What do the Olympics have in common with municipal governance?
A whole lot.
I rediscovered that while watching the Paris Summer Games – with one race in particular: the men’s 4x100-metres final.
Watching elite athletes compete is a reminder for all of us that success takes years of hard work and dedication. There are no easy days whether you’re training for the Olympic games or running a municipal government.
I admit the comparison might sound trite and I certainly didn’t plan on writing a column about it – but then came the men’s relay race on Day 14.
I was focused on two teams: the Americans who had the fastest qualifying time; and the Canadians who had the slowest.
Team USA had four individual star athletes with one of them having won bronze in the 100-metres sprint five days before.
On the other hand, not one member on Team Canada had been fast enough to qualify for the 100-metre final.
In fact, one sports commentator called their pre-Olympic individual records in 2024 “lousy.”
Yet, Canada emerged triumphant in the relay with a victory variously labelled as “miraculous,” “shocking” and a “stunning upset.”
With apologies to my American friends, I have to say the members of Team America didn’t just lose, they ran such a bad race with a botched baton handoff that they were disqualified.
What happened?
How did a team of also-rans, if you’ll pardon the pun, defeat the fastest relay teams in the world?
The answer is as obvious as it is profound: teamwork.
The Canadians had trained and competed as a team for years. They were a “well-oiled quartet,” in the words of one Canadian commentator, “with their egos checked at the door.”
Call it synergy or the gestalt principle or Aristotles’ adage that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Four individuals came together to make a greater whole.
By comparison the Americans were a loose collection of star athletes. Not only that, Team USA coaches swapped out one of the athletes from the qualifying team and shuffled their running order.
The result was chaos for the Americans – and a valuable lesson for the rest of us, particularly those who run municipal governments.
Too often we forget and dismiss the concept of teamwork, not only with our colleagues but with our neighbouring communities.
As I have said repeatedly over the years, for communities to move forward they need to find ways to cooperate and collaborate with their neighbours.
Cooperation brings economies-of-scale that in turn allow the basic services to be provided, which frees up resources that can be invested in the essentials, which help communities and regions grow.
By working together like members of Canada’s relay team, communities can build a greater whole than they could alone.
Conversely, a lack of collaboration between and within municipalities is the plague of the 21st century for our communities.
Some communities view inter-municipal cooperation as a zero sum gain where any gain won by a neighbour is a loss for themselves. The reverse has been proven true time and time again. As I have discovered from visiting communities across North America, the number one issue for attracting investors, businesses, and industry, is collaboration, not just between municipalities but within the municipality itself when dealing with various civic organizations.
A related issue is the concept of succession.
You might have a great plan now but will it survive into the future?
A community must take a long-term view, not just the next few years but the next few decades or longer.
That means we shouldn’t liken the road to success as a marathon run by one person. It’s more like a relay race run by an infinite team.
I’m not just saying that because of the Olympic race. I used the analogy in my 2016 book, 13 Ways to Kill Your Community. Here is an excerpt: “The better metaphor for a picture of success for any community or organization is a baton race that never ends. Each runner carries the baton for his or her leg of the race, running at the fastest pace they can manage.
At the end of their leg, they pass the baton on to someone else who is conditioned and primed for his or her leg, ready to take the baton and run at their fastest pace, knowing at the end of their leg they will pass it on to someone else, and so on forever. Thinking of it in those terms means your organization must have vigorous succession planning in place.”
I thought of that as Canada won the men’s 4x100-metres final.
When it comes to working together with our neighbours and planning for the future, we don’t need to be the fastest or splashiest or even the odds-on favourite.
We just need to be the best team.
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