How does a winning Olympic coach approach strategy?
How does a winning Olympic coach approach strategy? In this episode, Rich sits down with Hugh McCutcheon, the Assistant Athletics Director and Sport Development Coach at the University of Minnesota. Hugh coached the US Men’s Volleyball team to the gold medal at the 2008 Olympic games, then coached the US Women’s volleyball team to the silver medal at the 2012 Olympic games. He shares his thoughts on coaching, competition, practice, and team-building.
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“As a coach and a leader, we're a service provider. The service we're providing is helping the people who are investing the most precious resource they have, their lives, in our endeavor. We're trying to help them to achieve this goal. And that's a significant responsibility.”
“I've got nothing wrong with tradition, right? But tradition should only be the right reason for doing anything when it's the right reason. We shouldn't just keep doing stuff just because that's the way we've always done it. We should be basing our stuff in best practice methods.”
“There's not just a physical element to the moment of competition, but there's a mental one, and even a social component that goes on in competition. And the mental is not just about performance and executing. It's also about emotional control, which, by the way, is not emotional suppression. We all have emotions. It's creating a space between the emotion and the action.”
Practice Makes Profit
At it’s foundation, a plan should answer two questions:
What are you trying to achieve?
How will you achieve it?
To answer these questions clearly and consistently I developed the GOST Framework, which stands for goals, objectives, strategies and tactics. Goals and objectives answer the “What” question—goal is generally what you are trying to achieve and objectives are specifically what you are trying to achieve. Strategy and tactics answer the “How” question—strategy is generally how you will reach the goal and tactics are specifically how you will reach the goal.
Example:
Goal: Build a culture of high performance.
Objective: Retain 90% of high performers (those rated 4s & 5s) through Q4 of this year.
Strategy: Significantly differentiate bonus compensation based on performance.
Tactics: Create a bonus comparison chart and share with teams; Design a quarterly performance scorecard;
Communicate top performers’ results.
League of Strategic Minds
Question: How often should we be looking at our strategy and making changes?
Answer: Use a Strategy Tune-up on a quarterly basis consisting of a 2-4 hour review of the current business situation and calibrate goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics accordingly.
Winsights: Ideas for Advantage
Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian General and renowned military strategist wrote: “There is no higher and simpler law of strategy than that of keeping one's forces concentrated.”
Where is the single most important area for you and your team to focus your resources?
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(01:04) Deep Dive Interview with Hugh McCutcheon
(47:09) Practice Makes Profit
(50:17) League of Strategic Minds
(52:39) Winsights, Ideas for Advantage
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Submit a question for Rich to the League of Strategic Minds
Hugh McCutcheon LinkedIn
Championship Behaviors, by Hugh McCutcheon
Rich Horwath on LinkedIn
Rich Horwath on YouTube
Rich Horwath on Instagram
Strategic Thinking Institute Website
Inc. Magazine’s Top 4 book for 2024: STRATEGIC Book
New executive development platform: Strategic Fitness System
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Rich: [00:00:00] Are you strategic? The answer is the difference between failure and a Kevlar competitive advantage. Welcome to Strategic Minds, the podcast that explores how elite achievers use a strategic approach to excel in their fields. I'm your host, Rich Horwath, author of Strategic, and my vision is to teach the world to be strategic, working as a strategy facilitator, advisor, and coach to executive teams.
I'll be your guide as we do a deep dive into conversations with extraordinary leaders to learn new ways to think, plan, and act strategically. You'll discover game changing insights to turbocharge your performance and become a true difference maker. Now, let's explore strategic minds.
Mashup: I'm stuck. What
do we do?
I have no idea. You need a new strategy. We need a more dynamic strategy. The
strategy. You have to [00:01:00] strategize. But you won't strategize. Let's talk
a little strategy.
Rich: Today on the show, I'm excited to speak with world class coach, author, and performance expert, Hugh McCutcheon. Hugh's incredible list of achievements includes coaching the U.
S. men's volleyball team to the gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games, and then Coaching the U. S. women's volleyball team to the silver medal at the 2012 Olympic Games. You coached the University of Minnesota's women's volleyball team for 11 years with eight consecutive Sweet 16 appearances or better, three final fours, and he developed 26 All Americans while earning Big 10 and coach of the year.
honors nationally. You also played for volleyball for his national team in New Zealand and he also played professionally indoor and on the beach. You currently serves as University of Minnesota's assistant athletics director and sport development coach. He's also a senior advisor to the Federation Internationale de Volleyball and was [00:02:00] recently inducted into the USA Volleyball Hall of Fame.
You, welcome to the show.
Hugh: Yeah, Rich, good to be here. Thanks for having me, man.
Rich: Excellent. Well, I'd love it too if we could start perhaps with your origin story. Maybe you could share a little bit with us about where you grew up and how that environment shaped who you are and the people there, how they shaped your values and the things that have brought you to the leadership spot that you're in today.
Hugh: Sure, well, yeah, as you see it from New Zealand, so I talk a little bit funny, but when you look back, it's been quite the ride. I started playing volleyball in high school. New Zealand's mainly known for, for rugby, obviously, and, and America's Cup yachting and, and some other goofy Commonwealth sports like netball and cricket and all that kind of stuff.
But volleyball was something I got into, uh, and I, I really loved it. And I remember, uh, Quite vividly in 1988, sitting on my couch, watching, uh, watching the Seoul Olympic Games and USA won the gold. Marv Dunphy was the coach of that team. And then 20 years later, I got to coach that [00:03:00] same team to that same result.
And Marv was with us. He was on my staff. So yeah, not your traditional career path by any means, but most of it is connected to, Hey, I really enjoyed The sport of volleyball, like it had my head and my heart and maybe my gut as well. And, and I was always trying to pursue this opportunity to become the best that I could.
And so quite quickly, I had some physical talents that led themselves to being successful in the sport. I was able to rise through the ranks in New Zealand, but I was always looking for an opportunity to possibly learn more, do more, and was able to come to the, the States and competed at Brigham Young University.
And, and there I got to spend some time with a guy named Carl McGowan, who was a, Uh, our coach, but also a former professor of motor learning. And it was really the first time I'd been taught the game in a way that really made sense. I think coaching tends to lack academic rigor. I don't think that's going out on a limb by any means, but the idea of having some real, uh, logic and, uh, and some [00:04:00] rigor, as I said, to the method was really kind of intriguing and it got me quite interested in, The idea of teaching the game.
I went on and played professionally for a little bit and then went back to grad school and that's how I got into coaching. Initially it was a means to an academic end, but you're talking about origin story. One of the things you learn about in New Zealand is teams. We're either at the top or at the bottom of the world, depending on your view.
And, uh, there aren't many of us and we're all in it together. So there's a real Sense of connectedness that you feel in New Zealand that is different than America, not good, bad, just different. And then you come to the U S and it's the capital of capitalism. And now you learn how to compete. And I think for me as a coach, combining those ideas of team and how to compete the right way, and that afforded me to create some synergies that I think have been pretty successful.
Rich: Excellent. Yeah. You know, as we look back retrospectively, the path that you took makes perfect sense. I'd be interested you, as you were on that path early on when you were playing in college, once you got beyond college, you played [00:05:00] professionally, then you obviously got into coaching. At what point did you say, this is the path, here's the destination I want to get to?
Or was it something that materialized based on opportunities and things that just came into your life at the time?
Hugh: Yeah, it's a great question. I think as I reflect and look back, and not to say that hindsight's 20 20, but there wasn't like a master plan by any means. However, one of the things that I've learned in modern age now is that I've always been really attracted to this pursuit of excellence, this idea of becoming the best That, that you could be or that we could be on a team.
And so when I see it through that lens, I think that was the thing that was driving a lot of my decisions. It wasn't people want to talk about coaches making money and yeah, some of them do and it's great and they, they make a great living. But I think if you want to make money, you go get an MBA and get to wall street and start a hedge fund and go for it.
I mean, that's a much more efficient way of doing it than slipping around in a gym. [00:06:00] All that being said, for me, it was, Hey, like I said, academic. Means to a coaching end, but then it was like, Hey, we were having success. We won national championships in men's volleyball, collegiate men's volleyball. afforded me the chance to get involved with USA Volleyball.
Now, hey, it'd be great to go to an Olympics. Now I get to go to Athens as an assistant coach. Then I'm encouraged to become the head coach. Hey, here's another chance to climb the mountain and, and try and become the best in the world at what we do. Hey, now maybe we can take that whole paradigm and apply it to a more sustainable population with the women.
I don't know where I'm now coaching women's volleyball, which I'd never done before, but it was awesome. So it was always that idea of pursuing excellence. And I think that motive. has been really healthy because I think in coaching and I'd imagine it's the same in medicine and business. All kinds of endeavors.
That, that idea that this is what I do versus this is who I am, can get really clunky for a lot of us. And for me, I was always, if you'll excuse the third person reference, Hugh who coaches not coach Hugh. And, and to [00:07:00] that end, it was always like, Hey, here's this next challenge. Here's this other cool thing that maybe I could be a part of.
And that seemed to be the, uh, the foundation. The, the impetus, the driving force.
Rich: Excellent. And I want to build on what you said, because I think that phrase pursuing excellence is really interesting. And, um, you, for those listening out there, uh, has written an excellent book called Championship Behaviors.
Uh, so whether you're a leader in any area, I would highly recommend Championship Behaviors, Hugh's book. Uh, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. But you, this idea of pursuing excellence, we see it in great athletes. Oftentimes the Michael Jordans, the Steph Curry's, the Serena Williams in tennis. We can see that in them.
We don't, it's maybe not quite as noticeable for people who aren't in the arena. So the coaches, the leaders that are supporting are developing that, you know, as you look back on your career, what's inspired that pursuit of excellence in your mind, because.
Hugh: Well, I think a lot of it was connected to the goal.
And I think anytime you can be really clear around what it is you're trying to [00:08:00] achieve. Then a lot of things all of a sudden fall into place. But, you know, like I said, okay, we're trying to be national champions. Now we're trying to be Olympic champions, world champions. I mean, those are, uh, lofty endeavors.
And once you say that you're going to commit to that pursuit or even to help people guide them, To that end, there's a lot of things that all of a sudden become required of you relative to your, obviously you have to have relevant knowledge and information specific to the task, but also your ability to, to commit to that process and to live that process becomes critical because those spaces, I mean, if I'm demanding excellence, Of our athletes.
And yet I'm not prepared to, to live those behaviors myself. Well, that, that credibility gap shows up pretty quick. And like I say, you can fool a fool that you can't get a kid. They're not going to buy into that. They're not going to follow that.
Rich: Yeah, excellent. And I think that's a great lesson for all the business leaders out there as well.
If we're demanding excellence from them, what are we doing outside of the norm to [00:09:00] create excellence in the preparation aspect of what we're doing? So, so that, that makes a lot of sense. So let's take this idea of excellence. To a daily, a daily approach. So I'd love to know you a little bit about what you do on a daily basis and maybe how you start your day, how you finish your day.
Are there certain rituals, routines that help you maintain that level of excellence that you've applied as a coach and now as an administrative leader?
Hugh: Well, I think part of this, we're talking about this process or whatever, it's connected to the idea of consistency. And so a lot of, I'm not, I'm not a master.
Routine guy, but I also understand that I have a lot of different responsibilities. Like I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a son, I'm a brother. I also get to be a coach, I get to be an athletics director, well assistant athletics director, assistant to the athletics director, who knows. But I'm doing all these different things, right?
You know, when I get up in the morning, I have this engagement with the International Volleyball Federation. So they're seven hours ahead. So I feel I have a responsibility to [00:10:00] wake up and see what's been going on in Switzerland today and the world. And if there's anything I'm required to get on pretty quickly here.
And then I try to be a dad, help the kids, get them ready for school, get them out the door. And obviously my wife is involved in that process too. If I have to drive someone somewhere or do whatever it is, the kids call me Huber these days, because I'm the guy doing most of the driving. And the dad, I need a Huber.
All right, yeah, let me know. But then once that's squared away, Then, okay, now I'm into work mode and then, hey, here's the tasks. And, uh, I'm not sure I'm a list guy, but I am a calendar guy. I make sure everything's in there and really try to have very good control over my time and energy, because that's something as a coach that I, that you end up losing, a lot of people can pull on you in a lot of different directions.
But now in this kind of a 2. 0 iteration of my career here, um, You know, all of a sudden I have control over that and it's such a gift. My goodness, it's such a wonderful thing to have control over [00:11:00] that. So I'm very well guarded with it. How about that? I really am making sure that I'm on time and I'm doing it.
And again, we talk about consistency, but Hey, if I say I'm going to be there, I'm going to be there. And if I need to prepare, I'll be prepared. And all that kind of stuff. I just try to have that life of not discipline, but engagement and presence and honoring my commitments.
Rich: Excellent. Yeah, I love the idea of engagement and presence these days with the mobile phones and texts and things like that.
It's easy to be distracted. So I think that dedication that you described is something that's really powerful. You talked about the consistency. You talked about that pursuit of excellence earlier as well. You, there's obviously a lot written and you've done a lot in your work on helping players get better, helping players reach their peak level of performance.
What we don't find as much in the literature And in other areas is how does the coach, how does the leader get better at what they do? You talked a few minutes ago about if you're going to demand excellence from your players, you as a coach have to have that level of preparation. I'd be interested as you [00:12:00] look back on your career as a coach and now as an administrative leader, how did you prepare?
How did you practice? To become better at what you're doing. I believe that leaders are not like fine wine. We don't just get better with age. There has to be some intention there. So as you look back, how did you get better? How did you practice to become the best that you could be?
Hugh: Well, no doubt. I was fortunate enough to work with some really good people along the way.
And that's not to say that I didn't have some original ideas of my own, but like, for example, Carl, having an introduction to. Modal learning and the principles of skill acquisition and how they can be applied in terms of practice design and also how they affect improvement in performance. I mean, that's a real thing.
It's a relatively 60, 70 years. It's a relatively new science, but it's seldom applied in coaching. And one of the things that that's real, like I said, there's a, there's a lack of academic rigor. And when I was writing the book, I did a little research. Around 5, 300 universities in the U. S. 57 in 2022, [00:13:00] 57 had undergraduate degrees in coaching that they were offering.
So if a son is going to be 14 next week, actually, but anyway, he's an eighth grade. His mathematics teacher has a degree in mathematics and a certification is teaching. He plays basketball. His basketball coach, I'm not sure if he has a degree. I don't look at, I don't think he's certified in anything. Uh, but, but coach has more influence than teach.
And, and that seems kind of, well, not crazy, but it's a little clunky, right? And, and the thing that's hard about coaching or Again, maybe just unique is, you know, I don't know, I, I haven't been doing any disservice to the medical proficiency, but I think it probably takes 12 or 14 years before you can be called doc, but you can be called coach tomorrow by just raising your hand.
And, and so when power is given and it's not earned, low barriers to entry, it, it, it can get clunky in terms of motives and why people are doing it and what it's all about because it's. As a coach and a leader, we're a service provider, [00:14:00] right? I mean, the service we're providing is helping the people who are investing, by the way, the most precious resource they have, their lives, in our endeavor.
We're trying to help them to achieve this goal, and that's a significant responsibility. So when you can wrap that in something that's principle based, Not tradition based and I've got nothing wrong with tradition, right? But tradition should only be the right reason for doing anything until it's the right reason.
Like we shouldn't just keep doing stuff just cause that's the way we've always done it. We should be basing our stuff in best practice methods. And if those things align, then great. And if they don't, well, let's go with best practice. But anyway, where I'm going is if you can wrap. This idea of helping people in, in a process that's connected to, to rigor and efficiency and effectiveness.
Well, now it gets really clear around what this path can look like. And then going back to like, Hey, as the leader, you set the temperature in the room, whether you like it or not. So you've got to live it. There you go.
Rich: Excellent. And you talked to, there's a lot of [00:15:00] great things that you talked about there.
You, I'd be interested. You talked about practice design and as a coach, I'd be interested. What were some of the things that, some of the ideas that you brought to the table as it relates to creating more rigor? More discipline around the practice design because I do believe that business leaders don't practice enough their key skills.
Again, we're out there, we're in the world doing our thing, but as athletes typically spend 90 percent of their time practicing 10 percent competing in business, it's really flip flopped and many people don't spend any time practicing. So I'm just. Wondering if we can maybe borrow some ideas. When you think about your practice designs in the past for the Olympic teams, for your college teams, what, what were some of the tenants or the basic things that you did either innovatively or said, look, a great practice design is going to have these elements so that we ensure that we are gaining traction here?
Sure. Well, let's start with a couple
Hugh: of. Ideas that I think are relevant. First of all, talent is critical in sport and I would imagine [00:16:00] in business, right? I mean, the better people you have, the better coach you become, no question. And I'd imagine the better talent you have in your business endeavor, the better business person you become.
So that's an important part of it. But my guess is you can go to a lot of bars around the country right now, and there's a lot of people that'll tell you how good they could have been. So talent is not particularly rare. What's rare is talent plus work, plus having some kind of coaching or mentorship to guide that process.
And I think that part of it is oftentimes neglected, but you can have the best coaching in the world, but you can't win the derby on a donkey. Right? I mean, you need a thoroughbred. So just let's be clear around that. The second idea that I think is important in all of this is at the end of the day, when we have this idea of Practicing.
It's about creating an intention around what it is we're actually doing. I mean, coming to practice and sweating is actually just working out. And you can do that on a treadmill over at Never Lifetime Fitness, right? I mean, [00:17:00] so one of the people that I got to spend a lot of time with was a guy named Anders Ericsson, who was the world's preeminent expert in expertise, right?
Uh, Gladwell referenced him, uh, in his, the 10, 000 hour stuff. Um, but more importantly, he wrote a book named Peak that, that, that's, that's great, but talks about how deliberate practice is applied in a lot of different realms. But one of the areas that he and I would talk about often is how do we apply it in sport?
Because all of his research was in memorization or in mathematics, and hey, if you work hard at remembering things, you get better. There's this really linear path between work and outcome. In sport, it's not like that. My guess is in business, it's not quite as linear either. I mean, you can work really hard in sport and you may not win the contest.
You might even get a little bit worse before you get a whole lot better. So that, that idea of, of intention around practice is really important. So coaches have a, have a responsibility to, in my opinion, to, to, uh, coach, [00:18:00] which is what we do on the weekends. Timeouts and subs and game plans, all that kind of stuff.
We got to teach during the week and then we got to mentor. We got to help these athletes to become better people and not that they're bad people to start with, but we know that character off the court or off the field of play leads to character on the field of play. So that's coaching. I think the athlete.
All the, all the person that, that is being developed has, has the responsibility to work and everyone wants to tell you how hard they work. But in my opinion, uh, I don't think everyone has the capacity for it. The reality is this, well, the good news is that it's, uh, an emergent talent. It's not innate, born with this capacity to work or not.
You can learn how to do it, but listen, you got to work, you got to learn and make change because what gets you to us isn't enough to get us to a national championship or whatever it is. And then you've got to compete. And so if those are your responsibilities, how do you create as an, as an athlete or a learner, how do you create intention and the intention piece from [00:19:00] the deliberate practice model, coming to practice with, here are the things that we're going to work on.
That's the, The magic. So, practice plans matter, sure, but, uh, learner intention, either to, to come in and learn today, or if we're going to compete, come in and compete today, that matters as much, even more, because you can lead the proverbial horse to water, but you, you can't necessarily make it drink. So, the last thing I would say, when you're thinking about practices, is what we would try to do is have very clear skill constructs that were based in things that we knew have the best influence on outcome.
So we didn't practice stuff that didn't matter relative to winning or losing. We tried to practice the things that mattered the most relative to winning and losing, and we did basic correlative analysis to determine what those skills were and maybe what levels of execution. We created skill constructs around those that were clear and understandable.
And then the athlete would come and they could work on. For this day, [00:20:00] this part of this skill that was connected to this outcome. And so the, the link between what I was practicing today with intention relative to what I hoped to achieve at the end of the season was really clear. And so I think anytime you can give that process of improvement, not just skill acquisition, but skill application.
I think anytime you can give that clarity, it works out pretty well.
Rich: Wonderful. And the, the idea, and I love the idea of, of learner intent. And for all the leaders out there, I would ask you to think about what's your leader intent each day, as you interact with colleagues, your direct reports, the clients or customers that you serve, what's Are we walking into each day with that leader intent that, that you just described?
So love those ideas, you and, and the, obviously the idea of, of competition, of being able to outperform. And that, that leads us to this idea of, of having a strategic mindset when we're in sport, especially when we're in. We're trying to outperform the competition in order to have the best result possible.[00:21:00]
And in business, we're trying to outthink the competition so that we can have the best result for our company, for the customers that we serve. You've obviously had a lot of great experiences from a coaching standpoint, both men and women. I think you're one of only two coaches to win medals for both men and women in Olympic sport and volleyball.
So you've coached domestically, you've coached internationally. I'm wondering you, as you think. Back on your development of strategy, development of plans for your teams. Uh, and even today at the university of Minnesota, are there any consistent things that you think about strategically when you're going about developing a plan for, for a team, uh, for a function, for a, for a group, any, any common elements across all of those experiences that you say, when I Think strategically about developing a game plan or developing a way to give our team the best chance to compete.
Here's a couple things that I've thought about or that were part of my mental process there. Sure.
Hugh: Yeah, a few things. I think first [00:22:00] and foremost, what we know is that having guiding principles really matters. And what I know is that the application of these principles, at least in sport, I mean, they're self evident.
We live on planet earth and the laws of physics apply. So, so again, getting off the tradition and getting to something with some rigor really helps. So making sure you've got guiding principles. Now, none of this is algorithmic. I'm not, I'm not algorithmic. I'm not talking about controlled inputs leading to controlled outputs.
That's not how coaching works. However, these principles do work and it's up to the coach or the leader to figure out how to apply these principles to different populations. That's the magic, right? Also, what we know is that skill, confidence. Comes from skill competence. And so in my opinion, fundamental mastery is actually the cornerstone of the mental game.
And if you'll humor me, if we're looking at a free throw, for example, of my elbows over here, my hands over here, and I'm [00:23:00] trying to shoot a free throw like that. I might have the greatest. Breathing the greatest routine in the world, but it doesn't matter because my mechanics are all messed up. And so oftentimes, and my guess is this probably is related to business as well, but oftentimes in sport, coaches will reduce some kind of inefficiency to some kind of mental deficiency versus it actually being a technical inefficiency because they're not seeing it as a teaching thing.
They're seeing it as a performance thing. So it's like, hey, whatever, Timmy or Susie, like, hey, you've got to go see sports psych when really like until they get the fundamental Skills in place and still they get to be biomechanically efficient. Well, the routine doesn't really matter as much. Um, and that's not to say that the mental game doesn't matter, but that's a piece that should be added to this idea of fundamentals.
And so I had the pleasure of, of getting to know Jeff Jones, who's the CEO at H& R [00:24:00] Block, and, uh, Jeff and I have talked over the years about, uh, performance in a lot of different ways, but, but he has, he's Actually, and he just spoke recently on a, on a podcast about applying this idea of fundamental mastery and getting good at the fundamentals within his, with his business.
So I think it's transferable, but I would always say, Hey, let's get good at the fundamentals. And then we can worry about putting some systems in above that. But again, going back to, you know, How does coaching work? Well, I think a lot of people try to do things tactically that they can't do technically, and then they wonder why it all falls apart.
Rich: Great stuff there. I love the last phrase too. You talked about trying to get people to do stuff tactically that they're not ready to do technically. And again, in business view, I think. You hit it right on the head there. Sometimes people are talking about, well, we need to change the culture. We need to change the attitude.
When to your point, sometimes people just haven't been given the knowledge, the skills, the tools to do their role to the best of their ability. So to your point, they've got to be able to improve their [00:25:00] business behavior. So maybe it's increasing their. Emotional intelligence. So they're reading the situation.
They're reading the room better. They're listening more intently and actively to people that are talking with them. They're managing their own emotions in meetings when people are challenging some of their business ideas. So I love that idea of as a leader, are you really technically, and you and your people, are we technically sound in the key behaviors that we need?
That are driving our business. So before we get, like you said, to the mental piece, let's make sure that piece is as buttoned up as possible. So really love that piece. I'd be interested in you as you've transitioned to the administrative leadership side in the past year or so. Has there been any modifications in the way that you approach what you're doing to achieve the goals that you have now as part of the athletics department?
Hugh: Yeah, well, obviously, I've gone from making a whole lot of decisions to making a whole lot of suggestions. So that's a much different space to, to operate in. But also, that being said, there is, there's a real shift [00:26:00] in, hey, I got to put out the next fire, and maybe, and now I get to be part of the firefighter, or even fire prevention.
So, so the, we're thinking a lot more strategically, a lot more kind of big picture. Within the, my role in the university right now, there's probably three buckets. Obviously, I help coaches. I'm not coaching coaches. They're really good at what they do, but if I can be a resource or an advocate, there are very few safe spaces in coaching.
So, if I can help them out, great. And it might be about practice design, sure, but it might be about recruiting or it might be about any number of things. Maybe they just need to vent. That's okay, too. I also do some work with, uh, With, with athletes around performance in particular, owning the moment of competition.
And then I do some work with our admin around strategy, college athletics is an ever shifting landscape currently, and it's getting more and more complicated. No question. So trying to be involved in what these next months or years look like in the college space has been. Quite interesting. And then with this International Volleyball [00:27:00] Federation stuff that I'm doing, this is also pretty big picture stuff.
We're looking at the next eight years and the international calendar, the calendar, how many events should we have, what kind of format should we have, world ranking stuff. There's a lot there. It's great. I still get to stay involved in a real way with the sport that I love, but it's through a different lens, a bigger picture stuff.
How does it all translate? I mean, the good news is that it does translate. It's just, again, kind of a different application of these principles, these guiding principles, and, and, um, it seems to be going pretty well.
Rich: Wonderful. And, and you just mentioned, uh, working with athletes on owning the moment of competition.
I haven't heard that phrase before. I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about, uh, what, what that really means and, and, uh, And then maybe we as leaders could potentially use some of that, uh, as part of what we're doing. Sure. Well, like I said, we've got skill
Hugh: application, and then we've got, I'm sorry, skill acquisition, then we've got skill application.
And to me, those are different things. We can, whatever, work [00:28:00] on forearm passing and volleyball all day long, but it's a whole different thing to be able to execute that skill at 14 0 on the fifth set. So being able to understand that there's not just a physical element to the moment of competition, but there's a, a mental one and even a social component that goes on in competition and the mental is not just.
Necessarily about performance and executing, but it's also about emotional control, which by the way, is not emotional suppression. We all have emotions. It's creating a space between the emotion and the action. I mean, that's really what we're talking about. And then yeah, how to act in those moments, how to be present, how to give yourselves the best possible chance of competitive success, one of the things when we think about competing.
A lot of people get quite anxious about that. But if you're in sport, let's be honest, that's what you sign up for. So you got to learn to manage whatever the expectations or whatever it is you're building, the narrative that you're building around that and just see it for what it is. And I think [00:29:00] especially nowadays, some of that.
Angst is fueled through the world of comparison that most of our athletes live in through social media and their phones and talked at the beginning about teach, coach, mentor, right, for coaches. The mentoring thing is, is probably a little more recent. Uh, the days of I say jump and you say how high, they're, they're well and truly gone.
But I would say athletes today, I have more knowledge than at any time in the existence of the human being. I mean, they have the world at their fingertips through their phone. Any piece of information they want is there, but they have less experience than ever before. But especially in athletics, if, if, if let's say they're 12 years old and they're identified as a potentially excellent athlete, that they have a career or a future in the sport.
You know, most of their days for the next six years till they get to college have been scripted. They're in practice or they're at speed and quickness training or they're working with their nutritionist or whatever and then they're going to school and [00:30:00] trying to get the 4. 0 or whatever it is. These kids have never gotten into trouble and they certainly don't know how to get out of trouble.
So then they get to college and now they got to deal with stuff. They've got freedom, sure, but with that autonomy comes some responsibility and they're ill equipped to deal with that. So where I'm going back is like, okay, so now we've got to mentor, we've got to teach them what these words actually mean.
How to live them, right? Not just how to look them up on your phone and figure out what the meaning, like the dictionary meaning is, but what does it actually mean to live that. And when it comes to competing, because, again, life of comparison, generally the narrative around competition is if you win, you get everything, and you are everything, and if I lose, I get nothing and I am nothing.
And that's a really liberating way to view it. And if you choose to see it through that lens, then I think a lot of people, because they feel foolish or embarrassed or whatever, they don't want to engage, they don't want to compete for fear of coming up short. Listen, the reality is that competition and learning are really connected.
And there's this beautiful [00:31:00] interface between the moment of competition and getting better that's critical. You ask anyone that's gotten To be the best at what they do, I don't care what field it is, they made a ton of mistakes. They made a lot of errors and they just didn't let those errors define them.
They learned from them and they got better. And so when we talk about owning the moment, helping our athletes to see it for what it is, not a chance to be defined. It's a chance to get some real feedback about where you are on your path. Connected to this is also this really limiting narrative around arriving.
We, we tend to, uh, at least in, in, in Western culture, there's this whole thing about, Hey, we want you to give away your today because it's going to, it's going to be better tomorrow. Like work really hard for 40 years cause retirement's going to be magical. Or, Hey, give your youth to, to youth sport because you can go to college or give away college so that you can go to the Olympics or whatever it is.
But listen, having coached an Olympic gold [00:32:00] medal team, the guys won it. It was great. And believe me, life with a gold medal is better than life without it. It's profoundly satisfying. However, the next day, you still had to make your bed, go to breakfast and brush your teeth and get on with it. And these guys had, had bought in often to the narrative of ticker tape and the Wheaties box and all the stuff that were promised.
But it doesn't work out that way. And so again, going back to our athletes, I want them to understand like, hey, you want to have that good tomorrow. Let's start by having a good today. And this moment of competition is a chance to excel. It's a chance to put all this work into play. And it's something that we should cherish.
And yeah, we could have an emotional response to that, but we also get to respond to that response. And so to me, that's the magic for them and giving them that perspective and the freedom to be who they are in those moments and to own it and to learn from it. That's been the really powerful stuff.
Rich: Excellent. You, thank you for sharing those. And I think there's so many points there that you just outlined that are absolutely [00:33:00] applicable to, to what we're doing in business. And this idea of being able to persist, to think about what, what does success look like? I mentioned, you mentioned the 2008 team that won the gold medal.
And I know in reading in your book, you've got a fascinating story around building that culture up and really helping that team see what was possible. I'm wondering if you could share with the listeners, again, I think it's fascinating to hear how you were able to, and especially from a business, a lot of times, they Leaders take over a business that's floundering, that's needs to be turned around.
And in some cases, I think that was maybe a little bit the case that you inherited coming in in 2005 to that team. If you could share a little bit about that and how you were able to, to build and lay that culture out for that team. I think that would be, uh, interesting for our folks to hear. Sure.
Hugh: Well, um, as I said, I was the assistant coach with the team in Athens in 2004 and we actually finished fourth place, which is heart.
achingly close to some hardware. And the thing that was most [00:34:00] disappointing, I think, about those last couple of matches in the middle round was that we didn't play great. But I also understand, and maybe I'll try to convey this with an example, but the space between being good in international volleyball and being Olympic champions is currently small, but it's also massive.
For example, to win the Big Ten, In volleyball, maybe you've got to, whatever, pass a free ball perfectly nine times out of ten, or something like that. To win a gold medal, maybe it's got to be 99 out of 100. And so that, that shift in the way you perceive the margins is really important. And maybe the other thing to add to these Olympic campaigns is, you know, I tell people all the time, in volleyball anyway, it's four years to be good.
for two weeks to hope to be at your best for the last two hours. And so there's a lot that goes into it. When I was starting with the team in 2005, I mean, there were lots of teams that were better than us. I don't mind admitting that. But it seemed to make sense relative to the idea [00:35:00] of just the culture.
In America, and then also where the team was, but maybe the capacity that we had, the, the, the place that we could go, because as coaches, our job is not to see, well, we see your performance, sure, but we also need to see your potential. And that is almost, if not more important, who you can become, not who you are today, right?
So, We started talking in 2005 about putting a mission together. And when you've got four years for mission, it can be mission, vision kind of combo. But, but we talked about being Olympic champions and listen to qualify. I mean, there are 12 teams that get to go to the Olympics. One is the host. So there are 11 spots.
There are 222 countries that play volleyball. So getting to the show is almost as tough as winning the thing. But anyway, I lobbed up there just kind of softly like, Hey, why don't we put Olympic champions in our mission, and I don't think anyone just straight up shut it down. But it wasn't well received.
We knew how hard it was to qualify. In 2004, we had to beat [00:36:00] Cuba in, in Puerto Rico. We won 15, 13 in the fifth hit, and that was how we got there at one point here or there. And that's four years down the drain. So anyway. They knew how hard it was to even qualify, let alone to even win the thing. So I think for them, the idea of saying, Hey, we're going to be Olympic champions in 2008.
They thought it was laughable because like I said, a lot of teams were better than us at that point. However, culturally, like I said, we're the USA team. The USA doesn't walk around saying, Hey, we're number four, right? Apparently we're number one, right? So, so culturally it seemed to fit. But also, like I said, if we could harness this idea of competing and combine this with some of the team stuff.
That maybe that could present a competitive advantage for us that we try to out team the rest of the world. And, and, and I think identifying your competitive advantage and having clarity around the goal is really important because the goal is one thing, like, here's what we hope to do, but you need something to hang your hat on.
You need something to [00:37:00] believe in, Hey, we can do this better than anyone else. And then it kind of all fell into place from there. And I, last thing I would say about that. Is by saying that we're going to try to be Olympic champions or that we hope to become Olympic champions, immediately, there were a bunch of behaviors that all of a sudden kind of fell into place just from everybody committing to that goal.
You can't go out on the weekend and party and do whatever. And they'd show up on Monday morning and you're not super crisp and somehow think that you're honoring your commitment to becoming the best in the world at what you do. So there was some instant accountability, some instant things that kind of got built in just by making that the mission.
Rich: Excellent. That's a great lesson too for, for all of us business leaders out there is really thinking about are we selling ourselves and our team too short or are we putting something out there that we can aspire to? And then I love what you just said there, you about the behaviors then have to follow and the discipline has to follow there.
You also mentioned you just a moment ago. Identifying [00:38:00] competitive advantage. Yeah. I, from a, from your coaching perspective, how would you identify competitive advantage? Was it simply looking at the competition? Was it assessing your team's capabilities? How were you able to identify competitive advantage?
Cause in business, that's the Holy grail typically is can we create some competitive advantage?
Hugh: Sure. Well, I think we all have a decision to make about where we put our time and energy and, and you can strengthen your strengths or you can strengthen your weaknesses. And what I think is, hey, we have to be generalized specialists.
You know what I mean? Like, we have to be good at all the fundamental parts of the game, but we have to be great at one or two things. And so some of this Strategic intent was opponent specific. Hey, we're good here. They're not good here. So let's use our strength against their weakness. But also some of it was about, hey, we know that these are the metrics around becoming the best in the world at what we do.
We know that we can really play to this particular strength where maybe [00:39:00] we're a little down in this area, but we're way up in this area. So we got to play to that. And, and then see if we can leverage that into something that can be a differentiating factor relative to the rest of whatever this competitive ecosystem is that we're in.
And so I think the competitive advantage piece, every team, every year in college, or even over the course of four years in the Olympic space, you're constantly looking at, at what we're good at. And yeah, Hey, what can we get better at? But if we can take a strength and, and leverage that into competitive outcome success, I think We should do it.
Rich: Excellent. And then you talked about context being important in business. Obviously, it's important to understand what's happening with the market, our competitive landscape and so forth. When you looked at the context, would you, so let's say for the Olympics or the NCAA tournament for women's college volleyball, how did you assess the context?
Hugh: Really data driven. We would dig deep. And look for patterns. All teams, all athletes have patterns. So [00:40:00] really getting into the weeds around what they like to do, where their strengths and weaknesses were. And again, how could we leverage those to our advantage? How could we try to exploit them? And we also knew that they would do the same to us.
So in the moment of competition, you've still got to be able to compensate the just. I mean, these things aren't academic exercises on paper, they're played in the field of competition. So there's. That interplay that you've got to build into it. But the big difference, of course, between business and sport is sports episodic, and there's one opponent generally like, yeah, we're going to play on Saturday against this team.
Whereas business, multiple competitors, it's 24 seven. The outcomes are generally connected to some kind of fiduciary responsibility or, or stock price or something. There's that, and yeah, we're trying to win the next one. But all that being said. This idea of trying to figure out what you're good at, what you're not good at, what your various competitors strengths and weaknesses are, and really doing in depth analysis.
Like we, like [00:41:00] I said, we, we went in there deep and we were able to find all kinds of advantages in the data that we could then, you know, cause this is an art and a science, right? So you use the science to figure out what they are, and then you've got to be able to apply them in the moment. And to me, that's more of the art, but just being able to do that Really worked well for us for all of the Olympic campaigns that we were in.
I think that was great.
Rich: Yeah. Just to build on that, you, I'd be interested, maybe you could give us an example when you were doing the Olympics and diving deep in the data, what type of stuff were you looking at? Was it when the setter gets the ball on the right shoulder, they tend to push it 30 degrees left.
I mean, what, what type of stuff, can you give us an example of something that maybe
Hugh: some people are better passing on one side than the other. So if you can get them on, on their right. You can knock a team out of system, or if you can drop it short, you can knock them out of system. But even setter patterns, like, hey, the setter's over on the right side of the court, they tend to either sit the middle or the right side.
They like the short set. And so that means if the pass is pulling them over onto the left side of the [00:42:00] court, now you know they're either going to go middle or left. They're not going to go long set behind. Other setters like the long set. So if they run over here, they're going to sit over here. So you don't go following them.
So there's some things that That you can find out about setters and their patterns, hitters, where they like to hit, when they like to tip, all that stuff is really important. And when their patterns, then you can stop building your defensive strategies around that, or when you know their defensive patterns, you can stop building your offensive strategy around that.
And all of a sudden, siding out gets to be a little bit easier.
Rich: And you, I love what you just said there, because having worked with lots of business leaders over many years, one of the things I think that happens is we look at the products or the services that another company has, and we take those at face value, but what I don't see a lot of folks doing is looking at the patterns of the competitors.
So to your point, how do they typically price? Where do they like to typically sell? What are their salespeople typically look like? So I would challenge all the business leaders out there [00:43:00] and, and other leaders in other areas, when you think about your competition, have you identified the key patterns and trends to use point using data and really getting it at granular level to understand what do they like to do?
What don't they like to do? And then, like you said, you, you can come up with some defensive or neutralizing strategies, uh, in those situations. So, so great stuff there. I really love that. Well, I want to be respectful of. So, if we could, I'd love to share six, uh, short questions with you and, uh, get your response.
We call this the strategic six, if that works.
Hugh: Sounds good. Yeah, let the interrogation begin. I'm ready. All right.
Rich: All right. You, your first job was?
Hugh: You know, I think my first real job, I worked at the Christchurch City Council in New Zealand, uh, and I was, uh, part of a road crew. I was in university and, and that was my summer job.
Rich: Okay, excellent, excellent.
Hugh: How about your favorite vacation spot? Well, now that I'm a recovering coach, I'm kind of new to vacationing, so I'm not sure if I know any good spots, but [00:44:00] we got to spend some time in Italy last year and that was great. I've always enjoyed Italy, but listen, anytime with the family, how about this?
I'll say the type of vacation, family vacations, our kids are 12 and soon to be 14. They're just magical right now. We're having a really good time together.
Rich: Excellent. Sounds great. How about one word that best describes you?
Hugh: Yeah, well, one of the things I thought might be a good word is optimizer. What I really try to do with every endeavor that I'm a part of is think about how to get the most out of what we got.
Uh, and, and, and maybe within that whole optimizing thing is this idea of optimism as well, which is a little bit of entendre, but I, I think, Hey, there's optimists and pessimists and, and optimists seem to live longer apparently. So why not go for that? So if you can find the positive, it's pretty good deal, but optimizer is the one word I'd use.
Rich: Great, thank you. And if you wouldn't mind, share with us a book that's had a significant impact on your development over the years, if you could pick one book.
Hugh: Yeah, it's tough. It's a tough call. But listen, one of the [00:45:00] books that I really liked that stuck with me was Fountainhead, Ayn Rand, and not in the political sense of it, but the idea that Howard Rourke was blazing his own trail and chose to do that.
And I think if If I'm proud of anything in my career, I've had some outcome success, but I've also got to have all these different experiences and, and that whole idea of kind of following, following your path versus following someone else's, that really resonated with me.
Rich: Wonderful. Thank you. And one piece of advice that would fit on a bumper sticker that you'd like to share with people.
It
Hugh: depends how big the sticker is, but, but there's a Joseph Campbell quote that I like a lot. The privilege of a of a lifetime as being who you are. And I think that's a good place to study. You're the only rich that's ever gonna be. So why not enjoy the journey and understand the pri privilege of that.
And if that's too big, then I don't know, this too shall pass or something like that. No matter how crunchy it's getting ,
Rich: it won't last forever. Great. Love it. And then our last one, uh, if you [00:46:00] could share what the most exhilarating moment you've experienced in your professional career.
Hugh: Yeah. I mean, obviously the, the one that that's easy as saying, Hey, winning, winning gold in, in Beijing.
And it was great. Um, so, so maybe that that's, that's, that's the, The one you want to speak to, but, but also we had a final four team here in 2015 that in 2014 did not qualify for the NCAA tournament. Wow. And then the next year we went from the, whatever, the outhouse to the penthouse and, and we made a run.
So when we won the match to go to the final four, man, that was, that was profoundly satisfying as well. So yeah, if you'll hear me, I'll, I'll throw two in there.
Rich: Perfect, perfect. And well, you really appreciate you taking the opportunity to share your experiences, your insights with us today. I know I've walked away with a lot of great tools and techniques and principles based on the success that you've had over many years as a coach, as a mentor, as a teacher, as a father, as a [00:47:00] person.
So thank you very much. Really sincerely appreciate all the things that you've shared with us today and really appreciate being on the show with us. Oh,
Hugh: absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Rich: And now let's move into today's practice makes profit segment.
Mashup: What are we talking about? Practice. Practice makes perfect.
Practice makes profit.
Rich: At its foundation, a plan should answer two questions. What are you trying to achieve? And how are you going to do it? The challenge is these two questions are often not answered or answered in different ways across the organization. To that end, I've created a framework called G. O. A. S. T., which stands for Goals, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics.
These terms are familiar to us, but the way that we define them here is goals and objectives answer that first question, what are you trying to achieve? Strategy and tactics answer the second [00:48:00] question, how are you going to achieve them? So the goal is general in nature. Let's take a real world example.
The goal might be to reach the peak of the mountain. That's what we're trying to achieve. The objective then is going to be more specific. So in this case, if the goal is to get to the top of the mountain, the objective might be to ascend 3, 000 feet each day for four days till we reach that 12, 000 foot summit.
And oftentimes, with objective, we hear the acronym SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound. Strategy, then, in this case, is how generally can we achieve the goal? So, how do we get to the top? Can we go straight up? Do we need to zigzag? Do we need to go around the other side?
The general approach to reaching our goal. Tactics then are the specific tangible ways that we can get there. So in this case, it might be ropes, pickaxes, hiking boots, maybe a boat to go around the other side. So what are those specific tangible ways [00:49:00] that we can achieve our goal? So the G. O. A. S. T.
framework again answers those two questions of any good plan. What are you trying to achieve and how are you going to get there? Let's look at one more real world example. The goal might be to build a culture of high performance. That's generally what we're trying to achieve. The objective from a talent management standpoint might be, let's retain 90 percent of high achievers.
Those people scoring fours and fives through the end of Q4 of this year. So that's the objective, the specific thing that we want to do. Then the strategy in this case would be to significantly differentiate The bonus compensation system versus what we've done in the past, which is spreading things evenly across all the teams.
And then tactically, we might have a bonus comparison chart that we create, a quarterly performance scorecard, and then maybe we're going to communicate the top performers results. So again, a good way to practice being strategic is to answer those two [00:50:00] questions. What are you trying to achieve? And how are you going to do it?
And the G. O. A. S. T. framework gives you a simple, consistent way to answer those two questions. Goals and objectives answer the what question, strategy and tactics answer the how question. Let's now move into the League of Strategic Minds.
Mashup: I appreciate your strategic mind. Must have a strategic blame. Great strategic minds of tomorrow right here.
Rich: Audience members, people listening to the show can submit questions on our podcast page and I'll select a question and if we do, we'll send you some strategic swag as part of our thank you. So today's strategic minds question, how often should we be looking at our strategy and making changes? It's a great question because oftentimes people are changing strategies so much that it becomes a flavor of the month initiative.
And if it becomes a flavor of the month [00:51:00] initiative, then people that report to us are going to lose confidence and lose faith that we have direction set for the business. So we want to make sure that we're not changing strategy too often. Typically, what I recommend is if we're going to change things, if we need to, to, to do something differently to achieve our objectives, we want to change tactics first.
But what I would suggest is too often it's the opposite end of the spectrum where people aren't looking at their strategy for an entire year. And so we want to make sure that strategy is not like a birthday where it happens once a year. There's a lot of signage and fat and fair, and then it goes away for 11 and a half months.
So the happy medium I'd recommend is to start using what I call a strategy, quarterly, tune up. So the strategy tune up happens every quarter. And really what we're doing is we're spending about two to three hours with our team. And we're asking what's changed from a context perspective. So we think about the market, our customers, the competitive [00:52:00] landscape within the company.
What are the key things that have changed? Based on those changes, do we need to modify the goals, what we're trying to achieve, or do we need to modify any of the strategies that we're using? So that would be something to consider is, do we need to modify goals, strategies, based on that quarterly tune up?
So again, think about it like a car. We're not going to leave our car go for two, three years without doing a some maintenance, change the, filters, rotate the tires. So we've got to be able to say what on a quarterly basis is changing in the business. And let's do a tune up to see if we need to make any modifications.
Let's close today's show with wind sites, ideas for advantage.
Mashup: Any insights?
Hugh: You play to win the game. Any further insights?
Mashup: You don't play to just play it. Insightful. I want winners. I played the game to win. I want people that want to win. That's very insightful.
Rich: Today's wind site comes from [00:53:00] Karl von Klauswitz, the Prussian general and renowned military strategist. He wrote, there is no higher and simpler law of strategy than that of keeping one's forces concentrated. The question I'll leave you with today, where is the single most important place that you and your team should be focusing your resources?
To explore engaging with me to facilitate your strategy workshop, serve as a coach for your executive team, or speak at your conference, visit strategyskills. com where you can view today's show notes. Sign up for the free Strategic Thinker newsletter and access hundreds of other resources, including the Strategic Quotient or SQ assessment.
Pick up a copy of my newly released book, Strategic, and take your leadership development to the next level by subscribing to the Strategic Fitness System, an innovative state of the art executive development platform. [00:54:00] Remember, in today's competitive world, it's be strategic or be gone.