Heavy Mettle

The daily routines of Mittal Champions Trust (MCT) CEO Manisha Malhotra and air pistol shooter Heena Sidhu, whom the trust funds, are similar. Both are studies in regimentation. And, with less than a month for the 2012 London Olympics, the going’s been intense for both administrator and athlete. The demands are the same: Take critical decisions, boost performance, and meet targets.

To help her cope, Sidhu, 23, gets supervised rest-and-recovery programmes and mental training exercises. She even gets indulgences like the Indian mangoes that were brought for her to enjoy with ice-cream during the International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup in Munich last year.

All that 36-year-old Malhotra is getting, she says with a laugh, is grey hair. “Last Olympics, I got six grey hairs. Since then it’s become about 15, and by August 12 [the last day of London 2012], I may be half grey.”

The pressure on her to groom Olympics medallists has been intense ever since MCT played a significant role in bringing India its first individual gold medal at Beijing 2008—Abhinav Bindra topped in 10-metre air rifle shooting. But she isn’t complaining—as long as her “kids” repeat what Bindra achieved.

“If MCT’s athletes do not win any medals in London, I may not even have a job on August 12,” says Malhotra, who has been with MCT since it was set up in 2005.

She is aware of the stress the athletes are under; she was part of the sporting world before she joined the corporate one. She represented India in women’s tennis doubles at Sydney 2000 but was eliminated at an early stage. “Life would have been better if there was an MCT during my time. That’s what I always tell these kids,” she says.

MCT, created by Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal, isn’t just a CSR (corporate ‘sporting’ responsibility) initiative in the backyards of his steel factories. It backs Olympics prospects. It also boasts a significantly larger budget ($10 million or Rs 57 crore) than other private Indian Olympic initiatives such as the Olympic Gold Quest (Rs 8 crore to Rs 10 crore), the GoSports Foundation (Rs 2.25 crore), Monnet Ispat & Energy (the Indian boxing team sponsors), or dairy giant Amul, which is ‘Olympic partner’ to the Indian contingent at London 2012.

“Until the government and [sports] federations, through corporate support, build proper infrastructure and develop training from the grassroots for the Olympics, we can only wish to win medals,” says Sandeep Jajodia, chairman and managing director, Monnet Ispat & Energy. “The reality is that India has to be satisfied with one or two medals only.”

The country’s performance on the world’s greatest sporting stage has been dismal: 20 podium finishes in the 22 editions it has taken part in. It managed its biggest Olympic medal haul in Beijing 2008 (three: one gold and two bronze). So the contingent will head to London as underdogs.

MITTAL KNOWS A THING OR TWO ABOUT being an underdog, burning ambition, dogged perseverance, and what it takes to triumph on the world stage. Having started off as a wire rod manufacturer in Indonesia, he acquired steel mills around the world to become the world’s largest steel producer in less than a decade.

He says the principles of producing Olympic champions aren’t too different from developing winners in the workplace. “Athletes need the right coaches and equipment to succeed, just like people working for a company such as ArcelorMittal need the right managers and tools to ensure they can do their jobs to the best of their abilities.”

Mittal seems to have adopted a similar game plan for MCT’s Olympic medal hopefuls. “MCT is about recognising and providing training and development for athletes with the potential to be leaders in their chosen profession. I think this is a model that would work for any business.”

Malhotra echoes that. “To be able to train for a gold medal is no different from a corporation aiming to beat a forecast.” The ups and downs, problems, anguish, and the joy of achievement are the same, she adds.

While the scope of replicating sports tactics, strategies, and learnings to corporations and vice versa is vast, there are sporting parallels and learnings from MCT which are invaluable for today’s managers.

“The many ups and downs that a sportsperson goes through make for compelling lessons for any organisation to handle diverse and challenging situations,” says Reema Malhotra, head of HR India, Nokia Siemens Networks. She adds that India, as an emerging economy, needs the same discipline, dedication, and perseverance to excel in business as well as games.

MCT goes beyond funding sportspersons and providing them with the best training, equipment, and coaches. It regularly sends athletes to foreign shores since it recognises how globalisation has changed the demands for Indian businesses and sports alike. Naveen Narayanan, global head, talent acquisition, HCL Technologies, draws a parallel with his company sending employees around the world to understand clients better.

“Like businesses, sport is extremely competitive worldwide and everyone wants to go that extra mile,” says tennis ace Mahesh Bhupathi, who drew up MCT’s roadmap and is one of the trustees.

So, for London 2012, MCT boxers were sent to train at Bradford College in Leeds, Britain, where the British Olympic team trains; the archers are training under Lee Wang Woo, who has coached South Korea to three Olympic gold medals; and athletes are training in the U.S. and South Africa.

“It’s easier to write a cheque than be part of an athlete’s life: being there for them when they’re down or up,” says Malhotra. Patrick Kenny, a sports rehabilitator and performance enhancement coach, who has worked with both MCT and the Athletics Federation of India (under the government), says Mittal is not just throwing money around. “He’s giving them [the athletes] a great platform to jump as high as they want. And hopefully it’s for a gold medal,” he adds. Kenny’s from Britain and is proof of how global cultures and practices seamlessly mesh in sports today.

There’s more. Double-trap shooter Ronjan Sodhi is currently training in Italy. He has just one or two competitors in India, but the scenario is different when surrounded by 12. The clay pigeon targets the Italians use are the same as the ones that will be used at London 2012. “We don’t have those birds here,” says Malhotra.

Santrupt Misra, human resources boss at the Aditya Birla group, sees a point: “Say, Wal-Mart comes to India. If an Indian retailer has already gone and seen Wal-Mart in the rest of the world, he will know exactly what they do and can therefore compete effectively.”

Ask wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt, who can rattle off Russian with a North Indian accent. Despite being wary of foreign trips after he had to surrender five tins of home-made ghee to the Johannesburg customs authorities, Dutt knew the greater good in visiting Vladikavklaz in southern Russia, considered the mecca of wrestling.

He was coming off a constructive knee surgery (with a lot of help from MCT). He didn’t compete much after Beijing 2008, so his greatest need was for sparring partners. With nearly 600 wrestlers and 150 world and Olympic champions training under one roof in Vladikavklaz, he had a huge pool to choose from. “Back in India, I had just two worthy competitors in my weight category,” says Dutt, who is India’s medal hopeful in the 60 kg freestyle category. “The variety of functional divisions and global locations increases the scope of training towards processes, tools, and leadership skills in companies as well,” says Shalini Sarin, director of human resources, Schneider Electric India.

For most of MCT’s athletes, who have non-urban backgrounds, foreign exposure makes a huge difference. “Even five years ago Indian athletes suffered from an inferiority complex,” says Malhotra. “On previous foreign trips they went like a herd of sheep: hotel to stadium, stadium to hotel, hotel to airport, and airport to India. But now they are on their own and have their own interests. It’s a huge transformation.”

The knowledge transfers work both ways, as Heath Matthews, a former personal trainer at MCT and now doctor at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Mumbai, found. The MCT wrestlers, who only eat food prepared in pure, home-made ghee, had him flummoxed. Matthews tested them because, despite the seemingly damaging effects on weight, they still had the lowest amount of fat percentage compared with athletes from other disciplines, their endurance was high, and injury levels lower than the others. Matthews’s conclusion: Natural fats are not bad for you.

MCT STARTS BY IDENTIFYING the right trait in each recruit, and leaves the rest to individual training. “Once you have identified people with potential you need to set each individual on a path of continuous training, while monitoring their progress,” says Mittal. “You need to develop a system for each individual that will enable them to excel.”

For Misra, the workplace parallels are obvious. “Commitment, for one, is a trait which the potential hire has, or doesn’t have, or hasn’t made use of. But what is possible to hone are skills—how you plan, budget, manage each individual, give feedback, and create a climate which supports innovation, experimentation, and creativity.”

That’s why MCT recognises the importance of a customised approach to training each athlete, which has been the basis of its successes so far. It avoids generalised treatment, which marks sports federations, government camps for Olympic athletes, and, of course, some companies.

“When you’re doing this intense amount of work with an athlete, the key is to individualise,” says Pierre Beauchamp, a sports performance coach from Canada employed by MCT. Misra says if every organisation could replicate this non-generalised structure, all employees would be champions. “Everybody attempts to do it in their own way, but getting it right is not easy.”

The needs are different as well. Shooting, for example, is more expensive than athletics. The biggest cost for the former is equipment, says Malhotra. A gun costs Rs 5.5 lakh and a bullet Rs 5. Each shooter practises at least 1,000 rounds a day, and while it may not seem much, it amounts to a lot in the long run.

“My archers are the most equipment-crazy people,” says Malhotra. “As soon as there is new equipment in the market, I don’t know how they find out about it, but they want it. So, every time we go to a tournament, I get scared because I hear ‘No, now we want this carbon fibre arrow’, ‘This new bow has less resonance’, etc.”

Then there’s Gurmeet Singh, India’s representative in the 20 km walk category, who is obsessed with video analyses of his technique. Instead of merely recording his performance, MCT provided him with an expert to break the analysis down and show him where he was going wrong.

“No matter how weird the needs, it’s important to strike a balance between what MCT thinks the athletes need, what the athletes think they need, and what their actual need is,” says Malhotra.

Likewise, MCT provides its coaches with everything they need without trying to manage them. “There’s a large degree of trust. Since they have employed you, they know what you are doing, and they know how best you will use it,” says Kenny. “Don’t companies and businesses also do that for their employees to work to their 100% potential?”

All these, however, lead to one goal: Performance that yields results, relevant in both sports and business. “The bottom line is: to succeed, the margin of error has to be absolutely minimal,” says Bhupathi.

An archer could achieve a score of 1,100 in practice all day, but shoot 1,050 in an event, and even win gold with it, but according to MCT it shows inconsistency. “What if competition achieves 1,075 the next day? That’s when their performance assessment comes up,” says Malhotra.

Discus thrower Seema Antil was hurling up to 57 metres before she went to train under track and weightlifting coach Tony Ciarelli in the U.S. last September. A few months later, she was managing just 52 metres due to the change in technique. Ciarelli assured MCT that she would touch levels higher than 57 metres eventually. In March, Antil threw 62.60 metres, her highest in seven years, to qualify for London 2012.

Coaches such as Ciarelli, and of course, MCT are critical in addressing and bridging the gaps that Indian athletes have in comparison with their global counterparts. As Malhotra says, “The foreign athletes are created because of the system, and the Indian athletes are created despite the system.”

MCT has to deal with physical training and mental toughness, which are weak areas for Indian athletes. “The physical and mental training conducted abroad is almost militaristic in approach,” says Beauchamp.

His mental training modules for Sidhu—a combination of sports psychology, perceptual-cognitive training, sports medicine, physiology, etc.—integrates the latest technology with the goal of enhancing performance not just in sports but also business and art.

While bio-neuro feedback training brings the heart rate in sync with the respiration rate to maximise
internal harmony for shooters, perceptual-cognitive training helps improve peripheral vision to prolong and improve concentration.

Then there’s Bindra’s latest self-hypnosis technique, which involves mentally rehearsing different events—routines, scoring tens, performing at the Olympics or upcoming events—and pre-programming the subconscious mind.

“The purpose of such exercises is to increase or maintain confidence, self-regulate emotions, maintain focus and attention, and enhance mental toughness and resilience for optimum performance under pressure,” says Beauchamp, who has successfully implemented his mental conditioning programmes at San Francisco-based hedge fund Ascend Capital where he worked for three years. The key is to have a healthier, happier workforce, or sports contingent, which will ultimately be a higher performing one.

Tom Sermon, CEO of Australia-based Global Corporate Challenge, a corporate health initiative, which organises treks, points to workplace returns such as better productivity, team work, reduced absenteeism, etc. “These are the practical and financial advantages of a satisfied, engaged, and committed workforce,” he says.

A medal haul at the 2012 Olympics was MCT’s first target when it was set up. The setting is perfect this month, with the location being Mittal’s backyard: London. The only difference from Mittal’s other ventures is that this time he is after metals of a different kind.