Olympic Leadership Lessons

The last job I had right before going out on my own was also one of the best: managing the leadership and customer service training for the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics. Like millions of people, I loved the Olympics and had watched both the Summer and Winter Games all my life. The chance to actually be part of their production was irresistible, even though we all knew it was a temporary job. But how often does such an opportunity come around? It was rewarding to know you were part of something really significant and meaningful, and it was also the most stressful work I've ever done.

It's hard to imagine the sheer size and scope of staging the Olympic Games. The paid part of the Games, the organizing committee, grew from a handful of people to around 5500 in about six years. On top of that we recruited over 25,000 volunteers. My job was to get all 30,000 people through three sessions of customer service training over two years, and some 5000 or so through leadership training. Yes, I had help! Terrific help, with a small training staff of six people and 26 part-time trainers. We wrote all the training material, designed and produced manuals, and tracked the attendance of all 30,000 + people in nine training locations. Deadlines cannot be moved with the Olympics, and there were were many seven-day work weeks and a few of my colleagues slept in the office to meet those deadlines.

On more than a few occasions tensions ran high in my department (and others), tempers flared and words were exchanged. Not nice ones. There were those who wanted to quit at times, but didn't. One of the reasons was we believed in what we were doing. The mission of the the Salt Lake Organizing Committee and volunteers was "To Be The Best Games Workforce Ever." We really believed that. I recently found a copy of the SLOC guiding principles:

• Teamwork
• Passion and Pride
• Communication
• Integrity
• Fun and Celebration

Each principle had several behavioral bullets underneath, and they meant something to us. Why did we believe so strongly in our mission and values? Yes, it was the Olympics, after all! But like any organization, we had our issues and like I said earlier, stress and tension levels were sometimes off the chart. A primary factor was leadership. Our CEO set a clear vision and communicated it to us constantly, from whole-company rallies to impromptu meetings in the hallway. We responded to his leadership and internalized the guiding principles. That kept us going through the hard times, which also included the tragedy of 9/11. You might have heard of him: Mitt Romney.

Leadership makes all the difference in the success or failure of any organization. If you are a leader, from CEO down to supervisor, do you give your people a reason to believe? Do you tell them? How often? Can they see and hear you out there in front? Too many leaders post the mission, vision and values and forget to communicate them. That sends a message to your people of "The boss doesn't care so why should I?" Build a culture that strengthens belief in what you do and then watch your people perform. We had it in the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and the result was the IOC chairman declaring the Salt Lake Games to be the best-run in modern Olympic history. How about a gold medal performance from your organization?

Fiat + Chrysler = ?

I've been reading with great interest the recent talk about a potential merger of Chrysler and Fiat. So many thoughts are crossing my mind and they include skepticism, disbelief, serious concern over heavy-handed White House influence, and laughter...can't help that. The laughter will be familiar to anyone old enough to remember the Fiats of our youth. Fun, inexpensive roadsters were Fiat's main export to the US, and fun they were. They were also notoriously unreliable, breaking down on a regular basis, as much or more than my beloved British sports cars (and they were in constant maintenance mode). So for us, we can't help but wonder at the spectacle of two of the most unreliable brands in the automotive world actually merging.

However, being a car guy from way back, I'm aware that Fiat makes pretty good cars these days! And they're very popular across Europe. So I can get past that. What I can't can't past is the potential for disaster in merging two disparate corporate cultures. Fiat has a fascinating and successful history of making popular cars and even tanks and planes back during the WW 2 era. More recently they have acquired Alfa Romeo and even Maserati, with the latter enjoying great success under Fiat control. Fiat's ownership and board have been dominated by family members even today. This is a quintessential European and notably Italian company.

Chrysler has a history of greatness, but I emphasize history, as in a long time ago. Who didn't love the great Chrysler muscle cars from the 60s and early 70s? But since then their only distinction has been the development of the minivan, which was a huge success, but now other companies have eclipsed Chrysler in sales and quality in their iconic product. Sales of other Chrysler cars plummeted as well. Plymouth is gone and Dodge struggles.

Chrysler is now owned by Cerberus, a private equity group, and a Cerberus principle is now CEO. That's Robert Nardelli, whose record of running Home Depot is somewhat less than stellar. Cerberus is not interested in cars per se, only in turning a profit from their takeover of Chrysler. Nothing wrong with profit! But they don't know the industry and I suspect they don't really care. And their cars still suffer from poor quality and high repair costs compared to other US auto manufacturers. Chrysler would gain access to European markets and Fiat to ours, but will Europeans buy low-quality Chrysler products? Fiat's best car is the Fiat 500, a terrific small car that some say would be competition to the Mini Cooper. But Americans still love larger cars so banking it all on small cars seems unwise, even if gas prices rise again.

So we have two disparate companies and cultures, and beyond the superficial and I think overly-optimistic cross-marketing business model, I see a culture clash reminiscent of another failed merger. As others have pointed out, anyone remember Daimler-Chrysler? Are the lessons of history being ignored again? I'd love to see Fiat in the US again, but not this way.