Read the film transcript for It’s Everyones business.
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Lord Coe couldn’t put on the Greatest Show single handedly, so we’ve all had to work in teams here at London 2012.
This is how we’re doing it.
MARTIN GREEN:
I oversee a team that has to deliver the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, the Torch Relay, the Victory Ceremonies for all the winners in the Games, and the Welcome Ceremonies for the athletes in the Village.
The Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympic Games are watched by around a billion people. They are the first and second most watched TV programmes in the history of television, which on one hand is utterly terrifying, but on the other hand, we’ve brought round us such an amazing team here that I just have huge confidence that we’re going to put something on that every single one of those billion people are going to enjoy.
DOMINIC OLLIFF:
My name’s Dominic Olliff and I’m a Venue Operations Manager at the Olympic Stadium. The key skills that you need really, for my job is communication. You need to be able to get on with all sorts of personalities, all sorts of people, and to be able to work as a team.
The venue is just so large, the Games is so large, teamwork on a project like this is absolutely key. You’ve got Charles Quelch, the big man, he’s the Venue General Manager. Then we’ve got Lucy Blakey, and we’ve got Charlotte Conway as well. It’s very important to hear everyone’s points of view.
What would seemingly be a stupid idea, or a silly idea is absolutely a stroke of genius, just because no one else has thought about it.You can have amazing individuals who might know their roles inside out and do a fantastic job but if they don’t communicate, and work as part of a team, the Games just wouldn’t be delivered.
GILLIAN MILNER:
In the Marketing Team, we all work as an amazing Marketing Machine Team, every time there’s a major campaign for London 2012. So a good example of that is the Mascot launch, where all of us were allocated different roles and responsibilities to deliver the campaign, and we can only do that as a team.
So the skills that we need as a Marketing Team for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. I think you need to be very, very organised,you need to be creative, you need to be really, really good at listening, and to listen to what people want, listen to maybe their problems and their challenges, and try and solve them. And lots of energy and positive attitude.
MARK WARNE:
In a nutshell, without sponsorship, the Olympic and Paralympic Games simply couldn’t happen. We essentially need to be delivering a joined up, consistent message across all our 48 Partners, and there’s 18 of us within the team, so if we’re all giving different answers to each of the Partners, we won’t be able to do our job as efficiently.
I think our team is particularly good in that, while we do have a set hierarchy, even the person at the bottom of the team can still speak just as much as the person at the top, and I think that makes for great rapport throughout the team, and I think it shows throughout the business.
JAN MATTHEWS:
I started 18 months ago, and there was me. Over the last year we’ve grown to about 15 of us. By the time the Games arrives I’ll have 140 people in my team. Then part of the wider team are the caterers, cleaning people, the waste contractors. So in total our team will be about 24,000 people. We will provide 14 million meals across the Olympics and the Paralympics, so it’s the biggest peacetime catering operation in the world.
You’ve got to recognise that you are bringing people into a team to do a specific job and they all bring their own skills, and their own knowledge and experience to that team.
If you can surround yourself with good people and you can give them their heads, to go and do a good job, and expect them to do a good job, then actually, they succeed – I succeed.
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