I was reminiscing about my college years recently and got to thinking about my track exploits. For those of you who have never watched a Track Meet, please try to find some time this Spring to go to your local High School and watch those kids perform. It is one of the few sports where there is something happening all the time, from races to jumping to throwing. There is virtually no down time. Someone is trying their best at any point in time. It really is a lot of fun.

But I do want to apply a truth that I experienced while running Track in college to a leadership principle that all of us should remember and follow.

I did several different events, but one of them was the 4 X 100 relay. For those not familiar, 1 person runs 100 meters and then hands the baton off to the next. There are 4 runners and obviously, the fastest team wins the race.

The normal strategy for this race is to put the runners in a specific order: the 2^nd fastest person starts the race, the 4^th fastest runs the 2^nd leg, the 3^rd fastest runs the 3^rd leg and the fastest person runs the last leg. Most teams do it this way.

In college, I was the 4^th fastest person on the team. So following this strategy, I should normally be the 2^nd leg of the race. Over the course of the season, our coach tried multiple combinations of our order.

At this point, I need to regress just a bit. In a relay race, the biggest difference between winning a race and losing a race (assuming relatively equal talent from the runners) is the handoff of the baton. This will make or break a close race. A bad handoff will almost always cause a team to lose the race.

Now back to the story. What our coach discovered, much to everyone’s amazement, was that he could not put us in the “accepted” order of the race. We were always 2-3 seconds slower in that order. That is about 15-25 meters difference in a race.

Here is what he discovered: by putting us in the order of fastest first, 3^rd fastest 2^nd, 2^nd fastest 3^rd, and me last (that is the anchor – and remember, I’m the slowest of the team), we were a much faster team! Whenever he did this, our time was always 2-3 seconds faster than any other combination. This should not be! So why was it this way?

There were several reasons:

1. Our fastest runner had a really, really good start out of the blocks, better than any of the rest of us, so he always gained a bit right at the start.
2. The combination of our handoffs of the baton just clicked better in this way. The first guy only had to handoff, not receive (which he wasn’t good at). I had only to receive, not handoff (which I wasn’t good at) and the other 2 runners were good at both.
3. I was not good at catching people from behind, but I was good at holding off people that were behind me.

Going into the finals at our Conference Track Meet, we were seeded 4^th in the conference. But, we took 2^nd because of how we ordered ourselves. In the final leg, I had to hold off the guy that easily won the 100-meter race in order to keep 2^nd place. I was able to do that! And, we broke our personal record as well. I was so happy!

What are the leadership lessons we can learn from this and how will it help your team’s productivity instantly? Several things to consider:

1. Our coach was willing and open to trying different orders of people, etc. Although we practiced constantly, he was always looking for ways to improve our performance. He didn’t stay with the “it’s only done one way and we have to keep doing it that way” mentality. He was willing to risk certain things, especially in less important Meets, to figure out what worked best.
2. He got the right people in the right order. Jim Collins calls this getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats. Each of us had different skills that contributed to the team. If he’d put me first or second, we would have been a much slower team. My skill was taking the handoff and holding off runners. Our fast runner could explode out of the blocks to get us a really quick lead. The other two guys could produce really efficient handoffs so that other teams would lose ground on us in those critical moments.
3. Once our coach figured out what worked best, he did not waiver from it for the last 2 weeks of the season. We practiced and practiced and practiced to improve our times and our skills.

So think about this from your leadership perspective:

Are you willing to be open to looking for different ways to use your team? Do you try people in different positions or areas in order to see if their skills are better suited there? It doesn’t always work out like you hope. Sometimes your “times” are slower and you must rework it. That’s okay, especially if it’s on something not quite as important. Fail early, fail often and fail cheap.

Once you discover the right order, do you move people there and keep them there? Do you know that it might not be the way that everyone else does it, but it works well for your team and therefore you’ll stick with it?

And finally, do you keep it this way for a while so that people can grow into the roles and become better and better at what they do?

I promised you that this would be an instantaneous improvement in productivity. I may have exaggerated just a tad bit, but as soon as you start getting people on the right activities for their skills, you will find that productivity explodes for you! There will be some mishaps (and in fact, if you don’t have any, then you aren’t trying hard enough). Very quickly you’ll see that people are able to accomplish more and are happier in their jobs and the best thing yet – you’ll be less stressed!