It's Not about the Bike

It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life is an inspiring story of Lance Armstrong, great US athlete, who won Tour De France seven times in a row and more importantly came back from cancer to compete.

I just finished reading this book.

'I want to die at a hundred years old with an American flag on my back and the star of Texas on my helmet, after screaming down an Alpine descent on a bicycle at seventy-five miles per hour. I want to cross one last finish line as my wife and ten children applaud, and then I want to lie down in a field of those famous French sunflowers and gracefully expire: the perfect contradiction to my once anticipated poignant early demise. A slow death is not for me. I don't do anything slow, not even breathe.'

This talks about mettle of a winning professional, individual and character of a person who can think about winning from his cancer bed, think about winning Tour even when there were no sponsor to take him.

In 1996 twenty-four-year-old Lance Armstrong was ranked the number one cyclist in the world. But that October the Golden Boy of American cycling was sidelined by advanced testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain. His chance for recovery was as low as twenty per cent. Armstrong embarked on the most aggressive form of chemotherapy available and underwent surgery - including brain surgery - to remove cancer that the treatments could not reach.

Five months after his diagnosis he resumed training under a cloud of uncertainty. Armstrong returned to competitive cycle racing in 1998 when the United States Postal Service team invited him to join them, and from there he trained himself to victory in the 86th Tour de France in 1999.

Although scarred physically and emotionally, Lance Armstrong considered his cancer a 'wake-up call', one that crystallized for him the blessings of good health, family, friends and marriage

This is the story of a journey, from inauspicious beginnings through triumph, tragedy, transformation and transcendence. Filled with the physical, emotional and spiritual details of his recovery, It's Not About the Bike traces the remarkable journey of this great athlete to a singularly inspiring appreciation of life lived to the fullest.

This booked taught me one thing, never never give up. You can overcome obstacles in life though dedication, determination and hard work.

Salute to Lance, for fighting against all odds and showing a path !

Habit of winning

The habit of winning makes a difference and with which most of the business or the teams go for a kill!

When you take a hard look at India’s debacle in England you find that there are echoes of it in the world of business. Three companies in the last month — Yahoo, Apple and Research in Motion (makers of Blackberry) — considered giants at one point, are in the news because there are questions if they can continue to be major players in their businesses. Yahoo, because in spite of multiple CEO changes it hasn’t been able to break out of its rut for the past five years; Apple, because Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO and Research in Motion because it’s fallen way behind Apple and Samsung in the Smartphone race.

Great teams do not surrender meekly. Look at Sony. The Japanese electronics giant had suffered a series of failures in the first half of the decade before it entered the high definition optical disc format war where its Blu-ray disc went up against HD DVD from Toshiba. The war could have been the death knell for Sony but the company triumphed. It came back from the brink when Toshiba admitted defeat and launched its own version of Blu-ray in 2008.

Some teams seem to get in to constant winning, for longer time. So does the business. There is lot of similarity how a sports team or business team work. It’s extremely important to have the momentum of winning going. Because, as winning is habit, so does loosing.

There are several factors that make a high performance team. If you change any one of them, the equilibrium of the team will change and it might take a shift in team dynamics to make it work again. The role of coach is to give the vision to the team, to give the direction to win, to build the habit of winning. Like a coach, a CEO or a head of function need to build this culture of winning.

Technically speaking, coach or CEO, are not part of the playing team (operational team); but their contribution is in building high performance teams, building the team which continue performing and producing results for long haul. A coach or CEO can’t be man of the match, but they produce match winners.

They stand at background and build the culture. That is what a great leadership is all about.

Someone asked me about role of change in coach of India cricket team in team’s debacle in England.

Time to think how Gary Kirsten managed to build that habit of winning?