Coaching, Motivation and Analytics - what can you learn from your Garmin & Training Peaks?

I share my screen shot above of my Training Peaks Account to show how excited I am to be in the GREEN!  I am actually more excited this week to have the consistency of getting each workout in than the actual achievement or performance of each training session that my GARMIN logs and syncs from my watch to my phone and my training peaks account.  I am motivated going into the weekend to make sure I get all the workouts in this week.  I share this because it's been a challenging few weeks trying to get all the training in between weather, family, work, kids, etc.  I have had plenty of reasonable excuses but it doesn't change the fact that I need to follow the plan or adjust the plan accordingly.

Motivation comes in so many forms and methods which aligns with what drives each person individually.  What works for one person does not necessarily work for another person.  For example, I personally love data points and information that I can use to gauge my performance, benchmarks and adjust based on the data.  My husband on the other hand trains based on feel and the slightest thought of a controlled plan de-motivates him far more to have an opposite effect of avoidance.  In athletics there are philosophies, successes and failures in both approaches. Sound like any sales people we might know? 

What is common regardless of what motivates you is that you can not take action or modify your plan if you do not know:

• how you are expected to perform
• how you are doing against those expectations, or
• what type of feedback or coaching you need to help enable you to be successful. 

I do triathlons which means I need to work on training in 4 areas from swim, bike, run and transitions and then also make sure I can manage nutrition and other course challenges on the day of the race accordingly.  Doing all of these well is that magic combination for a successful race.  Training for all of these disciplines while working a full time job, being a full time mom, and wife is another challenge so my personality requires planning and an easy way to communicate regularly with my coach. I have an absolute love/hate relationship with my Garmin and my Training Peaks which is comparable to any sales CRM, Incentive Management or Sales Coaching applications available in the market.

The comparisons in great athletes, great sales people, great coaches, great leaders, etc is the same.  Have a clear plan, execute, and adjust.

So why do I share this with you aside from been very excited to be in the Green? Because we all live in high tech and analytics even if we don't want too it's there, we can choose to use the information or not.  The companies and people that adopt technology solutions and enable them to help optimize and provide value are the ones that are differentiating themselves from the pack.  

So whether you are an age grouper or pro-athlete trying to fine tune and improve your performance you can gain value from technology. 

If your a sales or marketing professional you will gain value with knowing what prospects are matches to your ideal customer profile, how to best engage and enable them to bring value and ultimately convert them to happy customers.

If your a business leader growing a team you need to know how to identify, recruit and retain the right talent.

And taking it a step further as I mentioned in a previous blog on talent and customers, if you know the ideal customer and ideal employee then you can find the perfect match both ways to achieve happiness and success.

There are a plethora of technology solutions available for all company sizes and business needs across talent management with Human Capital Management, Sales Performance Management and Corporate Performance Management. Whatever your flavor you can capture the right data and optimize your organization.  I know many of them and I'd be happy to share my thoughts with you across the various platforms. 

A bit lighter of a blog for me but go attack the weekend with whatever your adventure and I hope you enjoy measuring and achieving "green" in everything you take on.