Business sporting success covered in second winter lecture

In the second public lecture in the University of Waikato Winter Lecture Series, former Waikato Management School dean Professor Mike Pratt outlined the lessons for business offered by sporting success through the concept of peak performance.

Becoming the best you can be

In the late 1990s, a hunch that there was more to business success than the then-fashionable concepts of re-engineering and rightsizing led Professor Pratt to look closely at 12 successful sporting organisations around the world.

What he and his colleagues found led to the theory of sustained Peak Performance – a roadmap for businesses to become the best they could possibly be through sharing an inspirational dream and sense of purpose.

The resulting book – Peak Performance: Business Lessons from the World’s Top Sporting Organisations – became a business best seller.

Peak Performance journey

Over the past decade, Professor Pratt has taken 300 companies through the Peak Performance journey. His current clients range from leading global corporations such as Procter & Gamble through to government agencies, including New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

He said Peak Performance requires clarity of purpose and inspirational leadership to deliver on that purpose, and part of his job is to help organisations discover their heart and soul, passion and spirit so they can achieve at and beyond the highest level.

“The late Sir Edmund Hillary was a mentor to the Peak Performance project, and he put us onto the notion of the greatest imaginable challenge. That means Peak Performance can be a lumpy challenge, because there’s always a bigger mountain to climb.”

Into the 21^st century

Professor Pratt said the key elements of Peak Performance remain as valid today as they were a decade ago, but sustaining Peak Performance into the twenty-first century calls for a new focus on sustainability, well-being and value innovation.

“Business has changed,” he said. “Just as a focus on quality used to be an add-on but is now table stakes for companies, so sustainability and value innovation now need to be embedded robustly into every single business practice.

“Well-being is all about personal purpose at an individual and organisational level, and there’s a demonstrable link between well-being and profitability.”

August 17 - Women in Sport

The next lecture in the series is ‘Women in Sport’. Former world squash champion Dame Susan Devoy, Dr Toni Bruce, an expert on sport and gender in the media, and Waikato University lecturer Dr Hollie Thorpe, a former competition snowboarder, will discuss the challenges and pressures for women of elite competition in both established sports and newer arrivals on the scene.

The lectures are free and open to the public and are on each Wednesday for the month of August. ‘Women in Sport’ takes place at the Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts, 6 - 7pm, on August 17. Find out about the other lectures here.

View this 2011 Winter Lecture series on the University of Waikato's iTunes U Channel.