Became terribly over-excited yesterday afternoon upon meeting a double-Olympic gold medal winner. He even let me hold his medals! That said, he let all my colleagues hold them too.
Steve Williams, for it was he, was in the coxless fours boat along with Matthew Pinsent, James Cracknell and Ed Coode in Great Britain's heart-stoppingly narrow victory over the Canadian crew at the Athens games in 2004. He then returned to win again with a different crew in Beijing in 2008.
Williams was speaking at our staff conference. His tale of the dedication and determination required to be a world-class rower (six hours of agonising training every day for four years, one day off a month if you're lucky) is enough to make mere mortals feel, well, just that.
In comparison, we journalists (at least this one) consider it a major achievement if we're at our desk with a latte by 9.30am.
What I liked about his speech was that he didn't try to draw any clunky parallels between rowing and the challenges facing the media business, he simply talked about how making many tiny improvements during training had helped the crew shave off a seemingly insurmountable five second deficit between the GB team's best time and that of the Canadians.
This incremental improvement approach must surely be relevant for all types of businesses. It certainly is for us here at Haymarket. And it reminded me of something Andrew Scrimgeour, the MD at AJS Labels, said at a Directors' Briefing held by PrintWeek and Fuji last year.
Andrew also spoke about how small changes, made by a lot of people, can make a big difference. Along with something he calls "the 1% rule - or the power of one". His point being that generally speaking, most people can produce a 1% improvement in what they do. And all those one percents flow down to make a much bigger profit improvement to the bottom line.
Williams explained that everything the crew did in training was based around one simple question "will it make the boat go faster?" If not, don't waste any effort on it.
And Scrimgeour, similarly, talked of his passion for cutting out the sort of red tape and bureaucracy that can crush the spirit of a company. He said firms should examine their processes and procedures and scrap any that aren't serving a real purpose.
In the epic Athens race Great Britain's margin of victory was just 0.08 seconds, proving that sometimes the tiniest improvement can make a winning difference.
