One of my favourite parts of the course is that every Friday we are in class, a guest speaker comes and talks about their company, their career or one of their projects.
This week we had Roger Jackson come to speak. He is one of the most successful Canadian Olympic athletes, has been instrumental in working with the science of sport in Canada and is currently working on the "Own the Podium" initiative to increase the number of Canadians winning Olympic medals over the next couple of Olympics (something we have not been very good at in the past).
However, he was not here to speak about any of that. He talked to us about working on the bid team for the London 2012 Olympics. There was a huge infrastructural hurdle to get over, getting the public and the media on side as well as communicating what the differentiator for the city would be to the Olympic bid committee. It was very interesting and I can't imagine taking on such a daunting project.
Two things I picked up:
1) Always hire people smarter and brighter than you: I've always known that this is a good idea, one that my last employer was very good at.
2)"You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate" - my new favourite business saying.
They ended up winning the bid (by 4 votes) against Paris. Winning the bid is just the first step, but what a step it was.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)