Olympic Motto Inspires Higher Performances (Opinion)

In 1999, a few months prior to my partner Brad Jones and I launching New Creature, a friend and former vice president of Wal-Mart’s People Division, Von Johnston, invited me to hear Don Soderquist, retired COO of Wal-Mart, deliver a speech in the St. Mary’s Hospital auditorium. The focal point of Don’s message was the creation of high-performance teams. The key take away for me was that great leaders possess high expectation of themselves and of the people they surround themselves with. Don further added that it is critical that leaders actively foster a culture of high performance, celebrate success and pause to appreciate it.

On September 1, 1999, with this wise counsel in mind, Brad and I launched New Creature with high expectations. Over the past nine years New Creature’s people have performed brilliantly and beyond the call as they’ve helped Wal-Mart and its supplier’s sell more stuff. 

Year after year they have stretched themselves and broken record after record. As we began formulating our strategic plan for our upcoming 10th year I saw on the faces of our leaders that familiar look of high expectation — of themselves, of each other, and of me.

I’m thinking, “scheesh, how do I inspire this extremely high performance team to strive for even higher levels of performance?” Then while watching pre-Olympic TV coverage I was given the answer: Citius, Altius, Fortius.

Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” challenges the best of the best to continually pursue higher levels of performance.

Notice the nuance of the tense. The motto is not “Fastest, Highest, Strongest,” which implies high performance is finite.

Now take in to account the recipients of this rebel yell, those who personify the motto – Olympians. Ah, you’re now concluding what I did. That once you have high-performance people on your team, you as their leader, would actually be disrespecting and cheating them if you expected less of them in the following year.

In 2000, New Creature’s first calendar year, when the summer Olympics were held in Sydney, Australia, New Creature produced $600,000 in sales. Four years later in 2004, when the summer Olympics were held in Athens, Greece, New Creature reached $3.8 million. Now, four years later, as the summer Olympics are being held in Beijing, China, New Creature is coming up on $25 million in annual revenue. Four years from now, in 2012, when the summer Olympics will be held in London, England, my leadership team is telling me to expect $50 million.

Wow! Show me a team of Olympians striving for gold and I’ll show you a coach going along for the ride.

With the privilege and honor of leading such a high performance team my job is to get out of their way; to help remove obstacles to success and to allocate the enterprise’s resources to areas that show the most promise for a breakthrough. I also have the responsibility of keeping them focused on the prize and inspired to fight the good fight through good times and bad.

As a daily reminder of the Olympic performance we expect from ourselves, each Creature now has on his or her desk a 6-inch-by-4-inch glass plaque with Olympic motto of “Citius, Altius, Fortius” on one side. On the opposite side is printed the Olympic creed, “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”

In addition, each Creature has on his or her desk a copy of 1 Timothy 6:12, “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

New Creature is not church. We are far from saintly. However, Brad and I are keenly aware of the ultimate source of our good fortune. And we embrace the trials and tribulations that come to all entrepreneurs.

At the soul of New Creature’s culture is a belief that embracing the struggle together, in the spirit of “two are better than one” is the secret to sustained success. Individually each of our Creatures is a high-performer. However, as we sharpen each other’s iron we become a team worthy of the Entrepreneurial Olympics.

(Patrick Sbarra is a founding partner and president of New Creature, a Rogers firm specializing in in-store marketing and merchandising for retail suppliers. He may be reached at [email protected].)