When Olympic athletes step onto the field, court, or arena, their years of training will get the ultimate test as the world tunes in to watch. Someone who knows exactly how hard they have worked is Megan Clarken, CEO of Criteo, an ad-tech company based in France.
Clarken grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, participating in track-and-field events. She broke the world record in high jump when she was 12, set New Zealand long-jump records a couple of years later, and qualified for the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
“I was selected into a group called the New Zealand National Squad . . . formed around about six athletes,” she says. “We had an automatic selection into the Olympics, as long as we stayed injury-free. Guess what happened? I became injured.”
Clarken’s severe knee injury forced her to sit out the Games. Her drive, however, didn’t end. Not wanting to look back years later and wonder whether she could have made a comeback, she picked up the pieces and learned how to walk, jog, run, and sprint again.
“I had to compete in the 400 meters because I couldn’t jump,” she says. “I competed with a limp. I got third at the [New Zealand] National Championships and took the bronze medal. Then I retired. The second part of my [athletic] career is the one I’m most proud of.”
Clarken brings Olympic training experience to her role as CEO in three important ways:
Decision-making
Success comes from gradual progress and consistent effort, Clarken says, noting, “I was training very intensely with hours and hours of pretty grueling work. I wanted nothing more than to win Olympic gold and be an Olympic athlete, so everything else was secondary to it.”
Clarken has taken this view into the business world through her decision-making process. “In leadership, it’s essential to be decisive and stick to decisions,” she says. “As an athlete, the decisions I made every single day about how to train, whether to train, and what to train was all about the business of my body. Is my body able to do something or is it too risky? You need an awareness to make decisions.”
The importance of your team
While some Olympic events are individual sports, athletes are always part of a bigger team. Clarken says her Olympic training experience showed her the importance of associating with the best people you can find.
“Before and after I got injured, I was surrounded by people,” she says. “The most important was my coach, who was with me every day, twice a day, doing everything I was doing, including walking up the side of mountains on our tippy-toes.”
Clarken brings this lesson into business by leading from the front and from the back. “It takes being very transparent and honest,” she says. “I make sure that I’m steering people in the right direction, giving people guidance, and giving people the things they need to be very successful on their own. Then I let them go and shine.”
Finding the edge
Olympic athletes are often training for something that will take place far beyond the next event or season; they’re training for four years or even eight years ahead for the opportunity to compete against the world’s best. “I had my eyes set on the Olympics,” Clarken says. “I was going to go, and I was going to win. There was no question, and it was eight years away.”
Training twice a day is not just about putting the gear on and going out onto the track. It’s about working out the difference between now and then. In many cases, winning comes down to a centimeter.
“When you’re training, you’re training for the edge, for that centimeter,” Clarken says. “I’ve been beaten by a centimeter, and I’ve missed teams because of a centimeter. A centimeter goes a long way.”
Clarken takes the importance of the edge into business by being very operational and prescriptive about what it takes to succeed. “There are steps to get there, and you have to remind people,” she says. “It is a critical part of leadership.”
The feats of Olympic-level athletes are extraordinary, and Clarken has a unique appreciation for what’s gone into making a national team. “How do you get that edge when everybody’s doing exactly the same thing?” she asks. “I take many of the disciplines I accumulated through my teenage years that helped me evolve as an athlete to my job today.”