Dean Payne is the founder and president of one of B.C.’s most gruelling mountain bike races, the BC Bike Race, which finished last weekend. The race takes 550 participants from all over the world through 328 kilometres of rainforest trails around Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast, Squamish and Whistler over seven days (see page 4).
Payne, himself an avid mountain biker, said he could not put the major weeklong event together without believing in his team.
“I think relationships with people are everything,” he said. “For me the biggest honour is that my management team is everything. They believe in what we’re doing and what I’m doing enough to take their own leadership role.”
Payne trusts his team 100% and believes that mutual trust is built through communication, sticking together through thick and thin and allowing for mistakes.
An example he cites occurred just a few days before the race.
“A manager called me. Something didn’t go right, and it may have been something missed, but I don’t [blame team members] for making mistakes. So they trust me to be able to say [they’ve] missed something. I don’t get into who’s right and who’s wrong. It doesn’t matter … Let’s just fix this, so that they’re not afraid to make mistakes.”
If mistakes are made, whether by a supplier, an employee or by Payne himself, he believes communication is key.
“If I’ve missed something … then we can talk about it,” said Payne. “We do a lot of talking in BC Bike Race. It all comes down to communication, all the time, year-round.”
To help foster a positive relationship with his core executive team, who work on the race year-round, Payne bought them each a symbolic gift of a Victorinox Swiss Army knife.
“The analogy that I use with Victorinox is that they are the original [Payne’s team has had little or no turnover], they are the best, they have longevity and they have a brand everyone recognizes,” he said.
“We have to be like Swiss Army knives – we have to be versatile, flexible, to adapt. So I gave them it as a gift and a thank you.”
