Page 13 - Linkline Spring 2017
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Force you are there to serve the troops and not the other way around. That’s the key message for anybody who is involved in performance and managing big teams, small teams or those in between – you are there to serve them and enable them to be the best they can be, and a key part of military strategy is encouraging troops on the battlefield to make their own decisions. As Helmuth von Moltke said, ‘No battle plan survives contact with the enemy’.”
It is perhaps this vigilance in the face of adversity that has granted Gavin the unprecedented success he has had with the Dublin squad, leading them to a record-breaking 36 games unbeaten before their run was finally halted by Kerry in early April. What he has brought to the team since taking over is a Zen-like dedication to present (rather than past or future) performance prevents them from being distracted by their significant success.
“The minute they’ve performed I want to move onto the next one. I want to burn their trophy and move onto the next one. Because I know from past experience – and similarly you can look at any industry where people get complacent – success invariable crumbles. You have to have that growth mind-set. You have to keep moving forward; otherwise, someone comes from behind you and knocks you off the track.”
Gavin attributes his love of performance management to the many personal heroes he’s discovered during his study of the field. “I’ve been a big reader down through the years of the science of sports management, but also the art of it as well. There is a chap called John Wooden who has been a big influence on me. He’s a very famous basketball coach with UCLA. As Wooden would say, ‘Little details are vital, little details make big things happen’.”
Outside of sports management Gavin has also a keen interest in academic theories of management. He refers to one theory by renowned management professor Douglas McGregor whose ‘Theory X and Theory Y’ proposes there are two kind of worker: one (on the x-axis) who doesn’t like to work and needs to be strictly controlled, the other (on the y-axis) who is a highly motivated individual, who gets self-satisfaction from their work and therefore works more imaginatively and creatively. For Gavin it’s all about getting individuals from the x to the y:“You always come across people who have great knowledge, great skill but just don’t have the attitude. In that case you have to break down their performance and you have to outline it in a very detailed way. This is what you need to achieve in baby steps. You take them through that process and eventually you let them off and they get over to the y.”
Gavin also cites American psychologist Frederick Herzberg as an influence. Herzberg’s motivator-hygiene theory posits the idea that hygiene factors (general factors in the workplace), while they may not be motivators, can serve as demotivators of staff. Putting this into practice means taking care of the little details that, over time, can demotivate a team. As Gavin explains, this can be as simple as keeping a fridge stocked with milk, “or you go to the printer and the print cartridges run out or there’s no paper – we have all experienced that. These are the things that over time have a tipping point and eventually one grain of sand gets put on top of another grain of sand and the scale tips. But if you take away all those demotivators you can help your team to be the best they can be.”
Gavin’s all time hero though is psychologist, humanist and philosopher Abraham Maslow. And it’s easy to see how Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ has influenced his approach to performance management: “For me this is king. King because I have seen it work in aviation, in the commercial sector, and I have seen it work in sport with the Dublin football team. Maslow places self-actualisation at the very apex of the pyramid. His whole theory is about becoming the best you can be. As a performance manager of the Dublin football team my job is to get those players to perform at their very best.”
So how does it work when a team that is used to success, suffers a defeat? As was the case with Dublin when they lost to Kerry in the National League just a few weeks ago. Gavin admits it’s been tough: “Obviously people are disappointed, the players are disappointed, and I’m disappointed, mainly for the fans. But the players get over it pretty quick and you just focus on the next game. We ask ourselves ‘what did we do well and what can we do better in the next game?’ Similarly within the aviation industry, we have a culture that accepts there will be loses and people will make mistakes. All we want to do is reflect upon it, learn the lessons, see the root cause, and implement some changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
I am reminded of an Abraham Maslow quote Jim used in his speech, telling the crowd, “There are three different types of people: people who make things happen, people who watch things happen and people who ask how did it happen?” It's clear the first type is the positive one – the doer – but if we’ve learnt anything from Jim Gavin it’s that observing and questioning can be just as important when it comes to making things happen, be it in life, business or sport.
  From left to right: Kevin Byrne, CILT International President; Paddy Doherty, President of CILT; Jim Gavin, Dublin Manager & Assistant Director of the IAA; Pat Treacy, CEO of CILT and Patrick Casey, Secretary of the CILT Council. (Photograph by Michael Miley)
 The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport 13
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