RAPID Performance Lessons from F1 Racing with Paul Teasdale
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RAPID Performance Lessons from F1 Racing with Paul Teasdale
In the heart of London, amidst the rhythm of passing trains, The Jens Heitland Show unveils an episode that encapsulates the essence of high performance within teams and organizations. Episode 235, titled "RAPID Performance Lessons from F1 Racing with Paul Teasdale," is not just a dialogue; it's an exploration into the dynamics of transforming the theoretical into the tangible, the spoken into the actioned.
Paul Teasdale, with his profound experience from the fast-paced world of Formula 1 racing, brings to light the RAPID framework—a beacon for organizations aiming to clinch that pole position in their respective fields. The conversation kicks off with an emphasis on understanding what high performance truly means at an individual, team, and organizational level. It's about setting a benchmark, aspiring to lead, and perhaps, redefine what it means to excel in your space.
The journey from articulating these goals to actualizing them is where the essence of the RAPID framework shines. Breaking down the acronym, Teasdale delves deep into:
Results:
Pinpointing the finish line for your marathon.
Actions:
Mapping the racecourse with strategic pit stops.
People:
Assembling your pit crew, each member crucial to the lap's success.
Insights:
Equipping your crew with the best intel for split-second decisions.
Data:
Distilling the essence of countless data points into actionable wisdom.
Teasdale's insights underscore the momentum action begets, stressing the importance of small, deliberate steps. This philosophy, coupled with support from mentors and coaches, cultivates an environment ripe for innovation and growth. The transition to organizations magnifies this approach, focusing on aligning results with strategic objectives—much like an F1 team strategizing not just to win a race but to dominate the season.
What resonates throughout the episode is the symbiosis between data and human insight, the melding of technology and intuition to push boundaries and test limits. This balance, Teasdale suggests, is pivotal in maintaining high performance, ensuring teams not only reach their zenith but also sustain it. Leadership, thus, emerges as a lighthouse, guiding ships through the fog of complacency towards continuous improvement.
In closing, Teasdale imparts a universal blueprint through the RAPID framework, a tool as adaptable to individual career aspirations as it is to organizational revolutions. His parting narrative, a tale of ballet dancers enhancing pit stop efficiency, serves as a metaphor for the episode's core message: high performance is a dance requiring grace, precision, and, most importantly, a willingness to learn from the most unexpected teachers.
As the trains continue their journey past the London backdrop, Paul Teasdale's conversation with Jens Heitland leaves listeners with a roadmap to high performance—a path that begins with a single step from talking to walking, from dreaming to doing.
Timecode:
00:00 Welcome to Walk the Talk with Jens Heidland & Paul Teasdale
00:29 The Essence of High Performing Teams and Organizations
01:36 Individual Actions Towards High Performance
02:58 Applying High Performance Strategies in Organizations
04:27 Insights and Actions: The RAPID Framework Explained
05:37 Learning from F1: Data, Insights, and Performance
09:38 Iterative Innovation and the Mindset for High Performance
14:54 Applying the RAPID Framework for Personal and Organizational Growth
16:09 Concluding Thoughts: From Talking to Walking Towards High Performance
Guest Links:
Paul Teasdale on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauljamesteasdale/
Website: https://paulteasdale.co.uk/
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Transcript:
(This Transcript is AI generated)
Jens: [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Jens Heidland Show. Again, from London, and in the format of Walk the Talk, together with Paul Teasdale. Welcome, Paul. Thanks for having me, Jens. Brilliant to see you on this wonderful, cold and fresh evening in London. Yes. And there are trains running by, which is exactly a mission of Walk the Talk.
We want to show truth, we want to show where we are, and we want to talk. about things. Today with Paul, we talk about high performing organizations, high performing teams and how we get that from talking about it to walking. Paul, tell us, how do we get organizations, people and teams from walking? Walking.
If I'm talking to
Paul: walking. Um, well, I mean, the first point is about talking, you know, it's about talking and understanding for yourself, for your team, for your organization, about what does high performance mean for you. [00:01:00] Now, what does it mean for you as an individual? What does it mean for your team? What does it mean for your organization?
You know, and what, you know, where do you want to be? Is high performance around the benchmark for your industry? Do you want to be the top of your game? Do you want to be, you know, streets ahead of everyone else? Do you want to redefine what high performance is in your area? But once you've got that high performance in your mind, then it's about going from the talk to the walk, you know, and actually applying, uh, that gap analysis really, you know, where are you now?
And how are you going to close that gap? What are you going to do to close that?
So
Jens: closing that gap, how do we get people towards that? How do we get, let's start maybe with individuals first. How do we get individuals from. Talking and understanding and strategizing about you, getting things organized and getting people themselves performing.
Yeah. Um,
Paul: well, action sort of begets action, really. It's, it's a momentum thing. How do you actually start to get those little things in play? And this is where, you know, just [00:02:00] taking one action, uh, any workshop I do, any engagement I do, I'll always focus on what's the one thing you're going to take from today.
What's one thing you're going to change and experiment on? Innovate with and just see if it works or not. Because if you don't try it, you'll never know if it works or not. Um, and if it does work, brilliant, let's build on it. And if it doesn't work, what are we going to do to make it work? Because that is the thing that you've decided is going to move you from where you are to where you want to be.
So, if that's what you want to do, move on. And another point I would say is about getting support with it. You know, get yourself a coach, get a mentor, get a friend or confidant. And get somebody who can challenge you and keep you accountable to those things.
Jens: Yeah, loved it. I think it's super important to, again, I'm all about this human interaction and human engagement, which is like finding someone who helps you as a mentor and finding someone who gives you as well feedback on maybe where you stand as well to get towards.
Yeah. Organizations. Yeah. How [00:03:00] does that work with organizations?
Paul: Well, again, it's about understanding what do you want your organization to be? You know, I'll always start with results. When I talk to organizations about what results are you trying to drive? And it isn't just that immediate thing of we want profit.
You know, we want to have shareholder return. You know, that's the easy answer for people. They always want the profit. But actually, no, what does the result look and feel like for you? And what's the context of those results? So I spent some time in the world of F1, as you know, uh, working for McLaren and it was always about, we want to be sort of dominating the sport.
That was the high performance there, not just winning the race in front of us, but dominating the sport. Um, but we want to be doing that in a way that fits in with the strategic objectives and where you want the business to be. Um, so, uh, sustainability, you know, if that's a big drive for you, if that's a big strategy, your results have to be aligned to that as well.
Yeah. So it's not just about. The result at no cost. It's the result in the [00:04:00] context of how you want to achieve that. Um, and then once you've got that for your organization, you can start to sort of disseminate that down and see what it means for individual teams.
Jens: Yeah, I love that. So it's really understanding first.
What does it mean? What results you want to get out and then starting to strategize around that and getting towards the direction. So how do we use that in organizations and get moving towards walking? getting and accelerating towards the performance. Yeah.
Paul: Um, I mean, I've always been a fan, fan of sort of go slow to go fast.
You know, you've got to step back and this is where the results is really key. You know, you start off with saying, right, do we truly understand the results? We're trying to drive in the context of that. And I've got this rapid framework that I help people follow, understand your results. What are the actions that you can take?
What are the things, the levers at your disposal to push and pull that have an impact on those results? And then understand the people around that, who are the people who, um, are making those decisions and putting them into [00:05:00] action. And then there's a critical layer for me, which is about insights. What insights do your people need in order to make the best decisions?
And then finally, it's D for data. You know, what data, what's the smallest possible data set, actually, that derives those insights that you need your people to have? And if you step back and just review that rapid approach, then you can start to say, Right, now that I know that sort of thing, overarching piece.
What am I going to do to focus on that insight layer to how do we generate more insights, give people more value, help them with the decisions that they're going to make, and that will start the momentum going in my mind.
Jens: Yeah. How did, how did you learn this from, from the F1, from McLaren, from the work there?
I guess you, you have done all these things in that context and now do it with other clients as well.
Paul: Yeah. So I am, uh, in fact, it was probably a, um, The first time it really came to me, um, and was with a, sitting with a client and they were talking about the fact that they had invested tens of [00:06:00] millions of euros in a new site.
And they, um, they didn't know how to get more performance out of it. They didn't know what was going on. It's like, we've got all this new data, all this new data that's coming through, but we're not getting the performance. Why is it? And we started to talk about the approach that we take in the world of F1, where yes, you can get more and more data, But more data comes at more cost, because it actually costs you weight on the car, which slows you down.
Oh yeah. And it was when I was, I've always been good at sort of contextualizing this stuff and putting it into a, um, sort of a practical term. And what was happening was, if you think about data that you're consuming on a day to day basis, just the stuff on your phone, the reports that you get in work, you know, the new formats that all this data comes at you, it's cognitive load.
It's, it's It's mind space. Yeah. And so there's always been an assumption that more data leads to better performance, but actually it's the right data [00:07:00] formatted in a way that gives people insights that leads to better performance. Um, and that whole sort of flipping things on its head a little bit because most organizations came to us at McLaren because we were so data intense and so good at analyzing and predicting and modeling and all this sort of stuff.
And so. They always thought, how are we going to get more data, what are we going to do with all this data? And we said, no, let's flip it on its head. Start with the results, understand the smallest possible data set. And then you can start to move forward.
Jens: Yeah. I love that because everyone talks about this big data with AI and everything, but in the end it comes to the right data, understanding them in details and then going into the insights.
So how do you translate the insights into what are the actions possible to get to the results?
Paul: Um, so insights and action, it's all about the people there. You know, it's like insights are the questions that you're asking. So. I chat [00:08:00] AI, you know, it's only as good as the questions you ask it. So you've got to understand what questions do my people need, um, and what insights do they need presenting to them that are going to help them with decisions.
Um, I'll tell you a little story about a, um, a hospital that we work with, where they were doing, um, uh, sort of oncology, so cancer patients, and they had 20 odd people around, specialists sitting around the room with a report. Big reports, each individual. And they started off by saying, uh, you know, patient number one is a gentleman who is, was born on the 11th of September 1977, and and then they carried on with a load more data from the report.
And everyone in the room was there going 1977, 74, 75, 45, 46, September, when is it? And so everyone's mind space was taken up with Translating the data that we've given them into [00:09:00] insights that they needed, because they needed to know how old he was, or what age range he was, to help with the decision about what to do next.
So, instead of, you know, we work with them, instead of giving the date of birth, give an age range, and present that age range along with other critical factors like their BMI, their history, their blood pressure at the moment. Put that into a report that allows people to make better decisions. And that once you've got those insights around the questions that people have, then they're much better at going right here are the options in front of me.
Here's some action I can take. Let's move forward.
Jens: I love that. So when you do this with clients today, how do you help them to get taking this insights into the next part of the rapid framework? Um, yeah, I mean, it's all
Paul: about working with their team. It's all about iteration. You know, innovation is, uh, is a, a critical piece around, uh, you've got to iterate, you've got to try something.
You've got to say, [00:10:00] right, now that we know that insight, now that we've derived that and we've seen, um, what information it gives us, did it help us? Just take that one step and just challenge yourself as to what, what's happening. Because insight isn't very good if you don't do anything with it. Yeah. And that's the critical step.
Even if you do something with it and it turns out to be the wrong thing. That's better than doing nothing with it. So whatever I say is generate that insight and just make a decision and try it and find a way for that to be the smallest risk possible. You know, I talk about cube of scope, you know, if you've got different dimensions of of things you can test, then try it on the smallest cube of scope that you possibly can and see if it works.
If it doesn't, don't throw it away. Understand why first. Because it might just be that you need to tweak one little thing for it to work better the next time.
Jens: Yeah, I love the iteration piece because it's, it's, in my experience as well, a super enabler. Not [00:11:00] just from a process perspective, but as well from a mindset.
Because, you know, in organizations we always have the challenge that we want to be perfect, we want to make it great. We don't want to fail. No. But I think the part of what you just mentioned is We need to fail. We need allow us to fail to be able to get to the next level.
Paul: You've got to test where the edges are.
You know, if you, was it no fear back in the day? If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space. Yeah. Um, so you've got to, particularly in that high performance world, if you want to be at the high performance edge of whatever you're doing, you've got to be testing those boundaries. And so you've got to find those ways to safely test the boundaries.
And a great way that a lot of organizations and McLaren have done this over the years is to do this digitally. And to model your business and just to see if I make this change, what's the likely impact? Um, and use that in your decision support. But ultimately, I always talk about decision support because it's people who make decisions.
Um, if you're [00:12:00] getting your machines to make your decisions for you, you've just automated your process. Which has a place, but it's, it's not in a people business.
Jens: How do you work with, with the teams? Understanding that. One thing is the data and the other thing is the mindset. How do you get them into the mindset part?
Because that's, I guess, sometimes the more difficult part because the data is available and the insight might be there, but the mindset's, ah, we have tried that 20 years ago. And it doesn't work. That's not how we work.
Paul: It's, it's about conversation. You've got to have an open conversation with people and be open to the fact that most people are going to find a reason why things won't work.
Um, and so you've got to, Listen out for those things and test. So wherever people say this won't work because, it's an assumption. And if you can get them thinking of, I'm assuming it won't work because of this, then you can start to pull those things out. And quite often I'll have parts of workshops or parts of conversations, which is, [00:13:00] why won't this work?
Tell me why. All the different reasons. Because all of those are assumptions and we're going to test each and every one of these. Are they still true today? Were they ever true in the first place? What will it take for us if they are true today? What will it take for I
Jens: love that. So getting a team into this trial and error mode and then there's the first success.
How do you keep high performing teams performing on a high level?
Paul: Um, it's a momentum is the key, you know, and this is where leadership really comes into play. So, uh, I think the The key insight that I took from my time at McLaren, seeing what high performance leadership was in that context, is that those leaders truly understood what they were there to do as a leader.
They weren't there as managers, they weren't there as sort of administrators. You know, part of their role was to do some of that, [00:14:00] but they, wherever possible, it was always focused on have I got the right team? What the team that I've got, have I given them the right tools and techniques and testing those?
Finding little scenarios just to test whether or not these are the right people. Is there a safe way of going, you know what, I'm just going to do a little fire drill as such to test whether or not my people are reacting in the way that I've trained them to, I've tried to bring them up to. And that's about the debrief.
You know, the power of the debrief. If you've got a leader who enables a really powerful and consistent debrief and makes people feel safe to say, you know, this failed because. Then you're in a really good space So, you know leadership behaviors are critical in in that in terms of keeping up that momentum.
Jens: Yeah, love that How do people and individuals let's let's let's go with individuals. How can individuals use your rapid framework to Innovate [00:15:00] themselves to perform.
Paul: Um, I mean give it a go I mean one of the things I've got all load of material on the on the website, you know about the rapid performance I've also got it in the context of career development, so applying it to career development.
One, because it's helped me in my career development over the years. And I've also done a bit of coaching with people using that framework. But it's, that's just an example of it's application. Have a go! And work, work your way through it and see whether or not you are asking questions and see what questions it raises for you.
You know, do you truly know what insights you need for the performance you're trying to drive? And if not, you know, if you don't know of you, you can't quite articulate it, get in touch or, you know, ask someone else for some questions, you know, this is, it doesn't have to be me. It can be anyone to just help you through that process, to challenge your thinking throughout.
Um, But yeah, apply it to a safe space, you know, pick something that's going on in your world, a project, you know, might be about your fitness level or something [00:16:00] like that, and just see how it works for you. If you get value from the approach, see how it's going to iterate next time, see what else you can do with it.
Jens: Yeah. Let's finish off with organizations. Yeah. What can organizations do in a simple way to switch from talking about it to walking towards high performance?
Paul: I think the critical bit is about understanding what's going to leverage the performance they're trying to drive. So, like, it always comes back to what is that performance?
Do they truly know what they're trying to drive? The behaviors they're trying to drive, the context of what they're trying to do. Yeah. And then I've, um, I've got another model called the reframe model. Uh, and this is based off some stories about when the guys in the pit stop brought in ballerinas to help them become better at the pit stop, because they identified that actually the way in which we move as a, as a team, as a troop is actually going to help us with the performance we're trying to drive.
Who does this stuff really well? [00:17:00] Well, the ballet route move really gracefully as a team and work together. And so we can learn from that outside group. And so if you can apply frameworks like that to say What am I trying to drive and who can I bring in that's really going to Inspire and switch and bring in some new thinking it doesn't have to be f1.
It can be anybody else, you know, but it's actually focus on challenging yourself and thinking about that next level of performance and if it's outside of your industry even better because it Really does challenge your thinking and moves you to the next level
Jens: ballerinas What story to finish off walking and not just talking with Paul Teasdale.
Rapid is the model you go for rapid performance for yourself and your organization. Paul very much for joining me on the bridge with the train in the
background.
Paul: Oh, right. Absolute
Jens: pleasure Everyone walk the talk together with Paul Teasdale See you next time.
[00:18:00] Cheers.