Armstrong's Tour victory teaches business lesson

In the three years I've written this column, a definite pattern has developed. Not so much a pattern as a preoccupation. An unscientific survey of the subjects addressed in this space reveals that roughly half concern bicycling.

So be it, and here we go again.

On July 25 American (or, more precisely, as residents of that once-republic primarily identify themselves, Texan) Lance Armstrong rode his bicycle into Paris ... the one in France, not the town in his home state.

He pedaled down the Champs Elys?es as the winner of the three-week, 2,290-mile Tour de France, his cumulative time more than 7 1/2 minutes faster than his nearest challenger.

Armstrong is the captain of the U.S. Postal Service team. Though three-time winner Greg LeMond preceded Armstrong as the first American winner of the Tour, LeMond rode as a member of a European team.

Much has been made of Armstrong's compelling recuperation from cancer to win this demanding athletic event.

Completing the course of the Tour is cause for amazement enough. The physical demands of winning defy exaggeration. To do so after intrusive cancer surgery and its traumatic subsequent treatment is beyond imagination.

And though the winner must pedal every blessed mile himself, in the process traversing both the Alps and the Pyrenees, Armstrong's individual victory is most assuredly a team effort. The Postal Service team performed far in excess of expectations.

Here we enter the business-application segment of the story.

Armstrong's victory exemplifies the importance of teamwork, competitive awareness, technology, effort and loyalty.

Winning the Tour de France requires an awareness of each rider's strengths, the strategic ability to act at the most opportune time to take advantage of those strengths and detailed knowledge of the competition.

Armstrong won five stages out of a total of 20. No rider is expected to win every stage. But the lead Armstrong established set the table for his teammates to do their jobs.

In the pack of hundreds of riders, teammates serve as human shields from the bumps and tumbles of other riders. These domestiques, as the support members of the team are known, also serve to block wind so the team captain may draft in their airstream, a la NASCAR drivers (or, more prosaically, as geese flying in formation), as an essential energy-saving technique for Armstrong. Teammates also shuttle back and forth to trailing support cars to deliver water, food and other necessities along the route.

Teamwork is an obvious necessity to success. But the team also works to provide intelligence essential to executing strategy. If a group of riders breaks away from the pack, one team member must expend the energy to stay with the leaders, identifying which riders are in the break-away group and how far ahead of the pack they get.

This jockeying for position and tracking riders' times has changed significantly in recent years as sophisticated communication is now used to transmit information from nonriding team strategists to each rider. These strategists can calculate all the times and competitive threats and direct unified responses from team members.

Are you using all the technology available to your business to gather information about your competitors? The efficiency and ultimate success of your strategic responses is directly related to your ability to take advantage of the information technology available. Know your competition. How else will you know how far ahead you are?

All this teamwork does not diminish the fact that Armstrong had to do the pedaling himself. He won all four of the Tour's time trials, individual events with staggered starts, thereby joining an elite group of riders to have done so that includes Eddie Merckx, the legendary Belgian rider.

The greatest team in the world cannot elevate a mediocre rider, and though teamwork undoubtedly helped, Armstrong himself had to crank up the Alps and perform as a climber as he never had before. Teamwork accentuates individual talent and effort, but it cannot replace it.

Armstrong's win exemplifies the merits of employer loyalty. In his early 20s Armstrong was an accomplished rider. He signed with a European cycling team, his contract paying him $2.5 million a year. And then he was diagnosed with cancer.

Given only a 40 percent chance to live, it was notable that he even survived to begin the literally long road of training back to his previous stature. His European team dropped him. He shopped his services to other teams and could only get on with the nascent Postal Service team for a fraction of his previous pay.

Though certainly a logical business decision, the European team's decision looks poor in retrospect. Can you identify the members of your business whose skills and potential value merit weathering tough times with them? Many, if not all, business decisions are a gamble. Shouldn't those you make regarding people be the most daring?

The U.S. Postal Service expressed its belief in Armstrong by hiring him. He mentioned repeatedly during the Tour his appreciation for its vote of confidence, as well as his antipathy toward his former team for summarily dumping him, as motivating factors. And now the Postal Service is reaping the rewards.

Vive le Lance.

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