Across the 4 years of the Sydney Olympiad the Athlete Management Services staff at NSWIS set out to make a significant contribution across all of the scholarship programs - Olympic contenders and otherwise. We figured it was important to "touch" lots of people lots of times each week, making multiple relevant contacts across a wide range of settings.
We kept records. It was amazing how those records built up a picture of a growing set of achievements all on their own some. Any criticism or question of our programming was easily met - have a look at the contact records! We hit some great "contact & create impact" targets.
There were premium face to face meetings, group workshops, regular monthly squad meetings, monthly head coach meetings, informal interactions, and we focused it around a couple of small offices and a multi-disciplinary training room that could work from tv studio through to conference room. Every "service potential" was an asset. Just like the taxi that is pretty useless parked in a garage, we looked to maximise our use of the assets.
As a team we compiled our crazy working weeks on a Friday evening, coding "CMs" (coach meetings, IMs (individual meetings), TM (team meetings), etc. The compilation reports allowed for interesting internal review and week to week comparisons, but they also helped us develop a sense of momentum towards the Opening Ceremony goal of helping people to be ready to perform.
There were lots of "hurry up" messages all around us as the feverish activities continued in the effort to get venues completed. The visit one morning with a security guard who had a distinctly Irish lilt to his voice was a significant memory - "you know, it would take nothing at present to put a couple of kilos of plastic explosive under one of those light towers in the stadium over there..."
Driving into Homebush each day during 2000 had me going down James Ruse Drive, next to RoseHill Race Course, and the electronic countdown sign telling Sydney how many days were left to the Opening Ceremony. 1500 doesn't have the same impact as does 37!
Sandy Holloway was the fabled Head of SOCOG in that lats year. He is renowned for bringing his office together on the first Monday morning of 2000 and asking everyone how they were, how ready they were to use that Monday morning. He then delivered his famous punchline about, "well we have 37 of them left to the opening Ceremony!"
We have 8 Mondays left until the beginning of May. 13 until the beginning of June. Although aspirational only, a goal of having a raft version the website/app solution available for early June could well focus a lot of thinking.
I know that I can have such a draft in front of 2 Tokyo programs and have it well considered. It is not our driving brief, but i is doable. We have lots of planning to do re the evaluation of our program, but we can attempt such real world validation as well.
We need to get some momentum rolling. This site has a Forum built in to it. You have access to the forum through you site membership.
Can we start using the Forum for 2 things:
1 - keep the group informed of achievements, new ideas, developments via a Forum entry - something of a "sit rep" (situation report) - "met with mindfulness app people, great conversation, their app can inform a training program we can recommend, possibility to negotiate access rights for our users at discount (no in app purchase fee), or similar
2 - consider doing a Friday wrap, using a coding system such as W6, L2 I3 - 6 hrs writing, 2 new leads identified, 3 major insights, namely, xx - have a look at www.whateveer & read x
We can talk more about the coding system. From my perspective, Sit Rep - have over last 24 hours gained a good working understanding of Doodly App, aiming to produce first short video this evening - basically a cartoon creator that allows a custom voice over / sound track - usable for generating alternate version of "face to cam" type message - would be using sound grabs of one of our voices
More soon
JC