Culture Connection: How Developing a Winning Culture Will Give Your Organization a Competitive Advantage

Chapter 6The Train Drain

To know what people really think,pay regard to what they do,rather than what they say.

—RENÉ DESCARTES

FIVE WEEKS BEFORE the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, speed skater Johann Olav Koss had the worst race of his life. As a native Norwegian, a world record holder, and already an Olympian in the sport, the pressure on him to perform was particularly intense.

“The papers said, ‘Koss, to hell with him—he’s not going to do it”, Koss told me as we sat in his office in downtown Toronto in June. Koss is the president and CEO of Right to Play, a leading international humanitarian and development organization, founded by Koss in 2001, that uses the power of sport and play to build essential skills in children ...