Return on Effort (ROE)

The Game We Are Really Playing

If you were a professional sporting coach and the volume of training you were putting your athletes through had been maximised, what would you do?

This was the challenge facing elite swimming coaches in the early 90s. And, over the past few decades in most professional sports. The old adage that the key to success is to increase the volume of training to gain better results is over. Gennadi Touretski understood this when he coached Alexander Popov, the Russian short-distance champion, as well as the Australian Swimming Team in the 1990s. It was a peculiar arrangement where Touretski, a man known for his scientific approach to coaching was appointed the head of swimming at the Australian Institute of Sport, while Popov, a dedicated apostle of Touretski paid his own expenses to train in Australia as a Russian athlete.

During this time, Australia would experience a golden age of swimming with greats like Perkins, Thorpe, and Klim all becoming legends of Olympic swimming. And, Popov would dominate the 50 meter and 100-meter events during this period by winning gold in both distances at back-to-back Olympics. The Russian born coach was known at the time as a unique presence in swimming circles. His coaching methods were considered unorthodox and bizarre by many. He would have swimmers dragged through the pool so they could get used to the ‘feeling’ of swimming at a faster pace. He would ask swimmers to hold their arms outside of their car while traveling at 90 km/hr so they would feel the resistance when their palm was open compared to when it ‘knifed’ through the air.

All of this training boiled down to one principal - quality training beat quantity. Efficiency of movement was the focus of this coach, a degree qualified engineer that majored in biomechanics, biochemistry, fluid mechanics, and sports physiology. Tourestski wanted his swimmers to glide through the water with as little resistance. To do this they would have to forget about everything the swimming world thought was important - power. (Inside Sports)

Touretski with 'Thorpedo' in training.

Source: https://www.zimbio.com/

Up until this point in time, if you wanted to swim fast you simply had to be the most powerful. The most talented powerful athletes were the ones that would come out on top. Tourestski’s new philosophy would become obsessed with technique to support balance and a streamlined swimming action. This new way of swimming would aim to reduce stroke-rate which would maximise energy consumption while increasing propulsion in the water. (Swimming Coach)

It is a wonderful example of a professional leader understanding that they were not playing a game of speed. They were playing a game of effort, and the results they achieved as a result of their effort - both in training and in competition. It is an equation of Return On Effort (ROE). This is, the results that are achieved compared to the output and exertion that is spent. I believe this is the real game we are all playing. It is the true leveler or truth teller of our professional lives.

We all have a finite amount of time and resources to achieve our goals. And, in reality, there are many ways to get to the finish line for all of us. But, where is the actual finish line? In business, it can be argued that there is no finish line. When a salesperson achieves their sales for the month, there is another sales target to hit for the following Month. Then the following Quarter. The following Half. The following year. And so on. So, maximising our energy consumption along the journey like Tourestski’s swimmers is going to be super important.

This game of ROE is a windy one. It is not necessarily linear and has four distinct phases, all with contextual meaning and implications for our own journeys. The four phases are:

1. Extinction – low ROE with poor results and high exertion. You won’t last.

2. Isolation – a good ROE with okay results and high exertion. It's fragile.

3. Consolidation – a good ROE with lagging results and lower exertion. Learning to fly.

4. Synchronisation – a high ROE with low exertion. Now we’re flying with endless possibility

 It is a fluid model, where we can slip back and move forward at any given time. We can apply this to ourselves as individuals. We can plot our teams, our departments, and our entire organisations within the ROE model. Once we understand that this is the game we are really playing, we are then able to implement changes that will allows us to ‘glide’ over the water rather than ‘fight’ it. 

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