Adolfo Gómez Sánchez Transcript

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Clint Betts

Adolfo, thank you so much for coming on the show. It means a lot to have you here. You're coming to us from Spain, which is incredible, and we were talking about that a little bit before we went live. It sounds beautiful and incredible and a place that you would never want to leave, for sure. Man, you've had a fascinating career. You've been a tennis coach, you've written a book, you've mentored CEOs and coached CEOs. Tell us about yourself.

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Well, I guess my life is a confluence and the intersection of two great passions. And one was an all-around sport, as a competitive athlete and then later working with professional athletes. And then, on the other hand, is the world of helping, so what drives performance, helping people and organizations realize their full potential, and that's really what the last 30 years have been for me around it.

Why do some? If you look at it, it happens in sports and in business. Why do some people or some athletes perform and then others don't, even though they have more physical traits? You just have to look at the drafts. The drafts are actually pretty terrible in terms of success rates and number-one picks. Then you go to business, and it's very similar. And so the cross between that is what I've really been obsessed with, and what I'm passionate about is studying and modeling. What is it that drives performance?

So, the science of performance has been studied, and there are some great stuff and some really giants in the field. The problem with that is that it's usually really complex. So it's all around neuroscience and cognitive. And then people are like, "What would I do with this?" So, what we've tried to do is make it simple and actionable. And both for athletes, which is what I used to do with them, and now we've taken that to the world of business. And that's been a huge portal because I always say to CEOs, "If your favorite sports team is managed the way you manage your business, you would be aghast," and it's true. There are a million examples I can give you where you'd say, "Well, why do we do that? Because I wouldn't accept a coach doing that or a team doing that?"

And so I think there's a lot to be learned from the sciences of performance in sports and take it into business, and that's what we're passionate about, and that's what we do, and it seems like the market's happy to listen.

Clint Betts

It's incredible. And you've written this book; what inspired you to do that?

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Well, The Optimal Performance Formula is the packaging of all of that. That's the name of the book, and that's the formula. And it came because as we've grown, so over the last couple of years, we've grown exponentially, everybody in the team was like, we got to get this out of your head and into everybody else's. And so I said, "Okay, I'm going to actually write the book." It was just an amazing experience because it did a lot more than I had hoped, which was that it opened up opportunities for our clients.

So a lot of times, if you can't imagine something, you think it's impossible, and by illustrating examples in the book, people have reached out to us and said, "Hey, I never thought of that. We'd really like to do that. Can you help us?" And that's what really brightens my day; for example, when I sit with CEOs, they'll talk to me about their performance issues. After a little while, one of my main questions is usually, "What's your plan as a CEO to be a better CEO in the next five years?" And they go, "What?" And then I say, "Well, look at sports. You take Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Michael Jordan. When they became the best in what they did, they doubled down on getting better, so why wouldn't you do that as a CEO? That's an elite performer. All elite performers do that." And they go, "Oh yeah, you're right. I never thought of that," and that just opens up a whole world of possibilities that, until then, you didn't even look at.

So I think a lot of times it's about breaking paradigms. We limit ourselves. And there's a great quote by a Harvard psychologist in 1904, and he says 1904, so it's like more than 100 years old, and he said, "Very few men ever reach the full potential of their capabilities." I think that's still true.

And I actually say it's even worse now because I think we live in a hack-driven society. I think we live in a world where it's all about speed, but it's not about mastery. And if you look at anybody who does anything fantastic, it takes a long time, and the science says that. There's the famous 10,000-hour rule. But the underlying point is, I mean, you don't believe you'd be a ballet dancer in six months, do you? You don't believe you'd be a concert violinist in a year. It's absurd. Yet, especially in business, we think, oh, let's transform this company in six months. It doesn't work. It's impossible. It's naive, and you need to understand that changes where you want to go.

And transition is how do you take people along on that journey, and that's what really great leaders do. They know how to communicate, they know how to engage, and they know how to motivate people around one vision and then illuminate that way because anything that takes that long is difficult, and you get disappointed, you get lost, you get worried if you're going the wrong way. And so in the book, what we try and do is give pieces for that.

One of the things I talk about is what we call a mastery map. If you're going to do something that takes you 10 years because that's what you're looking at, if you're an athlete, you have to be looking at 10 years. And if you're a company, look at Amazon. Amazon lost money for what it was, the first 10 and 12 years, and now they're what they are, but it takes time. So you need to have a plan because I can't compare myself from day one if I want to play basketball to Michael Jordan because Michael Jordan's way down the road, and I'll just get disappointed.

But what I can do is find experts and say, "Okay, where should I be in year one?" Now, I still won't be even anywhere near Michael Jordan, but am I on track or not? And that's part of what, as a company or as an individual, you need to do. You know the pieces, and you need to know the secrets because a lot of times, we throw everything down. We do it all at once, and that's absurd because the easy example is an athlete, let's say, a dancer. Dancers are incredible athletes, and you need to have certain basics in terms of flexibility, hip rotation, et cetera, strength before you can even think about making those moves, and so to start and try and practice something like that without having the basics and the fundamentals is stupid. And a lot of times in companies we skip those fundamentals. You want to take people through this journey, but you have to equip them with a certain what I call foundational skills that they need to accompany people on that journey. So I think it's important to really understand your craft. And the more you get into it, the deeper down the rabbit hole you go, the more fascinating it becomes, and then you start seeing things.

I always said I would watch a tennis game and I would see it very differently than most people. I'll be watching it with my wife, and you just see it because you've just been there so many times; it's the depth of the levels. I could probably watch basketball, but I just miss a whole bunch where somebody who's really good at basketball can pick up on it.

But I think that's the beauty of it, and it's what I've been doing martial arts since I was a kid, and I'm not a kid anymore. You might not be able to tell that, but so over 35 years and that's what attracted me to it. It's something you never finish chasing. And there's something, especially in our stressed-out world, there's something really beautiful about that.

And in the end, it's actually neuroscience and biochemicals. It's dopamine versus serotonin. So, serotonin is the happiness molecule, and dopamine is pleasure. Now, although consumer companies want to confuse those two, they're two very different things. They want to make you think pleasure is happiness because then you can buy it, but they're really two different things. So dopamine is something that you get high on, like sugar, and then you drop off. The interesting thing is that the more you stimulate dopamine receptors, the more it inhibits serotonin receptors. So it means the more you're chasing pleasure, the harder it is for you to get happiness, and I equate that with somebody's life journey.

It's about [inaudible 00:08:28]. For me, dopamine is around achievement. So winning trophies, getting a raise, getting that, whatever, making money, whatever, but that always saturates. It doesn't last. Dopamine doesn't last, whereas serotonin is about becoming. It's when you do activities where you're becoming somebody, you're working on yourself, and that's the road to mastery.

If you look at any of the greats, and the ones we mentioned, that was their attitude. And Kobe Bryant, you see any of the recordings on him, he's like 12, he went to this basketball camp, and he said, "Shit, I got to get better in this and this and this," and he did a plan and he worked on it. Tiger Woods changes his swing in the middle of his career. That's a great example. That's the antithesis of dopamine because you don't feel good, you feel clumsy, you feel terrible, but it's serotonin because he's good because I'm going on becoming something greater, and I think that's where it all starts.

You have to have that mindset because it allows you to decide what you're not going to do. It allows you to do what you are going to do, and it gives you that motivation to work long-term because we all get distracted by short-term comfort or short-term pleasure. And what the greats do is they don't lose sight of that, and they don't get distracted in the short term. They always remember where they're going, and they'll give up short-term comfort for long-term success in where they want to go.

It's the mental equivalent of the fable of Ulysses, and he's on the boat, and he's going to go see the sirens, and he knows when he gets there, he's not going to be able to resist. So he says, "Tie me to the mast because I don't trust my future self. I don't trust myself when I get there," and that's what greats do. But they do it by saying, "Okay, where do I want to be, and how much is it going to hurt me if I don't get there?" And so when they have the temptation, they say, "I'm not going to do it."

So great example, when I was on tour, I obviously crossed Rafael Nadal a few times, and one of the things I heard him say once, which was great, was when he was, I don't know, in his teens, 14 or something, he had a summer where he didn't train really hard. And that summer he goes with his friends, he parties. When he came back that year, he wasn't as good as he could have been, and he was losing to people he shouldn't have, and he never forgot that. He's like, "I will always remember that summer. And anytime I have a chance to party or not work, I will remember that." And you could see the rest of his career was I'll put it off because I want to be the greatest. And it didn't even matter how much he won or didn't win. It was a matter of what could be better. And if I can, and I'm not doing it, I can't live with myself.

And I think you see the difference in focus. Can I be the best I can be? So that's serotonin. I'm becoming. But it's not whether you win or lose a tournament. It doesn't matter. They kept going because that's just dopamine. That's just data. Achievement is just data. It just tells you if you're on the right track, but it doesn't define you.

And there's a great, great quote by Michael Gervais, who's a performance psychologist who used to work with the Seahawks and stuff, brilliant guy. I really like him. And Michael's quote is actually really deep. He says, "Performance should be an expression of who you're, not a measure of who you are or not a definition of who you are," and that's really actually profound because what it means is it should be you being your ultimate self, serotonin, becoming not I win, or I lose, and then that's an achievement. If I win or I lose, that defines if I'm a winner or loser. So, it's not a definition of who you are. It's not a sentence. It's the opportunity to become your greatest self and your real self, and athletes who do that get into a flow state and really perform exceptionally well.

So although this sounds obvious, it's hard to do, but that's what we try and help people to get there, and it's exactly the same for CEOs and leaders in any field.

Clint Betts

Why is it so hard to do? I wonder when you're talking to CEOs, what are some common performance issues that they tell you that they're experiencing. When you say, "Hey, what type of CEO do you want to be in five years," what are they struggling against right that second that's preventing them from being their best self?

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Well, I think there's a couple of things. Part of it is the environment in which we're brought up, such as the industrial model and the schooling model. So school teaches you everything that's wrong, the opposite of what you have to do in life. It doesn't work with others. There's only one right answer: don't question things. It's everything that doesn't get you success. Follow the path; don't step away from the trodden path.

And when you get into the industrial model and into a company, it's the same, and there's this unwritten rule that once you get to a certain level, like C-suite, you should know it all. And that's just so marked different from what we were talking about before as an athlete. No, that's when I most want to learn.

Feedback is a really big issue now in companies, and it's really hard, and sometimes people take it really poorly. Whereas as an athlete, you crave it. If you're not getting positive feedback on how to work on how to improve, you change coaches because I don't want... Because plateauing that's a whole different... So, if you look at business, it is about competence. That's the word. I want competent employees. Competent means you get good at or decent at something, and then you stop growing. Whereas athletes never plateau.

You look at it in business; it's like I'll give you the example of driving. When you get good enough at driving and stop running over people and crashing into things, you stop getting better. You then consolidate that level. You always drive at that level of skill, but you don't figure out how to be a better driver. So what people do when they, I have 30 years experience, well actually you have one year's experience 30 times because you are being a little factitious, but not too much. You've flatlined.

What is a challenge, then, when you want to drive an organization to performance? You're asking them to do all the things that they are prohibited from doing. Don't step out of your lane; don't make a mistake because you've got to be competent. Why do I want you to be competent? Because I want you to do your job well. What does an athlete do? He spends 95% of his time doing what he or she does, what he or they don't do well. That's what training's about.

As a matter of fact, businesses are lacking the concept of training, and that's actually really important because what they do is they'll do these theoretical trainings. Oh, an hour and a half on psychological safety, that's a big topic. Okay, great. Now, after that, go back to your desk. Well, that's like, I can explain to you how to technically serve an ATP pro, but if you don't go out into court, you're never going to consolidate that. You're not going to be good at executing. It's exactly that. It's that insane.

And then they go, why doesn't it work? Well, because you have to embed in day-to-day, and this is part of what we work with clients, an opportunity not only to practice that but also to receive feedback while you're practicing it because that's how you learn. And that means you have to necessarily, by definition, be wrong. You have to make mistakes because nobody is good at something the first time they do it, and there's an indicator from the research that says you should be working at a level that 15, 20% of the time of what you're trying to do you're not doing it well. That means you're pushing out of your limits. And that's unacceptable in business. No matter how much they say, "Yes, yes, failure," it's bullshit. There is no acceptance for that. So all of those things, it's these paradigms that they're trapped in, and so then how are you going to take a company and drive performance if you can't even see that you're being held hostage by those rules?

Then the other part of it is that we have this siloed type of view, especially in companies and not just in departments. I'll talk about two of the big things that I hear a lot of CEOs talk about: culture and innovation. They're two hot topics, and there are two things that they really don't have any clue what to do with. So everybody cognitively gets it. Yeah, I know I should have a good culture. Yeah, okay, I've heard about Apple or whatever, and yeah, yeah, innovation's important. But then I say, what are you doing about it? Oh, we've got an innovation group. Well, that's insane Because innovation is something that pervades the entire organization, just like culture. Culture is how you do everything. So we have a culture group, but the thinking is just backwards. You can't fix a problem that's across the organization by putting it in one piece.

We have a metaphor that comes from sports. Physical trainers will now talk about your train movements, not muscles. I don't care if you're working your biceps. I want to be able to swing a tennis racket, and that's my whole kinetic chain from my legs, through my hips, whatever, because that's the end I want.

So when the way it works in companies, there's silos, you want cost savings. This is a big thing: efficiencies. So they go to finance, or they go to procurement, and they say, "Fix it." But for them to fix it, they have to cross the whole value chain, and the other guys aren't working on it, and it's not in their incentives. It's impossible. It's insane. It's like fixing your tennis swing by just using the biceps. So you have to put it on your head, but the whole system is designed to work that way.

And then there's a bias because it's called self-justification bias. The people who are most resistant to change in an organization are the ones who have had the most success in that model. Why is that? Well, because you think if you've had success and the model is fair, then I deserve it. If the model's wrong, broken, shit, maybe I don't deserve to be where I am. So the ones who are highest up are the ones who are most emotionally vested in that model being correct because it means I deserve to be where I am.

So if you're thinking about changing, you've got to at least put that on the table; it's the elephant in the room. Then, you have to help people understand what that change means for them and help them lead it. If you don't, what you get is what these two psychologists called Keegan and Leahy called hidden commitments. We each have these things to protect ourselves internally, and we do them without even noticing it, and that's where resistance to change comes from. We don't even know why we're doing it, but it's a defense mechanism because that's saved us in the past. However, the situation is different, right?

Clint Betts

Yeah. How do you motivate a CEO? I wonder too how much of their issue is around distraction and being spread too thin maybe? Are they spread too thin? Are they doing too much, and is it like a focus as much as anything?

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Yeah, the focus is something I actually talk about in the book, and it's really important. So you can sequentially go to stuff, but multitasking is a myth. You can change from one thing to another, but you can't do two things at the same time. And the image of that, and I talk about this with athletes because when they lose focus on the point they're playing, and they're thinking about the one they just lost or what might happen in the future, they lose strength.

So, if you think a woman's high heel hurts a lot, why? Because all the weight is at one small point. She takes off the shoes; it hurts less because you're dispersing the energy. So, mental energy is exactly the same. And so it's what you're saying. CEOs have such a broad remit that they're trying to control, and let's face it. It's insane. Just a whole EXCO, I mean, what is it, eight, 10 people? What are you going to control, 50,000 people, 10,000 people? It doesn't make any sense. So my title, for example, in my company, and you'll see it on our web, its CEO, it's crossed out, and it says, "Chief passion officer," and that's actually my aim to talk to CEOs and say, "That's what I believe a CEO is. Your job is to find a really compelling mission, align people behind it, create the conditions so they can bring their brilliance, and then get out of the way." When you try and stop that, then you become a bottleneck.

I heard somebody say, "Control is for beginners." Well, actually, control is for people who don't live in reality. You're not going to be able to control it anyway. It's false. There's just no way. You humanly can't. So what you need to do is find the right people, which is where culture comes in, and work on that, and that's not easy. Make sure you get the right people, and sometimes you have to fine-tune your roster. It's just like a sports team.

Bill Belichick, I loved his theory on that. Won the Super Bowl, he would go into the off season and say, "Okay, where are we weak," and he would review every single role on the roster, and every year he'd come up better. And he managed to do it with a team of not superstars because he had that clear, never sat on his laurels.

So companies need to keep doing that. You need to keep saying, "Okay, does this work? And maybe Joe, who used to be great, we've now shifted, and Joe doesn't bring the value we want," and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that, and you have to move on.

And so the way we hire or promote in companies tends to be on historical performance. So how do you choose a sales director? You take a good sales guy, and you make them a lousy sales director. Why? Being a sales director requires a lot of skills, and you don't need to be a sales guy. And that's even more accentuated when you say, "Okay, now we're creating a new role, head of innovation." Who the hell's done innovation? I don't know. Tom sold something innovative. Let's put them there. And so you're actually saying, "Well, who has the closest proxy," as opposed to saying, "What attributes, what skills, what personality traits do I need, and then let's go find that, and do I have them in or not?" But we tend to think, oh, well, I'll go the safe route. But it's actually not the safe route because you're saying, "Okay, this is as far as I can go. I can only go as far as my past."

And in all industries, new entrants are coming in; they're fast, they're agile, they're innovative, and they've got nothing to lose. If you're not able to match that, you're going to get blown out of the water, and look at all the big giants that... Nokia got blown out. Motorola before them. A Blackberry, remember Blackberry, they all just disappeared. Big, big companies that were absolute leaders, and they just stopped, so just like an athlete. He can be a great athlete, but he stops training, stops pushing the limit, boom, somebody comes and passes you.

So I think a lot of times there's a curse to success. You've been successful, and you think, okay, I'm going to sit on my laurels. And then there's just the misunderstanding of what pieces I have that are holding me back; they're just intrinsic in my organization, and sometimes it's challenging those paradigms, and what if we don't do this, what if we find somebody from outside the industry?

But a lot of times innovation comes horizontally from other industries. So you got the example of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs goes into the music industry because he was fresh and he wasn't a victim of the paradigm, he wasn't hostage to paradigms, he asked questions like, "Hey, what if we don't sell a whole CD? What if we just saw one song?" "Oh no, that's blasphemy." "What if it's not physical? What if it's digital." "Oh, no, you can't touch the record." And he's like, "Well, maybe people don't care about that. You care about that, but maybe people don't care about that." So we tend to fall in love with our projects and our products, and all of a sudden, a new generation may not care.

I remember when banking started to talk about online banking, and it was all the older people want to go to the branch. Most of us would never go to a branch unless we're really forced to. But that was like it'll never work because it's virtual. People don't see it, they don't trust it. So I think a lot of times it's about questioning what am I doing, what's working and what's holding me back?

And there's a really great theory by her. I think her name is Peg McColl. She has a PhD in cognitive psychology, but she's also a world-class poker player and a world champion poker player. The crux of her observations is that when people have success, they grossly overestimate their own merit in that success, so when they win in the hands. And when they lose, they overly attribute it to bad luck.

And companies do that, and I've seen a lot of CEOs do that. When it goes well, they feel so proud of themselves, whatever. And when it goes bad, they're like, "Oh, what a bad turn of luck," and that's one of the things that we always say, when it goes well, you have to relax and say, "Boy, that was lucky. Okay, what can we do to double down on that?" When you make mistakes, it's important to learn and say, "What could I have done to have avoided that?" There are always things you could have done. Now, how could you see that coming? Well, that's what you get paid for. That's why we pay you the big bucks.

It's like in Europe, we have a lot of soccer players, Cristiano, and all of this. And when one of these guys misses a penalty shot, one of the fans will always say, "Well, he's just human." No, you get paid 110 million a year, you can't be human. You'd be human for like 500k a year. You can't be human for 110 million, but that's a whole idea. It's a free market. So you want to do that, and you have to perform.

So I think that people just get too comfortable, and that's why small companies sometimes overtake them because they're hungry. They're not comfortable; they don't have too much room to fail. And young athletes, they're hungry, they'll work extra. So it's about keeping that energy there. As a CEO, you must understand your role as CEO or C-suite. Understanding your role is really about building capability under you. And I know it's been said before, but it's true: find people who are more brilliant than you and have different skill sets and bring them in because that's what a great leader does. You don't want people just like you because then you don't have... When you talk about diversity, I mean the most important diversity is cognitive diversity. I don't care about your background, your sexual orientation, your race; I don't care about that. I care about it. Do you bring me a different perspective? And nobody talks about that. Nobody's talking about cognitive diversity. That's what you have to be looking for.

I hired in our company a guy who I met who was living in a van. he had gone up to Norway to make burritos, and he'd come from an architecture company, and I loved him. He was just so, and he brings us such fresh insights. And sometimes we'll say, "No, this is like this." And he'll go, "Why?" I'll go, "Well, that's a good question. Why? Yeah, you're right. Maybe it doesn't have to be like that."

So it's being open to being challenged and not taking it personally and actually finding that that enriches you. And that's high-performing teams, the Navy SEALs, they've got that super clear. Sports teams, give you feedback because if I don't give you feedback, you might do something wrong and somebody dies. Okay, so I can't get upset. You're not trying to tell me I'm a jerk. You're trying to make sure we all work well.

And so, whereas in companies, like a friend of mine said, she says, "Feedback is the F-word in companies." Oh yeah, I'm going to give you some feedback, and it becomes a tool, like a politically correct way of bashing each other. That's not the idea. Feedback is data to get better, and you need data. You need objective data. So you've got your performance, your profits, your whatever, lead times, et cetera, and then you've got to have other data. Another problem CEOs have is that they don't know how to measure some of the softer stuff like culture or innovation. So, if you don't know how to measure it, you don't know how to manage it. So we're really good at doing price per widget, volume, sales, and all that. We know that. But the other stuff stays there because I don't really know what to do with it.

"What do you mean data?" "Okay, so all right here, trust. What does this mean? Explain to me what their value is?" "Well, we trust everybody like a family member." "Right. Okay, are you sure about that? Okay, so family like I trust my wife or family like crazy, Uncle Bill. He's drinking, don't let them near the kids, that kind of stuff?" "No, no, no. We trust everybody." "Okay, great. So, do you track vacation days?" "Yes." "Why? Just tell everybody to take the right vacation. Do the best for the company. Do you track travel expenses? Just say, "Hey, look, apply it as if we own them money. I trust you." I don't check my wife's Visa or expenses. I trust her. I know she's in the best interest of our family company."

And they're like, "Uh," and that's the acid test you have to put yourself through. Are you really living those values? And if not, that's fine. Don't say it. If it's not trust, we want to control everything. That's fine. You can say it, but be authentic. It's not about parroting what's popular in the market. It's about being authentic because people can feel that. Actually, scientific studies have shown that the emotion that most resonates and has the highest frequency and the most power is authenticity. It's more than anything else.

And that, to me, is why when somebody is passionate about something, they engage other people. They resonate with them, and they light them up, and people follow great leaders because of authenticity because it's what they really believe. And you can like them or not, but a guy like Elon Musk, okay, he's not the easiest guy to get along with, but everybody says he believes it. He's there. He's bet his whole life savings. So, how can you not be moved by a guy who is authentic?

Clint Betts

Yeah, yeah.

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

And I think that's really important. A lot of times, CEOs are like, "Well, I have to appear to..." Just be who you are. I'm not typical. I don't care, and there are clients I just directly say, "If you're looking for this, we're not the right team, won't do it," and it's better to do that than to just make a lot of money off a project rubber-stamping something. That's not who we are. There are great companies that do that that make a fantastic living with it. We're here to tell you what we really think. We're here to challenge what you think, and we're to push you to be better because we see you can. And if you don't want that, that's okay. Not everybody wants that. Everybody wants to get in shape. That's fine. So I think you have to know who you are and then find your tribe and your clients.

Clint Betts

How much of this comes down to discipline? And from your time on tour and seeing the greats, a really interesting thing I've always thought about in tennis is you had Federer and Nadal, and it's like, hey, these are the two greatest. Which one's going to be the greatest of all time when it's over? And then you had this guy named Djokovic who came in, and he didn't even care that everyone was already anointed. These other two are the greatest, and through discipline and hard work, becomes that himself in a way. So I mean, what did you learn from the tour playing tennis, your own career, all that type of stuff, and how important is discipline in all of what you're saying?

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

So discipline is absolutely key in self-discipline because talent will never get you as far as hard work will. Talent is how fast you naturally take off, but over the long term, discipline and hard work will get you there, and it's got to be the right type of work, too, okay? So that's the first thing.

The second part of discipline is what we're saying about feedback, and Djokovic is a fantastic example because if you remember, I'm old enough to remember his early career. He wasn't respected, especially not by Federer and Nadal, because he would quit games, he would get winded, and he would have tantrums. So he had the moral strength, and I think this is what makes him such a great champion, to do is to say, all right, I'm going to take myself apart piece by piece, figure out how to improve it, and then stitch it back together.

We often talk in my company about how we break performance down to the component pieces, optimize each one, and then stitch them back together seamlessly. That's what Djokovic is. So, his nutrition was good, and he went off gluten, and he did a whole bunch of stuff. His flexibility is really flexible. It'll prevent injuries and stuff because Nadal said something really interesting at the end of their career. They said, "Is Djokovic better than you?" And he says, "Yeah, he's lasted longer." He says, "His body was better than mine," and that counts. If I had had his body, would I have won more? Maybe, but I didn't, or I didn't know how to train it. He got a sleep coach. He's obviously worked his mental game. And so you see, the guy got rid of his ego, went into the dark, and worked on this, and then he became great, and that's a great example. It was just discipline. He didn't have the natural talent of Roger Federer. Well, who does?

But by the way, Federer is an incredibly hard worker. I talk about that in my book. There's a great story from Darren Cahill, a big, famous coach. He coached Andy Murray and a lot of other big players, and he spent a week with Federer. And he says, "I was amazed at how hard he works because he makes it look so effortless." But he would be four or five hours on the practice court, and Roger said to him, he said, "All the work goes on behind the scenes. When people see me, they don't see this. It's all the work behind the scenes," and the greats are like that, and it's okay.

A lot of people talk about the unrequired, the unrequired work. That's what greats do. That's where the discipline is. Do I feel like it? No, it doesn't matter. I'm going to do it. And what drives that, where again the dopamine and the serotonin, is that long-term motivation and what can I do to be better? And so that discipline of, okay, I've gotten here, great. Now, what's the next thing I can challenge? And sometimes that comes from the most unexpected places.

I mean, 20 years ago, flexibility was not something any tennis player would ever talk to, but it really does impact because, of course, it allows you to A, reach the shots you wouldn't reach, B, reduce injuries, and C, generate more power in the kinetic chain. So, if you can flex your back when you're serving, you can generate more power. So it really is actually really important, and then people are starting to get it now, but at the time, they didn't think of it.

And the other thing is finding your identity and then sticking to that. A great example is when I worked with a player named Juan Mónaco. He's an Argentinian. When we started working together, he was like 50 in the world or something like that,~ and he was a brilliant guy, a really nice guy. And his thing was, I mean, he didn't have the tennis of Roger Federer. He was just a really solid baseliner. So we said, "Well, work to your strength."

So we had this identity that he was like a gladiator. So it doesn't matter if you win or lose; it's about making points as long as possible because that's your strength. So bring him to your strength. And, like I said, he's a really bright guy, so he's figured that out. And then he made the top 10 just with that strategy. But what was behind that was he would train like nobody. He would do his diet, his training, his cardio, and then he would go on the court, and he would practice, and he wouldn't miss a ball.

It was like David Ferrer is another famous player like that. I remember seeing David Ferrer train, who was one of my players, and I think it was 45 minutes before he hit his first ball out. I mean, that's insane. And that just comes from imagining something that nobody thought was possible. Well, what if I don't miss balls? Because then, psychologically, that gives you an edge. Because when players are playing, and the rally gets longer, most of them will start getting anxious; shit, I'm going to miss one. I don't want to miss one. These guys would double down on that. It's like, oh yeah, I could do this all day. And then I'm not going to blow you off the court, so why am I even going to try? So it's about avoiding the temptation to try and do the big sexy plays and just say, I'm going to do what I'm good at, and nobody's going to get me out of here.

And that even works in teams. If you look at the football club Barcelona, Pep Guardiola built a fantastic team with role players, or Belichick is another example. He took role players. You do this, and you do this really well, and that's it. I'll get somebody else to do this. You just have to know how to do that, but that takes a lot of discipline because the ego wants you to do other stuff.

The same thing to CEOs and C-suite. It's A, having the discipline to continue to improve, and then it's knowing when you become the obstacle and the bottleneck. This great book was called The Founder's Trap and talked about that. How companies grow off the back of a founder, but there's a point where the model gets scaled, and you need to get out of the way, or you become the downfall of the company, and you need to know what you're good at.

I remember when I did my MBA 30 years ago, we still had paper cases, and I read this one story. It was a Harvard case about a company called Cray Computers. And this guy, Cray, I can't remember his first name; he was the founder of the company in big mainframes, but he realized he needed to grow. And he was like this crazy scientist, a brilliant guy. So when he looked for this MBA guy from Harvard called Rollwagen, he said, "Look, you are going to run the company." And the other guy was smart enough to say, "Okay, but you're going to be the face of the company because you go out and you do your crazy stuff, and I'll run this."

But both of them were smart enough and big enough to say, "I got to do what I'm good at and let other people do what they're great at," as opposed to trying to have the whole thing. And that, to me, is a form of discipline. It's about not letting your ego get away with it and carry you away. I'm going to do this because this is where I'm good, and I'll try and improve on the stuff I'm not good at. But if I have a guy like Djokovic, hey, let him do what he's great at? Why are you going to take his things away from him?

Clint Betts

Finally, because I want to be respectful of your time here, we end every interview with the same question, and that is at ceo.com believe the chances one gives is just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Wow, I think there's a lot of people. So honestly, I mean, I would say one of the big ones is a lot of the tennis pros and coaches on tour who were just so generous. They just shared their insights, and you're like, oh my God, I never even saw that. And I think that's really important when people are willing to take their 30, 40 years of experience.

Because what the science shows is that experts develop something called mental maps. And what they do is it's like macros, like chess masters. They don't see pieces, they see plays. They see entire boards, positions, and situations. And so either do that for 30 years, or somebody explains to you insights from there. So there were a lot of generous people on the tour who shared that with me, and they said, "Look at what this guy's doing. Look at what happens here," and that ended up being embryonic for me to later build on that. So I would say that was definitely one of the big ones.

Clint Betts

That's incredible. Adolfo, thank you so much for coming on. Congratulations and everything. We'll link to your book. Everybody needs to read it. I think it's an incredible book. Well done on that.

Clint Betts

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Well, I guess my life is a confluence and the intersection of two great passions. And one was all-around sport, as a competitive athlete and then later working with professional athletes. And then on the other hand is the world of helping, so what drives performance, helping people and organizations realize their full potential, and that's really what the last 30 years has been for me around it.

Why do some, and if you look at it, it happens in sports, in business, why do some people or some athletes perform and then others don't even though they have more physical traits? You just have to look at the drafts. The drafts are actually pretty terrible in terms of success rates and number-one picks. Then you go to business, and it's very similar. And so the cross between that is what I've really been obsessed with, and what I'm passionate about is studying and modeling. What is it that drives performance?

Clint Betts

It's incredible. And you've written this book, what inspired you to do that?

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

I always said I will watch a tennis game and I will see it very differently than most people. I'll be watching it with my wife, and you just see it because you've just been there so many times, it's the levels of depth. Whereas I could probably watch basketball and I just miss a whole bunch where somebody who's really good at basketball can pick up on.

So although this sounds obvious, it's hard to do, but that's what we try and help people to get there, and it's exactly the same for CEOs and leaders in any field.

Clint Betts

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

So when the way it works in companies, there's silos, you want cost savings. This is a big thing, efficiencies. So they go to finance, or they go to procurement, and they say, "Fix it." But for them to fix it, they have to cross the whole value chain, and the other guys aren't working on it, and it's not in their incentives. It's impossible. It's insane. It's like fixing your tennis swing by just using the biceps. So you have to put it on your head, but the whole system is designed to work that way.

Clint Betts

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Yeah, the focus is something I actually talk about in the book, and it's really important. So you can sequentially go to stuff, but multitasking is a myth. You can change from one thing to another, but you can't do two things at the same time. And the image of that, and I talk about this with athletes because when they lose focus on the point they're playing and they're thinking about the one they just lost or what might happen in the future, they lose strength.

So companies need to keep doing that. You need to keep saying, "Okay, does this work? And maybe Joe, who used to be great, we've now shifted and Joe doesn't bring the value we want," and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that, and you have to move on.

So I think that's where you have to start to really dig down and say when we talk about culture, one of the things I'll do with the team is, do you personify your culture? What does it mean? What do these values mean? And there's nothing worse actually than having these values on the wall and then not acting in a way that's coherent with that because people then the employees see you and they just don't believe anything. So I'll often go into workshops with CEOs and their teams and we'll talk about values. And I say, "Okay, so let's look at the data." "What do you mean data?" "Okay, so all right here, trust. What does this mean? Explain to me what their value is?" "Well, we trust everybody like a family member." "Right. Okay, are you sure about that? Okay, so family like I trust my wife or family like crazy, Uncle Bill. He's drinking, don't let them near the kids, that kind of stuff?" "No, no, no. We trust everybody." "Okay, great. So, do you track vacation days?" "Yes." "Why? Just tell everybody to take the right vacation. Do the best for the company. Do you track travel expenses? Just say, "Hey, look, apply it as if we own them money. I trust you." I don't check my wife's Visa or expenses. I trust her. I know she's in the best interest of our family company."

Clint Betts

Yeah, yeah.

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

So I think you have to know who you are and then find your tribe and your clients.

Clint Betts

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

So discipline is absolutely key in self-discipline because talent will never get you as far as hard work will. Talent is how fast you naturally take off, but over the long term, it's discipline and hard work will get you there, and it's got to be the right type of work, too, okay? So that's the first thing.

We often talk in my company about how we break performance down to the component pieces, optimize each one, and then stitch them back together seamlessly. That's what Djokovic is. So, his nutrition was good, and he went off gluten, and he did a whole bunch of stuff. His flexibility, he's really flexible. It'll prevent injuries and stuff because Nadal said something really interesting at the end of their career. They said, "Is Djokovic better than you?" And he says, "Yeah, he's lasted longer." He says, "His body was better than mine," and that counts. If I had had his body, would I won more? Maybe, but I didn't, or I didn't know how to train it. He got a sleep coach. He's obviously worked his mental game. And so you see, the guy got rid of his ego, went into the dark, and worked on this, and then he became great, and that's a great example. It was just discipline. He didn't have the natural talent of Roger Federer. Well, who does?

So we had this identity that he was like a gladiator. So it doesn't matter if you win or lose; it's about making points as long as possible because that's your strength. So bring him to your strength. And like I said, he's a really bright guy, so he's figured that out. And then he made the top 10 just with that strategy. But what was behind that was he would train like nobody. He would do his diet, his training, his cardio, and then he would go on the court, and he would practice, and he wouldn't miss a ball.

It was like David Ferrer is another famous player like that. I remember seeing David Ferrer train, who was one of my players, and I think it was 45 minutes before he hit his first ball out. I mean, that's insane. And that just comes from imagining something that nobody thought was possible. Well, what if I don't miss balls? Because then, psychologically, that gives you an edge. Because when players are playing and the rally gets longer, most of them will start getting anxious; shit, I'm going to miss one. I don't want to miss one. These guys would double down on that. It's like, oh yeah, I could do this all day. And then I'm not going to blow you off the court, so why am I even going to try? So it's about avoiding the temptation to try and do the big sexy plays and just say, I'm going to do what I'm good at, and nobody's going to get me out of here.

Clint Betts

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Because what the science shows is that experts develop something called mental maps. And what they do is it's like macros, like chess masters. They don't see pieces, they see plays. They see entire boards, positions, and situations. And so either do that for 30 years or somebody explains to you insights from there. So there were a lot of generous people on the tour who shared that with me, and they said, "Look at what this guy's doing. Look at what happens here," and that ended up being embryonic for me to later build on that. So I would say that was definitely one of the big ones.

Clint Betts

That's incredible. Adolfo, thank you so much for coming on. Congratulations and everything. We'll link to your book. Everybody needs to read it. I think it's an incredible book. Well done on that.

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Thank you.

Clint Betts

And it takes discipline even to get something like that done, so congratulations on that. And I'm sure we'll have you back on, but thank you so much for joining us. This was incredible.

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Great. Thanks, Clint. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Edited for readability.