideas and conclusions. Without supporting data, the act of sharing opinions can turn into a war of words and wills that diminishes respect and weakens your relationship. Identify relevant data and use it.

·         Move to Action

Once you have shared your views or experience, then summarize both viewpoints to demonstrate your understanding. Once this is done, you are ready to ask, “What shall we do?” Hopefully, your partner will now be willing to include and consider the point of view he has just heard you express.

In summary…

The first challenge is to help him get past the need to defend his perspective and then be willing to think about data or understanding that may be different from his previous experience. Remember that it is not easy to get outside of our own thinking because—in a very real way—all we know is based on what we know. If we would simply ask ourselves, “What do I not know?” we might be able to start seeing past what we think we know and be more willing to explore other ideas and perspectives.

Good luck!

About John R. Stoker

John R. Stoker has been facilitating and speaking to audiences, helping them to improve their thinking and communicating skills, for over 20 years. He is an expert in communications. He believes that human capacity to achieve astonishing results depends on the individual’s ability to interact with others.

John holds a Master's Degree in Organizational Behavior as well as a J.D. Degree. His landmark book, Overcoming Fake Talk, is both entertaining and engaging, and it presents skills that help readers talk about what matters most.

In the past, John worked as a practicing criminal defense attorney, spent summers as a Grand Canyon white-water guide, and taught on the university level for 13 years. John has been happily married since 1994 and he and his wife Stephanie are the proud parents of five children

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Leadership Reflections on Race Across America

I returned recently from Annapolis MD where I had been crewing in the Race Across America (or RAAM for short). This blog contains some reflections on my experience in 2014, experiences all about leadership and participation. I crewed in 2007 for a 2 man relay team and 2014 was for a solo racer

About RAAM

RAAM is a bicycle race that goes all across America, starting from Oceanside CA (north of San Diego) to Annapolis MD on Chesapeake Bay. The race covers 3,050 miles and climbs over 100,000 feet (4,880 kms and 33,000 metres) and is unlike the bicycle races we all know about, like the Tour de France or the Vuelta Espana. The difference lies in that the race is not run as a staged race and the racers are not permitted to ride in packs (i.e., in a peloton). The basic idea is the racers all start on the West Coast with one minute intervals and head to the East Coast following a fixed route as best they can. They choose when to rest and when to sleep and when to ride – 24 hours a day. They are not permitted to draft behind another rider or a vehicle. Basically what happens when one racer approaches another – ride up behind; make the commitment to pass; have a chat on the way past and move on. The overtaken rider then can choose whether to challenge the pass or drop back. The race is split into Solo Racers and Team Racers – with Solo Racers starting on Tuesday and team racers starting the following  Saturday. The teams are run as a relay race with changeover happening day and night whereas the solo racer is alone.

Why do it?

In 2007, I was asked by a friend, Glenn Druery, who was racing in the two man Team Velokraft to crew. Glenn and I were involved in endurance cycling events and he felt that I could add to the team drawing on my endurance cycling and management leadership background. And so it proved. The crew experience in 2007 was not great driven by some mismatched expectations by some crew members and by a lack of good team briefings by the crew chief. Crew members did not know what they had to do and struggled to work it out for themselves in the absence of solid leadership from the crew chief. So bad was it that the racers sacked the crew chief after 5 days and appointed me as crew chief. When I announced to the world that I would be crewing in 2014 for Chris Hopkinson, I received a message of warning from a crew member from his 2013 crew. We chatted and it was clear that the problems were very similar to what I had experienced in 2007. The crew members had different expectations; they had not been properly briefed about what they had to do and leadership to plug the gaps was not there. Forewarned is forearmed – I chose to take up the challenge without raising the specific concerns with the racer and his crew chief. Why? I am wary of exaggeration and prefer to see for myself.

What happened?

I was somewhat relieved to receive a document before I set out to Oceanside which outlined some of the things that we would need to deal with – sleeping; driving; looking after the racer; mechanical checks to be made. Important things like where to stay in Oceanside, what gear to bring, what roles were expected were missing. That is not a problem as I had provided enough time before the start to get the requisite level of briefing from the crew chief – just set up a meeting and be told what to do. The rest of the crew were staying in a house together away from the start in Oceanside (I had chosen to be near the start to get into the atmosphere and to cut travel times). Well there were a number of meetings set up and no briefing. I was due to meet the crew chief at the first crew briefing meeting – well the crew chief did not appear. So I attended the crew briefing meeting - which followed the same format as the 2007 meetings. With 30 minutes to go before the race began it was clear to me that many of the crew had not been briefed about what was expected of them. We would work it out somehow.

Differences from 2007

The 2014 edition of RAAM was going to be a little easier than my experience in 2007 for a number of reasons.

• Four of the crew including the crew chief had prior RAAM experience (in 2007 we had none)
• The crew chief decided that she would always be in the follow vehicle and would be continually available to look to the racer’s nutrition, medical and motivational needs. In 2007, this task was shared across more than one team member. This sharing brought in a set of communication challenges and in due course the racers got fed up – they were not eating enough and could not perform.
• The team would only operate two vehicles, one to follow the racer and one to provide support services and in which the resting crew would sleep. In 2007, we operated 3 vehicles: One to follow the racing racer; one to leapfrog the follow vehicle and to carry the resting racer; one as a sleeping vehicle to accommodate the resting crew and the resting racer when he was on sleep shift at night – also to store provisions and provide cooking facilities. This third vehicle was a major source of complexity though it played a crucial role for feeding the racers (and crew) and for giving racers chance to shower and sleep stretched out in a bed
• The support vehicle would not be used as a follow vehicle. In 2007 the leapfrog vehicle could also be used as a follow vehicle to cover times when the follow vehicle needed to stop to refuel or to change over shifts. In 2007, there would always be a follow vehicle following the racer
• When the solo racer stops to sleep the whole team can stop. The teams never stop though we did have one break when our 2nd racer withdrew and the surviving racer needed a rest before finishing solo.

What was 2014 like?

I do not want to let this blog turn into a whinge fest – all I will do is re-post a few tweets and anecdotes about leadership that I sent out during the race:

• “Do you know what we have to do?” “Not yet”. “Good timing with 30 minutes to the start”
• First cooked meal since Monday going down a treat in Cortez CO. (June 13 and race started June 10)
• Dawn at Alamosa CO. It is cold and time to get on the road (June 14 after sleeping out at 3C - 38F)
• How do you expect us to stay awake if there is no cash for coffee and drinks for the crew?
• Greensburg KS - had a shower - after nearly 5 days without one it had to happen – June 16
• Great leaders are not threatened by strong team members. They leverage their ability to better results. @RAAMRaces is showing that in spades
• Leadership lessons from @RAAMRaces. Criticize independent thinking from the team leads to the end of all thinking
• Leadership lessons from @RAAMRaces Treat people like they are stupid they will choose to act stupid
• Leadership lessons from @RAAMRaces Leaders shout team members down. Team members go into defensive silent mode"

RAAM is a crucible in which decision making gets tested to the extremes.  It is a classic multivariate problem with independent moving parts which need to be scripted to a unifying script. As a management consultant, I created the business concept of Decision Engineering, where an organisation is welded together by a series of decision points. In one of my seminal projects on Operational Improvements in British Airways, I invented the concept of a Planning Envelope. Decisions within a planning envelope could be made 100% by the deciding unit (e.g., cabin crew planning) without reference to any other unit. As soon as a decision took the scope of impact outside the planning envelope, notifications are needed to warn other affected units what is happening (e.g., a late crew will impact the chances of on-time push back of the aircraft which will affect downstream gate availability for an incoming aircraft).

One might well ask how does this apply to a team crewing a RAAM racer. To my mind, a successful team has clarity on a bunch of things. I learned a lot of this in 2007 on the side of the road from Lee Fuzzy Mitchell III who was crew chief of the team we were racing against. Lee was the nicest man alive and there is nothing about crewing he did not know. This is what has to be done right 

1.  Criteria to be optimised

This is not hard although there are quite a few to be taken on board. It is however easy to get the focus wrong.

a.  Performance of the racer on the bike  – nutrition; hydration; comfort; temperature management; cleanliness; motivation; rest; sleep [not taking into account issues like equipment choice which are pre-decided]

b.  Time of the racer off the bike - time to recover; meaningful rest and time to prepare to start again

c.  Performance of the crew measured though quality of decisions and ability to stay awake and to keep the racer performing to his best ability – nutrition; hydration; cleanliness; rest; sleep; motivation and expectations management

d.  Safety – racer while riding; racer while handing off on the road; racer while handing off from a vehicle; crew while hanging out the vehicle; crew standing alongside the road; vehicle while following the racer; all other road users

We had a mostly safe race. The racer fell only once = once too many. I do recall the crew chief worrying about the safety of the crew during a violent storm in Kansas, while insisting the crew strap a tarpaulin over the external speaker system – winds blowing in excess of 60 miles per hour.

e.  Costs – supplies; fuel; food for racer and crew; incidentals

All through the race we seemed to have only two criteria in mind.

•      Keeping the racer on the bike and
•      Minimising support vehicle movements so resting crew could sleep

What was really missing included keep the racer properly refuelled so he could perform at top level day in and day out. The crew sleeping model was totally undermined by excessively long shifts – we certainly had several crew shits in excess of 12 hours and often these were back to back with excessive vehicle movements in between (go ahead a time station and then come back again to do a crew change)

2.  Roles and responsibilities (and planning envelopes)

This is both easy and hard. Individual roles needed during RAAM are not difficult to perform and are easily reinforced with checklists. Because the race runs 24 hours a day, roles have to be rotated between crew members. This stresses communication at handover time and between roles, checklists of things to be done and clear outlines of responsibilities, decision criteria to be applied and timelines for actions. Of course as tiredness creeps in, decision quality drops which means that things like checklists become more important. And of course the whole system becomes fully stretched if something goes seriously wrong.

In a good crew, the crew chief has only to deal with problems and changes. All other tasks should happen automatically within a planning envelope. For example, daily provisioning should be from a standard list supplemented with special needs arising from the prior day activity. Daily laundry should be planned in based on most convenient laundry facility (given time constraints and opening hours); crew eating and showering can be planned in. Mechanical checks of the bike should occur automatically at every stop and every time the racer sleeps (which means the mechanic has to be on shift when that is planned to happen); 6 hour shifts should be between 6 and 8 hours long – not 14 hours long as happened many times.

And of course every role should have a backup person ready to cover it in the event there is a problem (who not only knows what to do but where to find everything needed to execute that role)

3.  Lists and Checklists

Lee Mitchell was a list and labelling maniac. Every item of equipment was placed in a labelled box or container. Every time an item was used it was placed back in the same place. Every time an item was exhausted, the replenishment list was updated. Every input and output to the racer was recorded – so that it was totally clear if the racer was short of nutrition or hydration. 

RAAM 2014 did not have a single list that I saw. I certainly did not know where stuff was kept. The crew who had packed the vehicles did know - so I was covered there. Had the crew chief been taken ill, we might have been stuck.

From Fuzzy’s guide:

♦  Stop and Eat sheets: record all intake of calories, sodium, and fluid as well as peeing. For stops record time off bike, race location and reason for stop. Remind each other to make entries on Stop and Eat sheets.

♦   If your rider hasn’t peed twice, drunk 4-5 water bottles, and eaten lots of calories and salt by 12 noon, plan on a DNF!

4. Communication (and Trust)

Communication is the heart of any group initiative. Team members perform better if they know what they have to do. They perform better if they know what is changing that will affect their ability to perform their roles. 

From the outset, we did not know what we had to do and what was expected of us. And when we did apply independent thought and did something that was at odds with the way the crew chief saw things, we found out. Result was a crew that became unwilling to do anything or chose to do whatever they wanted to do.

In a rolling 24 hour event like RAAM, handover communication is essential. Knowing what has happened and what is left undone is central to ensuring a repeatable performance and overcoming obstacles. We had a weakness here but were protected because the crew chief chose to stay awake so much and to stay in the follow vehicle. We did pay by the compromised quality of decisions as tiredness grew – especially in some very long shifts we all did. Luckily we did not face any serious catastrophes as this would have been a test the team would have failed.

5. Adjusting to solve problems 

    This is the real test and one we never did not have to deal with. The process is not difficult. We would have failed as item a. below was never clear.

a.       Reaffirm the decision criteria one is trying to work to

b.      Layout the options for solution

c.       Evalaute the options against the criteria

d.      Make a choice and live by it

What was 2014 like

The final outcome is our racer, Chris Hopkinson, completed RAAM in 10 days 17 hours and 55 minutes.  He won the Jure Robic award for the fastest male solo racer average speed into the Hanover PA time station at 14.55 miles per hour. He completed his race around 27 hours faster than his 2013 attempt - simply fantastic

The real test of RAAM success is how the crew felt about it and would they sign up again and could the racer have gone any faster or finished any sooner. We ended RAAM with a great crew who would happily crew together again. All of the crew would crew for the racer again – he was the consummate gentleman with a fine sense of humour. The crew would also crew for other crew members if they chose to race. 

There is no doubt in my mind the racer could have improved on his race performance.  We were also a lucky crew as the problems we had were not major – we never will know how much time we could have lost if something really bad had gone wrong.

One can only guess how much better our racer could have done if a few things were done differently.  

• Better preparation in equipment. there is always a way to get another 100 grams off a bike and a more streamlined way to organise things in a vehicle
• Better management of hydration and nutrition based on full and proper measurement of inputs matched to measured outputs. Racer was burning around 12,000 calories a day and was probably replacing up to 8 to 10,000 a day especially in the first 3 days
•  Better tools for racer communication. Every time the follow vehicle came up alongside the racer to discuss things, the racer slowed down. (e.g., two way radio or even more full use of microphone/speaker system)
• Tighter management of rest breaks – every time the racer took a break the 5 minute break became a 10 to 15 minute break (save 8 minutes each break times 4 to 5 breaks a day - 40 minutes a day)
• Tighter management of sleep breaks – faster to get down to rest; limit rests to agreed time periods; faster to get back on the road would have saved at least 1 hour per sleep  break (times 9 sleep breaks is 10 hours saved). This is the hardest part of RAAM as the racer has to sleep to stay safe when on the bike.
• More sleep for the crew chief would have produced better decisions (lower costs and higher racer performance) and better team morale

What did I get out of RAAM?

In RAAM 2007, I crewed the night shift which meant I saw very little of the route across America in daylight. This time around with 6 hours shifts (in theory) work rotated through daylight and nighttime hours. So I got to see a lot more of the USA by daylight. Highlights were crossing the Rockies in daylight; enjoying a spectacular Kansas lightning show during dusk time; camping along the side of the road under a full moon (in 2007 we were always on the move). 

The crew did bond into a great team and as a testimonial my crew partner wrote

“We made a great team. It was a pleasure to work with you. You would make a great crew chief for someone. If ever interested in doing so in the future, let me know and I will recommend you if one of the many racers I know is looking for one. You do know your stuff. I will never forget the memories we share of this past RAAM.”

Pippa Middleton on the road

And I did get to support a British cyclist who has written his name into the RAAM history books as a British cyclist. And as a Brit that makes me a proud man.

Perhaps a little ignominy to end it all. We had the pleasure of riding alongside one of the 8 man teams (Michael Matthews Foundation) in the latter part of the race. A team member was Pippa Middleton, sister to the Duchess of Cambridge. We stopped for a chat and a photo session and Chris and Pippa rode side by side for some time while yours truly was navigating the follow vehicle. So distracted were we all that the navigator sent the pair down a wrong turn and they headed off down the freeway off the route. Well if one wants to get lost on a bike ride, getting lost with Pippa Middleton is the way to do it. Sad to report this was the only navigating mistake affecting the racer and it cost valuable time.