Food For Thought: Review of "The Corporate Athlete"

In the first of many book reviews on the subject of leading and endurance, I am going to start with the obvious first choice: The Corporate Athlete: How to Achieve Maximal Performance in Business and Life, by Jack L. Groppel (Author), and with support from Bob Andelman (Author).

Don't read this book unless you have already started working out.

In fact, the Corporate Athlete is not just a book, for some it's a way of life. Acquired in 2008 by Johnson and Johnson, the Human Performance Institute is the physical manisfestation of the book. And therein lies the problem with the book. Your brain needs deep thinking, distraction free, simple concepts to help jump start behavior change. Instead, Dr. Jack means well by being inclusive, but ends up with chapters that meander, with too much science and too much evangelism. It may very well put a beginner off from the very promise of regaining control of life as it relates to leadership.

Dr. Groppel's pedigree is impeccable and his lifelong passion and career involvement in the institute and its courses impressive. This from a press release about the group:

Human Performance Institute™, which develops science-based training programs to improve employee engagement and productivity, will operate within the Johnson & Johnson Wellness & Prevention business platform.

Human Performance Institute™ is both a campus-based institute (Orlando, Florida) and client-location provider of training programs, including its Corporate Athlete® course, designed to manage energy to create and sustain high performance. Human Performance Institute’s technology of managing energy is measurement based and grounded in the sciences of performance psychology, exercise physiology and nutrition.

You'd think that this would be a good book for a beginner. It's jam packed with the author's desire to cover every topic related to well being, with a smattering of understanding and testimonials from reformed executives. You know the formula.

However, the Corporate Athlete book is dense, and reading it is somewhat like having a well meaning relative shake a finger at you (at the end of a bulging bicep). Good information, trusted source, but the whole finger-shaking experience is incredibly unpleasant.

The beginning of the book makes a case for healthy living, and the exhorts you to TRY TRY TRY, and the end of the book provides the scientific rationale (and the nutrition chapter especially, excrutiatingly complete). There's no escaping, and by the end (if you manage to get through it), you may feel some empathy for the fast food eating, workaholic executives who are cited in the book as having been transformed. You wish them well, and you thank (your higher power), that you aren't them.

In fact, because the book keeps hammering on the same theme ("wake up people! and jog!") the desire to go grab a burger at certain points may be extreme, especially after the passage where author Dr. Jack Groppel feels so much guilt about eating fried calamari after a hard day, that he describes peeling off the saturated-fat coating so that he can enjoy his meal, somewhat, without guilt. What, no grilled, low fat calamari on the in-service room menu?

Quelle horreur!

And yet, despite my revulsion, I love this book. And because I allowed Dr. Jack to keep shaking his finger at me, for some reason, some of what he wrote has started to impact my behaviors.

My problem is, I can't recommend it if you're just starting out. And, by the way, it promises too many benefits for executives that physical exercise alone cannot improve.

Let's be clear. You can have a very fit body, and be a very intellectually dull and motivationally weak executive. It won't matter if your biceps are beautiful, if you're not working on other aspects of your leadership, situps and pullups won't work.

At the Human Performance Institute, you will learn in 2.5 days as much as you will be able to retain at this book. The difference is that you'll have a support group to help you work through your resistance and to help you make changes.

In reading a book like this, with no support group, you may simply come up against your own resistance. If you're already an athlete, Dr. Jack will speak to the inner-you who can make choices based on the science he offers. If you're just beginning, I suspect all the cheerleading and finger shaking will remind you of that well-meaning relative, and the book will simply gather the same amount of dust your last treadmill, exercise bike, or snowshoes have...

Passing this book along to friends may very well position you as the finger-shaker. That is not where you want to be positioned as a leader. You may recommend this book after you read it, but I in turn recommend that you do so with plenty of equivocation and caution, much like I am doing now.