On first encounter it sounds like one of those ‘eight pint debates’ that mates have down the pub - ‘What’s the fastest a human could ever run?’ , ‘Could a human lift a truck above his/her head?’, ‘Who would win a race in a straight flat 50 swim, Michael Phelps or Mark Spitz?’. However, when you really start to analyse these questions, some interesting challenges immediately become apparent.
I’ve just been reading ‘Perfection Point’ by John Brenkus (2011, MacMillan), in which the author attempts to answer such questions. It’s a fascinating read. Covering a number of different sports, including sprinting, swimming and weight –lifting, he aims to establish the absolute perfect performance by a human-being, one that can never be surpassed because to do so would go beyond the limits of human potential. His search becomes a difficult one surprisingly quickly.
Here are a few of the problems associated with such an endeavour:
1. Social – over what distance do you decide to run your race? Who decides? Why is it that people can perform better in competition with others than when alone? If this is the case, can a record truly be held by an individual or should it be jointly held by all participants? Think about the use of pace-makers in distance running, for example. Even more sophisticated examples are given by Brenkus. For example, the setting of a minimum reaction time for a sprinter to react to the gun is an arbitrary number set by the sport’s governing body – who is to say that someone cannot learn to react faster than this standard? (Or put it another way, is an athlete potentially being adversely affected by the rules?)
2. Environmental – there is an advantage to being placed in the middle lanes of a sprint or a swim. Some of this is tactical advantage, some of it is to do with the forces of nature. For example, water temperature and the ability of a pool to dissipate wave energy have an effect on speed. What about wind resistance, track surface etc?
3. Technological – sports equipment is constantly being refined, improved and updated. At what point do advances in equipment overshadow any performance improvements in the athlete? Consider how technical advances in golf clubs, for example, have made drives from the tee much longer. Swimming is an example where ‘speed suits’ have been banned as providing an unfair advantage. In essence, the assumption about sport is that everyone starts from a level playing field. Technological advances require research and that means money. If two Olympic swimmers stand next to each other on the starting blocks but one has the benefit of millions of pounds of research behind him, while the other has got there on his own merits, are they the same? Is it fair? (And is it inevitable that inequalities like this will always be present?). Brenkus has a really interesting chapter on the use of performance-enhancing substances. Although he comes out firmly against the use of drug-taking, he highlights the ambiguities and inconsistencies involved in deciding what can be considered ‘legal’. Caffeine? (Doesn’t occur naturally in the body, but easily available by drinking coffee), ‘Testosterone? (Naturally occurring, levels vary between athletes, but can also be injected).
4. Finally there is the psychological – firstly top athletes need saving from themselves. The will to win is so strong that they will do anything including potentially self-damaging activities in the pursuit of coming out top dog. Again Brenkus highlights inconsistencies in what we (as the public) find allowable. Why is it OK to watch two boxers beat the living daylights out of each other, but steroid use is not? What about genetic enhancement? He also makes a very interesting point about the power of psychology. If all the science points to an absolute minimum time for say, a 100M sprint, one that cannot be surpassed because of the physical limitations of the human frame, if that time is near to a ‘round point’, then it still may be beaten. Consider the 4 minute mile for example. The sheer compelling nature of this ‘round point’ as a target inspired athletes to try to beat it, despite it being described as impossible. And of course, once one person had done it, others quickly followed. The natural conclusion of this type of thinking is that perfection can never be achieved, simply because of the power of an individual to think ‘I can beat that’.
Although this is a book on sports, I think it has relevance for those of us who work in more mainstream areas. If you are managing people, you are probably also being held accountable for their performance. If you apply the above influences (social, environmental, technological and psychological) to your followers, how much of what they achieve can be attributed to their individual endeavours? Are there things that you could do that might help them perform better? Even more bluntly, are there things you are doing that might actually be stopping them from performing to the best of their ability? Sometimes just getting out of the way is the finest piece of leadership we can display!
It is these types of challenges which have led to appraisals being a combination of evaluation of results achieved and behaviours used to achieve those results, the latter being more in the control of the individual. (For more on this approach, see our earlier blog post on goal setting). Perfection, therefore, may be an impossible dream, and the pursuit of it, can paradoxically lead to inferior results, by placing too much pressure on the person or by creating inflexibility. ‘Settling for excellence’ is a better mantra – it retains the compelling nature of aiming for the best possible, while retaining room for creativity and flexibility.
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