Cycling Thru Business: Using Systems and Platforms for Process Improvement
- Bob Merrill
- May 26, 2023
- 7 min read
If you want some context, feel free to go back and read this introduction:
Wow, is May almost over? Have you been riding your bike more this month because it is Bike Month? If not, what a better time than this weekend.
This is the final week of the Giro d’Italia, and the competition is in the mountains and ramping up. If you watch any form of racing (Monaco F1 and Indy 500 are this weekend), you are presented with all kinds of metrics. The GCN feed is showing me the slope of the climb, the kilometers left in the race, the time between the stage leader and the overall race leader. This data is relevant information to the situation in the overall race. Occasionally, the coverage will show specific telemetry of a particular rider. Usually, heart rate, power, cadence, and speed. This is information specific to that individual’s performance at that time of the race.
I use a Garmin Edge 530 as my cycling computer. When I bought it and did the setup, I printed the Data Fields from the Appendix. There are over 150. More than one hundred fifty! Any my device is a few years old, so I am sure there are more. The foundation of my computer is for navigation. And successful navigation is reliant on GPS, speed, and distance. But
the computer is also the platform to capture and display additional data, where often we need to add accessories, like heart rate straps, cadence sensors, power meters, and, yes, even radar.
In our organizations, our systems are very similar. We have a platform that has basic functions built in to help us with navigation, telling us where we are and maybe how fast we are going in a particular direction. Then we add other systems to capture more data to provide insights to help improve our performance. In addition, we can use data from different sources that can then be use to calculate new metrics. For example, using a power meter Watts can be captured and then a scale records my weight (kg). Two different systems and when uploaded to a central platform, it can calculate Watts per kilogram (W/kg), which in cycling is a key performance metric.
My opinion, too often business leaders abdicate their responsibility on the effective use of data and metrics to functional groups, losing commercial experience and context in their development and deployment. Yes, my Garmin can show me 150 different data fields, but the real decisions are related to intention, context, and knowledge.
Poor Performance in the Eyes of Your Child
I bought my wife one of the first GPS enabled running watches. It was not the slim looking devices of today, but the Garmin Forerunner 201 was more of a small brick. On this particular morning, she was setting off on a run with our young (like around five year old) son peddling along on his bike. It was a simple loop, but they had to cross busy streets at stoplights. My wife decided to use the Virtual Partner feature and programmed in a reasonable per mile target pace. Using this set pace, the watch, graphically, would display where she was in relation to the her “partner” that was holding the pace she set. If moving faster, you were ahead of your partner, and, if slower, you were behind. Rookie mistake by my wife was informing my son of this cool piece of technology. So during the run he would query where they stood. The little runner in the display was no long a ‘partner’ but now clearly the competition. Since my wife set a pace that she was comfortably running, her actual pace put her ahead. They stopped at the traffic signal and the light changed relatively quickly allowing them to cross. As she got to the other side of the street, she noticed that the little pacer had closed the gap. At the finish of her run, my wife, at the prodding of my son, was exhausted by having run much faster than she planned. My son was disappointed in her performance and watching the little digital display of her virtual partner with raised hands, jumping up and down.
What happened was a lack understanding and context of the process and data. It made sense in the real world that my wife would stop and wait for the signal to change so she and my son could safely cross the street, and this had to happen four or five times on this route. The little liquid crystal partner had no such concern for the safety of our son, so he just kept on at his programmed pace.
The issue, in this case, was the feature called Auto Pause was not turned on. If that was on, when my wife stopped to wait for the light, the timer would stop. And when she would start up again, it would start. To me, this is the same as when we are questioned about revenue being behind last year and/or plan, and we say it is a “timing issue.”
Can we agree on the fact that time does not stop? We also probably agree that the if this was a race to get to the finish the fastest, then the clock does not care if you stop for a traffic light, and thus the Virtual Partner clearly beat my wife and son.
The foundation of many of our systems were to make things easier. I can use GPS to help me estimate how fast and far I ran, versus paper maps and pedometers that need to be calibrated. However, we soon found ways to use our data points to compare and improve our performance. Let us consider a CRM, Customer Relationship Management system. I am a huge fan of systemic sales process and CRM tools. My first sales role introduced me to ACT! and though very basic, I could never understand the resistance. According to Salesforce, whose stock ticker is CRM because they are synonymous with the technology “The goal is simple: Improve business relationships to grow your business.” Business growth is easy to see, and probably easy for an organization to align around. That is the outcome. But what very much seems to be the challenge is aligning around “improve your relationships.” Whether it is the process, the structure, or the metrics, in most cases this involves change.
This is where, in my opinion, partnership and collaboration are the main ingredients for sustaining a growth mindset and continuous improvement culture. I once heard an interview on a podcast where the speaker was discussing the difference between data-based decisions and data-informed decisions. Having alignment and agreement on what is data-based and what is data-informed is a good starting point. But this alignment should be done with front line management. They are operating the process and thus have the most influence in its performance.
For illustration, look at the photo at the top of this article is of my Garmin screen. It is from a third-party app developer. It looks like the cockpit of a Formula 1 car. I think you will agree it is cool. If you are familiar with bike computers it is much more fun that the normal table of data fields. Here is what is on the screen when using a power meter: compass direction, speed, average speed, ride timer, distance, cadence, time of day, power, power zones, average power, power balance (L/R), Grade %, Elevation, Total Ascent.
This is cool. It is great way to present the information. And, it is useless at helping me become a better cyclist, other than making it fun to feel like an F1 driver while riding. This data represents a snapshot of current outcomes and an accumulation of information, such as how far I have ridden. There is nothing that helps me in the process of improvement.
The risk and challenge we have is spending too much time and energy focused on generating information about outcomes and opportunities associated with the outcomes, and less on designing the metrics and insights around the process. This is because, quite often, senior managers and executives are more interested in the ability to see the outcomes of consolidated data. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, provided resources are also applied to providing the insights needed into the process where the value is created by those operating the processes.
An inexpensive cycling computer or apps on your phone are cheaper ways to navigate and track outcomes. But if you do invest in a platform that has the tools to help you improve you capacity and capabilities, then time and energy is needed to learn and understand the tools and techniques to improve.
For example, using this Garmin, I can have a workout (maybe assigned by a coach or part of a plan) with specific details and instructions on the screen. The system would alert me if I was in the zone, too high, too low, etc. Information like speed and distance would be irrelevant, since the activity, the process was the focus. The best indicators are the ones that help you during the process.
Now I am nowhere near a professional cyclist. And I am not anywhere close to being competitive in any formal age group racing either. My training and workouts are not focussed on the finite - winning a specific race. Instead, I have specific milestones in mind, such as spending a week in Italy going over many of the climbs in the Giro d'Italia. Or doing a charity ride with my friends where it will be challenging, but comfortable. Sometimes I just ride for the joy of riding, and in that case any money or time spent on performance technology is a waste.
There is functional learning needed on how to start the Garmin, upload workouts and routes, download completed workout data, etc. But the real power of any platform is how useful it is at helping you, collaborating with your coach in most cases, get better.
Speaking of doing a charity ride with my friends, I also want to share that I am raising money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) by participating in America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride with Team In Training. On June 4th I will ride around Lake Tahoe with hundreds of other fundraisers supporting the important work of LLS in fighting blood cancer and supporting the patients and families impacted by this diagnosis. If you are able, please consider a donation on my fundraising page:
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