The Greatest Olympian of all Time

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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The greatest Olympian of all time

There is no question that Michael Phelps is the most dominant Olympian of all time, no one disputes that.

As was to be expected, all eyes were on Michael this Olympics and everyone was comparing him to all the top performers in the history of the Olympics.

Some might think that he started his career winning every race he participated in. That was not the case and I was a witness to his first Olympic loss and a lot of his wins.

Michael, believe it or not, competed in the 2,000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. I was working with the Panamanian swimmer Eileen Coparropa so I got to see most of the swimming competition.

Michael was only 15 and at the time, he was the youngest American male swimmer to make it to the Olympics in 68 years.  Even though he lost, in talking to one of the American coaches, he said to me “you see that kid? He is a future star and soon no one will be able to beat him”. I don’t think that coach could have imagined that the skinny kid he was pointing out was going to win 22 medals, the most in history and 18 gold ones, double that of the next highest record holders.

Let me put that into perspective. The next best total for gold medals is nine, posted by four of the most heroic athletes in the history of the Olympics: Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, Finnish track star Paavo Nurmi, U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz and U.S track star Carl Lewis.

His 22 medals are four more than Latynina’s 18 and seven better than Soviet gymnast Nikolai Andrianov.

What really amazes most people is the fact that Phelps was able to participate in four Olympics.

After his first Olympics where he got zero medals, he went on to win his 22 medals. He had six gold in 2004, eight in 2008; I was in both of those Olympics and he won four more now in 2012 that unfortunately had to miss.

As an aside, I would have been in these Olympics, I was negotiating with a team but realized that my agent had booked me in Mexico on August 2^nd and in Chile on the 7^th and there was no way I could have made it. Those contracts had been signed and there was no way out, besides, I have never missed a booking in my entire life.

Even though Michael was the most dominant figure, his victories were not easy at all, I mean, some were, but there were a few cliff hangers and one that in all fairness, he didn’t win, even though the record books say he did and that is what counts.

In fact, let me get it out of the way now. Michael competed in the 100 meter butterfly in 2008 in Beijing. I was there and like a lot of the fans, I thought he had lost against the Serbian swimmer Milorad Cavic. When the results were posted in the electronic screen, it turned out that Michael had set an Olympic record for the event with a time of 50.58 seconds, beating poor Cavic by one hundredth (0.01) of a second and winning the gold medal.  Lots of people were surprised and some skeptical.

This was somewhat of a controversial race because just before the race, Milorad caused some controversy when he said it would be a good thing if Michael lost the race. He said, “It would be good for him if he loses. It would be nice if historians talk about Michael Phelps winning seven gold medals and losing the eighth to some guy and I would like to be that guy”.

What do you think this did to Phelps? When they told him, he sort of got mad and said “when people say things like that, it fires me up more than anything,

This win by Phelps against Cavic by such a narrow margin, provoked a protest by the Serbian delegation and they officially filed it.

A later analysis of the video by the FINA panel, which according to procedures in place, they analyze frames shot 1/10,000^th of a second apart, confirmed Phelps victory.  There was however, one catch. The images were not released to the media right away.  This action by Omega caused some consternation since Phelps had a sponsorship contract with Omega. The Serbians were not happy at all but what can you do when you are going against the greatest swimmer of all time that swims for the USA, the top swimming team in the world.

Cavic, the losing swimmer, gave a lesson in sportsmanship when he wrote in his blog “people, this is the greatest moment of my life. If you ask me, it should be accepted and we should move on. I have accepted defeat, and there is nothing wrong with losing to the greatest swimmer there has ever been”. That was so nice of him and I imagine that the fact that he is a Serbian American, swimming for Serbia, probably had something to do with it.

This is what is interesting, though. In August 2009, one year later, Omega officials admitted that Cavic for sure touched the wall first but “Phelps did it more forcefully” thus recording the time first.

I find this fascinating and it will probably be discussed forever. Who wins, the guy that touches first of the guy that touches more forcefully and registers it first.

That little controversy aside, Mark Spitz is right when he said that not only is Phelps the greatest swimmer of all time, he is the greatest Olympian of all time and that makes him the greatest athlete of all time. With this I agree one hundred percent.

How has he been able to compete in four Olympics setting all these records?

In a few words, commitment, focus and willing to sacrifice everything to achieve his goal.

Now, like all good things in life, it ends for him. He is gone, retired and will, according to what he thinks right now, never ever compete in a race again. He says that maybe someday he will jump in the water but not to compete. It is over and boy, what a legacy will he leave.

 

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The Great Need for Innovation in the world

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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The great need for innovation in the world

 

As I write this article, I am in Cancun, Mexico where I was hired to do a very successful company, based in Central America with over a 125,000 employees and a presence in  dozens of countries.

 

What motivates me to write this article is what the CEO said to me when he invited me to lunch in a wonderful restaurant here in Cancun, named La Destileria.

 

“One of the biggest problems in my company is execution. Everyone has great ideas but few are implemented”

 

This is a very true statement, one I have heard in many of the companies I have worked with. It is in fact, one of the biggest problems in many organizations, including of course, government entities.

 

Let’s first define innovation: A simple definition would be the practical application of creative ideas, a short and sweet definition.

 

The key word here is practical. No matter how creative you are, if you don’t land the idea and execute it, nothing happens.

 

I agree with management guru Peter Drucker who said:

To be effective, an innovation has to be simple, and it has to be focused. It should only do one thing, otherwise it confuses people.

 

In today’s highly competitive world, with uncertain economic conditions, innovation is much more than developing new products. Traditionally this is how people associate innovation, developing new and exciting products.

 

When innovation is mentioned we first think of Steve Jobs and Apple computer. We think of Microsoft with the idea of having one personal computer in every home. The Google kids who had the idea of giving anyone the ability to find out anything in the world by simply searching for it.

 

Now innovation is also about reinventing business processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer needs.

 

With the internet and this globalization push we are all now experiencing, the pool of new ideas has widened considerably.  It is all about selecting and executing the right ideas and applying them much faster than any time in history.

 

Innovation can be a product such as the I-Pad, a car that parks itself, a java chip Frappuccino, or a service, texting on an smart phone, repairing the screen of an I-Pad or a process, taking your car to a dealership and getting it back in one day instead of 3 days. In fact, several years ago a Toyota dealership in Central America hired us to speed up cars getting out of the repair shop after the clients dropped them off.

 

When we studied the processes they were using, we found that they had over 50 steps before the mechanic touched the car and it took four and a half days average to deliver the repaired car. We took it down to just a few steps and brought the average time down to a little bit over one day, I think a day and one hour. Now it is down to one day on average.

 

A radical innovation is an innovation that is life changing or world changing.

It might have the power to dramatically change behavior of people, change their expectations, even their life experiences. It can give a company a competitive advantage that could remain for many years.

 

For example, Apple started the I pad on April 23^rd 2008. Only five people were on the design/programming team. It was very complex programming it then making all the apps able to fit the screen and some other difficult stuff that took them over two years to launch. Apple began taking pre orders on March 12, 2010.

 

To date close to one hundred million I pads have been sold worldwide.

This innovative idea changed the company and it has changed the world. They have over 80% of the market today, three years after it was launched.

Some of the companies that tried to copy it such as RIM and HP went into the market and quickly got out.

Samsung is giving them a run for their money with a new tablet they have invented.

 

A good idea is not automatically an innovation. Art Fry who invented the Post it Notes said: “An idea doesn’t become an innovation until it is widely adopted and incorporated into people’s lives”.

 

The point is we need innovation and innovation comes from individuals, companies, teams, anyone that is a detective searching for a solution to a real problem, a perceived problem or an invisible problem.

 

We have lots of problems now in our society and in the world but there will always be people that will come out with an idea that will carry us forward.

 

A big hurray to innovators all over the world.

 

By the way, if you ever come to Cancun, go to Harry's, it is one of the best restaurants I have ever eaten in.

 

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The Mathematical Olympics: You win with your mind not with your body

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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The Mathematical Olympics: you win with your mind not with your body

We are all very excited that the Olympics just started. I have worked the last four with different countries and I am sorry I am missing this one because I need to be in Mexico and Chile in the next two weeks.

This article, however, is about the other Olympics the one that no one writes about.  I am referring to the Mathematics International Olympics.

Have you seen it reported anywhere?  Maybe a mention here or there but not really much coverage from the media in PR, United States or Latin America.

Not surprisingly, do you know where it had lots of coverage? You guessed it. South Korea, Singapore, China, Malaysia, Thailand and other Asian countries.

The best team in the Mathematics Olympics was the South Korean team, with six gold medals, China came in second place, the United States third, then Russia, Canada, Thailand and Singapore in that order.

You hear everywhere that Latin America is ready to take off, with Brazil leading the surge. Yet, it was Peru who finished on top of the Latin American countries coming in 16^th place. Brazil was 19^th, Mexico, 31^st, Colombia 46^th, Argentina the host country 54^th, Chile 59^th, Venezuela 91^st and Cuba 95^th.  There were 100 countries participating and Puerto Rico placed 81th with only one competitor. With the amount of money we spend in education, Puerto Rico should do much better.

Singapore has a seventeen year old, Lim Jack, who won the first place in individual competition with a gold medal and a perfect score. As a team, they didn’t do that well.  They couldn’t find a few Lim Jack’s around.

Canada had a 15 year old math genius who ranked fourth in the world in mathematics winning a gold medal. He was part of a Canadian team of six high school students among 548 students from around the world competing against each other.

Since the competition took place in Argentina, the host country, I would have expected that it would have tremendous coverage. It wasn’t so, most papers only made a brief mention of the event and neither the President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez nor the minister of education, for God’s sake, were present in the inaugural event as reported by Andres Oppenheimer a well- known columnist  who works for The Miami Herald and CNN.

If you take Argentina as an example, and this is true of practically every other country in Latin America, teachers actually make very little money, less than a taxi driver, and a waiter in a restaurant or even a garbage collector.

 If having an educated population ready to tackle the challenges that the modern world is presenting is so important, even critical for the survival of the country, how can teachers be so underpaid?

This is something that has to change. If they want good teachers, they have to raise their salaries so that they can make a decent living, otherwise they will start driving a taxi or becoming plumbers and electricians, not to demean those honorable occupations.

Oppenheimer visited Argentina recently and he found out that truck drivers in Argentina make 2.8 times the minimum salary, garbage collectors 2.6 and teachers only 1.3 times the minimum salary.

A teacher working two shifts, morning and afternoon, makes 2.59 times the minimum salary still less than the truck driver or the garbage collector.

We can reach the conclusion that Argentina, a long time ago among the top 8 countries in the world economically and who had a very solid educational system, is now among the worst in the PISA scores well behind Chile, Uruguay, Mexico and Colombia.

The new elected Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto has a big challenge ahead of him in the educational sector. The country was pushing to raise its standards and last month they convened the teachers to a meeting where they would take tests in order to evaluate them. Only 30% showed up! Can you believe this? It is really very sad and gives the country a bad image internationally.

We have to ask ourselves an important question. Is there a relationship between science and mathematics and the progress that countries can achieve?

Let’s look at South Korea, the winner of this year’s competition. As many of you know, my book Don’t Eat the Marshmallow…Yet, which deals with self-discipline, was number one in the best seller list for 62 weeks in a row. It was so successful that a children’s version was written to be distributed among all the young students attending school.  In other words, they felt that those principles should be taught to children, very early in their lives. They take education very seriously.

Fifty years ago, Korea’s earnings per capita was lower than most Latin American countries yet this last year it registered  13,500 international patents in the US versus 500 for all the Latin American countries combined and a per capita of over $30,000 making it one of the ten richest countries in the world.

 I visited Seoul last year to give a few speeches and they told me that their goal for 2050 as a country was to be the number one country in the world. I don’t think they will be able to reach that goal but let me tell you, even if they aren’t able to beat the US, China or Germany, it is a heck of a goal. I won’t be around to see it, unfortunately.

We need to prepare our kids for the mental Olympics with the same interest or even more than we do for the Summer Olympics and we need to pay our teachers more.

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