Pessoal, coisa boa deve ser compartilhada! Minha prima me mandou este artigo direto da Holanda que sabia que eu iria AMAR!

Como eu não achei o link e a revista da MCkinsey deve ter acesso restrito vou compartilhar com vocês o artigo. Também não me dei ao trabalho de traduzir ( 🙁  ) Mas meu inglês que é capenga deu conta então se divirtam:

Andrew Messick, CEO of IRONMAN, shares the inside scoop on one of the world’s most challenging endurance competitions February 10, 2014

Andrew Messick, CEO of IRONMAN, shares the inside scoop on one of the world’s most rigorous competitions. “The first ten hours are generally easy,” he says. “Then it gets hard.” * * * Coconut-throwing monkeys, menacing crocodiles, wild dogs . . . while many of us face obstacles in our work, they most likely rarely involve threats of injury from the animal kingdom.

For Andrew Messick (CHI, AMS 91-97), CEO of the World Triathlon Corporation and the “IRONMAN” race series, these challenges are just another day on the job. This role is the latest in a series of senior positions he’s held at high-profile sports organizations. Several years before taking the helm of the WTC, Andrew was an SVP for the International division of the U.S. National Basketball Association. He was, he explains, “the first person in the process of getting Yao Ming out of China in 2001.” The NBA had been active in China since the 1980s, he says, when the organization started televising NBA games there. “Pursuing opportunities to expand business was a big part of what I did in my tenure there,” he said. “It was great to try to bring NBA basketball to China – we did a ton around merchandise and partnering with the Chinese basketball association.” Following that, he spent four years as President of the sports division at global sports and entertainment giant AEG. He joined WTC in 2011, after he had already been participating in triathlons for several years. We recently spoke with Andrew, who explained what it’s like to run one of the world’s premier sporting events. The global reach of IRONMAN “IRONMAN was founded in 1978, from what was essentially a dare between a bunch of military people in Hawaii over who was the strongest and toughest athlete. They resolved the argument by agreeing to complete the three hardest endurance events in Hawaii – the Waikiki Rough Water Swim, the Around Oahu Bike Race and the Honolulu Marathon – all in the same day; whoever won would be the ‘IRONMAN.’ That first year, 13 people finished. In 2014, we will hold 35 IRONMAN races and more than 70 half distance races. We are a global race series, operating more than 200 races a year in 26 countries around the world. There are still big parts of the world where we have very little presence, yet there is great demand for our product. We are a unique sports property. Unlike a marathon, which is generic, all intellectual property associated with IRONMAN belongs to us. No one can hold an IRONMAN anywhere in the world without our permission. We have a remarkable level of control and oversight over the IRONMAN brand, which is unique in the world of sport.” A day in the life “I’m internationally focused – we are expanding everywhere, but with a particular focus on Europe, Latin America, and Asia – so I spend a lot of time there. I face the usual challenges of anyone running a global company. Some days are spent on sales, some on our professional athletes, some on race operations or our partnership with the World Anti-Doping Agency – it’s different every day. We have encountered all sorts of curveballs at our events: monkeys throwing coconuts at athletes in Malaysia, salt-water crocodiles in the swim in Queensland, wild dogs chasing cyclists in Sri Lanka, and landslides in Switzerland in 2013 that caused us to abandon the race. We do outdoor events on public roads and waterways. We’re operators – we deal with it. Part of what makes it an interesting job is coping with the enormous variability of things: weather, the political vagaries associated with permits to be able to conduct your events, etc. With 200 races a year, you figure out how to handle things like extreme cold and heat – or sharks – on the fly, and adapt to specific conditions you’re presented with. It requires pragmatism and flexibility. In the event business, there are only specific solutions to specific problems. One of the things McKinsey helped teach me was how to make good decisions really fast because you often find yourself in situations where you have imperfect information but you need to act, and everybody is waiting to find out what you’re going to do. Those core skills of getting pretty close to the right answer quickly have been very useful over the course of my career. My McKinsey skills have also been very important in how we think about the growth of IRONMAN as a brand (I was pretty deeply involved in branding-related initiatives at the Firm). And from an international management perspective, I rely a lot on what I learned during my time at McKinsey, where I worked in Chicago, Amsterdam, Japan, the Philippines, and Western Europe. All of those experiences and skills I developed and refined at McKinsey – just being able to function in an international environment – are things I use every day.” Mentors at the Firm “Claudio Aspesi (MIL, CHI, FIR 85-01) was a Principal in Chicago and he continues to be a great friend of mine. Also Dick Ashley (CHI, NYO 72-03), who was the office manager in Chicago. He is someone I continue to admire, and I often ask myself, ‘How would Dick handle this situation?’ He was able to combine being really smart and ambitious with having very high emotional intelligence and a high level of sensibility. As I get older and more experienced, I have realized how important emotional intelligence is. I was very lucky to have an office manager who had it in such abundance.” Fellow alumni in sports “Philippe Blatter (ZUR, SAO 93-93, 95-05), a former partner from Zurich, is President and CEO at Infront Sports & Media, which is a big sports marketing company. Infront and IRONMAN work together on a number of initiatives in Europe. Jeff Luhnow (CHI 93-99), who I worked with in Chicago, is now the general manager of the Houston Astros. We’ve been friends for 20 years now. And [former Director] Minsok Pak (CHI, DAL SEO, SIN 91-10), who was a business analyst when I was in Chicago, is a very experienced and very accomplished IRONMAN athlete – I saw him at the world championships in October. We catch up whenever we can. There are a lot of alumni who are applying their skills in sports or who are active in the IRONMAN community. It’s fun to catch up with them and to compare notes, because the sports world is pretty different from the Firm. I look forward to seeing current McKinsey people and alumni at the races.” Andrew Messick at an IRONMAN race Andrew Messick at an IRONMAN race The IRONMAN appeal “I started doing triathlons just after turning 40, when I was looking for a challenge. I had always been a runner and cyclist and thought, ‘What can I do as a forcing device for being fit again that would give me an opportunity to compete?’ Triathlons felt like the right combination of elements to get me excited. IRONMAN is powerful because you are always setting another goal. What you find is that you really like the process – the discipline of training regularly, and how accomplishing each new goal makes you feel. It’s a very powerful self-reinforcing loop: the more you do it, the happier you are that you’re doing it. You feel better about yourself. I still compete, although ‘competing’ implies a level of performance that hasn’t been there in a while. I participate in our event. Since I’ve been in this job, I have done two or three 70.3 [‘Half IRONMAN’] races a year. It’s good to continue to race and feel the nerves of a race coming up and be focused on how you do your best, prepare yourself and think about the details you need to get ready to have a respectable performance. I still find it fun and enjoyable. If you find yourself wondering if you could do an IRONMAN, the answer is yes. It’s a ton of work, and it requires a ton of sacrifice. For people who haven’t done it, the first ten hours of a race are generally easy. After that, it gets hard. But perfectly ‘average’ people do it all the time. Anyone can do it.”

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