I love the Olympic Games. It wasn’t always the case as for many years through my childhood Russia or America or even a bloc of countries would boycott them, or people were constantly cheating, and looking for ways to bend the rules to their advantage. In fact it hardly ever seemed to be a level playing field, and “the best” quite often were not “the best”, or at least not legitimately. Yes, there are still cheats, and of course once again Russia is barely represented in the games (for very good reasons) but on the whole there are more and more countries competing in a huge variety of sports, and whilst no doubt the USA will top the medal table, there will be many more smaller countries winning something, even if only a bronze medal, in one discipline or another.

The great thing is the stories that go with their magnificent achievements. The adversities they have had to overcome, and the mountains (sometimes literally) they have had to climb to reach the top of their sport.

Nothing is easy in life, and often the harder you have to work for something the more satisfying it is when you get there. You can tell by the huge outpourings of emotion that some athletes show when they finally win the gold medal.

Setting up your own business is also a huge challenge. Everyone gets things wrong, wastes money, employs the wrong people, and faces setbacks time and time again. The winners are the ones who don’t give up the first, the second, or even the ninetieth time they have to sort out yet another problem. They are the ones who bounce back up again, put it down to experience and swear to do better next time. All the athletes have coaching to help them when they need a boost, and extra pair of eyes to spot what they are doing wrong, or just give the a friendly bit of encouragement. As a business owner, perhaps a coach could do just that for you!

Having been a business coach for the best part of 14 years now, it is safe to say that whilst I have encountered a wide range of businesses, there are still many different market sectors I haven’t yet worked with. The thing is, however, that whichever new client I next start to work with, I am prepared to bet that the issues and challenges will at some level be exactly the same as all the rest.

The reason I bring this up, is because recently there have been a few problems with the cricket club of which I am chairman: As I looked more in depth as to what is and is not happening, it suddenly became clear that once again I am finding exactly the same things which need to be sorted out in this organisation as are in businesses being run for profit.

The first problem is that one person is trying to do everything because there is no clear demarcation of who is responsible for what. Understandably ultimately he got fed up with that and resigned his post. It is now clear that there are no roles or responsibilities, and no-one (apart from the ex-captain) really knows what needs to be done each week, or how, and as a result we are in a bit of a muddle. But, nothing which shouldn’t be fairly straight forward to address.

So as with the businesses I work with we will need to allocate roles and responsibilities, set up tasks and systems, and get a proper database of the membership in place, and with any luck we should soon have things back under control, and then we can concentrate on the important aspects of having fun and winning.