I was at a fascinating lunch last week where Craig O’Shannessy and Michael Maguire both spoke about performance.

Craig O’Shannessy is a world-renowned tennis coach. He has Novak Djokovic amongst his impressive list of tennis players who have sought his advice. He introduced the importance of data to tennis coaching and how analysing game footage helped identify marginal adjustments in shot selection, body and court positioning. Ultimately leading to improving his charges’ games. 

Djokovic attributes this work to contributing to his success and longevity in the sport. O’Shannessy reminded us of the importance of data analysis and why measuring the right things is crucial to influencing behaviour and ultimately to success.

Michael Maguire is the coach of the NRL side, the Brisbane Broncos, who won last year’s competition after languishing at the bottom of the ladder the year before, after a near miss the year before that. 

Madge spoke about the important role “standards” play in achieving success, and what it takes to raise performance to meet and sustain those standards. The Broncos had a reputation for being an arrogant bunch of talented young men who didn’t understand hard work.

He spoke about the small changes he made to expectations about what constituted a satisfactory standard and the impact these tweaks had on the players. He described the challenge of guiding talented young men who resisted the standards he was setting. The evidence is now clear on how successful that was.

Both speakers reminded me of these important traits in making a business successful.

✅ Are you measuring the right things? Do you have one or two numbers that tell the whole story? 

✅ Poor dashboard selection encourages gaming behaviour. Many teams chase targets and deliver poor behaviour instead of focusing on activities that truly add business value.

✅ Data is only useful if you can extract knowledge from it. A spreadsheet of numbers or a blue box on a dashboard with a number in it doesn’t necessarily convey knowledge about the business. Executives need knowledge to make decisions.

✅ The power of the 1%. For example, if you make marginal improvements in inventory management, you can, over time, free up millions of dollars in capital for the business.

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