HelpPay's Social Impact Chair John Bertrand talks with the AFR's Jennifer Hewitt
Media Coverage Dated: 19 September 2022
Why lessons from America’s Cup win still matter
Jennifer Hewett. Columnist
Australia II became the pride of the nation when skipper John Bertrand and his crew won the America’s Cup in 1983. Bertrand is still passing on the lessons that come from losing – and coming back to win.
John Bertrand has an optimistic approach to the inevitable carnage sweeping through Australian venture capital and tech start-ups as market funding and valuations evaporate. It will be an opportunity, he says, to learn lessons, to adjust business models, to work on creating the best possible culture and getting tougher for next time.
Pay attention. Bertrand might be most famous for winning the America’s Cup as skipper of Australia II in September 1983 – producing national euphoria – and now further commemorated in a new Netflix documentary, Untold: The Race of the Century. But both before and after that success, Bertrand has always been focused on drawing the best out of the combination of cutting-edge technology, intense competition, team psychology – and lessons that come from failure.
That includes a US-style embrace of “failing fast” as an invaluable learning curve rather than Europe’s approach where Bertrand says failure is still not “acceptable” or Australia “where we are still a little confused by it”.
For Bertrand, it’s all part of a high-risk, high-commitment passion to winning with the right culture – across different decades, sports and industries.
This is the man whose university mechanical engineering thesis was titled The Optimum Angle of Attack of America’s Cup Sails, after all – years ahead of his fourth attempt to defeat the New York Yacht Club in Newport in 1983.
Bertrand is happy to acknowledge “lots of losses” ahead of that remarkable victory, dating back to his first attempt on Frank Packer’s boat in 1970.
The Packer effort could never compete with the Americans’ money, training and discipline. So, Bertrand won a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to refine his engineering skills, but also his understanding of the American psyche.
‘Audacity to challenge’
Not that it stopped him sailing for Australia in the 1972 Olympics in Germany. While there, Bertrand got to know a fellow Olympic sailor, the late Ben Lexcen, later the designer of Australia II’s famous “winged keel”.
“Benny asked me to be his assistant designer for his first America’s Cup challenge with Alan Bond, in 1974.” Bertrand says. “Bond was 34 years old. Talk about chutzpah. He had the audacity to challenge. We got blown away by the Yanks.”
The dream stayed on hold. Bertrand won a bronze sailing medal at the 1976 Olympics in Canada (so did an American called Dennis Conner). Instead of participating in another Cup challenge the following year, Bertrand and his wife established a sailmaking business. But the Australian sailing body boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980, the next Cup year.
“I got a call from Alan Bond saying, ‘You have to be involved.’ I said I didn’t want to because I had seen how amateur the effort was relative to the Olympics and the lack of management expertise.”
Bond was his persuasive self, however. And after another loss, he also asked Bertrand to be skipper for 1983.
Three years later, Australia II’s successes against other nations’ boats resonated around Newport all that glorious summer, along with deliriously happy fans – including this enthusiastic reporter. But behind the fun of the campaign, discipline was extreme. Bertrand describes their creation of the Boxing Kangaroo (red gloves for aggression, pumped up chest for pride of a nation) as the battle flag and the 1980s Men at Work hit, Down Under, as the battle hymn.
The result was a thrilling 4-3 win against the odds on the last leg of the last race after Liberty’s Dennis Conner misjudged the wind. This allowed the Australians to sail perfectly to come from behind to pass at the crucial time. Bertrand attributes Conner’s error in part to the psychological impact of the winged keel.
“The Americans were spooked by the winged keel,” he says. “The psychology of that was as important as any technical development.
“The water was chopped up like a washing machine. We were coming at them faster than normal. As it turns out, we had more wind, but they couldn’t see it. They figured it was the winged keel and jibed away to move into a higher-risk environment to find extra wind pressure.”
They didn’t find it. Conner had to come to Fremantle to find it again four years later. Bertrand spent four decades building on what else he learnt at Newport.
From boats to pools
In the mid-1990s, the popularity of images of the spectacular mid-race disintegration and sinking of a subsequent Australian challenger boat in San Diego made him realise the new power of the internet. He set up a sports broadcasting business listed on Nasdaq before it, too, was sunk by the “tech wreck” of 2000.
In the next decade, Bertrand was asked to rebuild Swimming Australia, a “dysfunctional” organisation, from the disappointment of only one gold medal in London in 2012 to the triumph of the Tokyo Olympics.
In this decade, he is – among many other interests – social impact chair and executive coach at Australian fintech HelpPay, making it easier for Australians to get assistance from others to pay bills they can’t afford at the time.
For Bertrand, 73, the common theme is helping young people achieve their personal best when it really counts – under extreme pressure and often on a world stage “where there’s nowhere to hide”.
This includes a culture of extraordinary commitment and achievement, but also fun and love for fellow team members.
On the swim team, for example, Bertrand worked with everyone from the military’s special operations service to Amazon Web Services to improve swimmers’ “conversion” rate of achieving personal best at the right time.
According to Bertrand, it’s about creating psychological time and space, the sense of shared trust and individual calm.
“I enjoy that,” he says. “It is really America’s Cup thinking in many ways.”
See the original article here: https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/leaders/why-lessons-from-america-s-cup-win-still-matter-20220916-p5biol
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