Welcome to Perfect 10 Corporate Cultures > About Perfect 10 Corporate Cultures > Our Heritage
In 1983 Lynne Ruhl received a phone call that changed her life. The
person on the other end of the phone said, "Ma'am, your 7-year-old daughter
is a talented gymnast and we’d like to put her on a gymnastics team."
After they mentioned her daughter Becky would be training 11 hours a
week instead of 1 hour, Lynne told them she would call them back. She
didn’t want anyone having that much impact on Becky unless she knew
what was being taught.
So, she visited existing gyms in Cincinnati and observed how they trained their
competitive athletes. What she saw broke her heart. She saw all the coaches teaching
through ridicule, condemnation and manipulation. The worst case scenario happened
in a gym where the competitive girls were working out in the back and the
preschoolers were taking classes at the front of the gym. The owner came over
the PA system and asked everyone to stop what they were doing and come to the
front and form a large circle. He put a competitive child in the center of the
circle and instructed everyone to call her names until she would agree to do what
he had asked her to do.
Lynne was angry but by the time she got home she had a plan. She went in to
her husband and said, "Roger, Becky cannot do gymnastics unless we buy a gym."
He said, "OK!"
Their attorney sent out blind letters to all the gyms in Cincinnati saying "I
have a crazy client who wants to buy a gym so if you want to sell, please call
me." Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy called. That began a 10-month long process
which ended with the purchase of Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy.
Lynne was charged with putting together the philosophy under which the gym would
be operated. Roger and the attorney took care of all the purchase details. Lynne
quickly realized that she didn’t know the first thing about running a gym, so she
called the only person she knew in gymnastics, 19 year old Mary Lee Tracy. Mary Lee
had been a wonderful preschool teacher for Becky, so Lynne was very aware of her
positive approach in teaching children.
They met weekly to discuss how the gym would be run. Their philosophy was simple:
They wanted everyone who stepped through the doors of their gym to feel valued and
cared about. If a gymnast left their building an Olympic athlete but did not feel
that they cared about her, then they had failed. If she left a mediocre gymnast
but knew that they valued her, they had succeeded.
Let me tell you what they were purchasing. Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy in 1983
occupied a 4000 sq. ft. renovated equipment shed. They had to close down operations
one week every year when the termites “swarmed”. When they asked their insurance
company to insure the equipment, they condemned it instead. Things were not
looking good.
Not only did they inherit a toxic facility, they also inherited an extremely toxic
culture. Parents would sit in the bleachers at the gym and boo children doing better
than their own in practice. They would do that at competitions also. They would start
rumors about children in hopes of making their life so miserable that they would quit.
It was disgusting.
She and Mary Lee lived one day at a time, intentionally treating each person in their
building with respect. As they began to grow, Lynne hired only instructors who agreed
with their desire to treat all people well. She knew she could teach them how to teach
gymnastics because she had learned that herself, but she could not give them a heart
that cared how people were treated.
Even though she only hired people who had a desire to treat others well, when they
went out on the floor to coach, they still taught using ridicule, intimidation and
manipulation. She wondered what in the world was going on. She knew that wasn’t their
desire. Lynne began to realize that it wasn’t a lack of desire … it was a lack of skill.
Mary Lee and Lynne had taken courses that taught them how to treat others with respect.
She called that company and asked them if she could teach the gym staff the same skills.
They were happy for them to do that.
Lynne began training their staff and competitive gymnasts, starting at 4 years of age.
The kids were acting so differently at home that parents began to ask for the same
training. Eventually, their culture was totally turned around (and they didn’t kick one
person out of the gym).
Fast forward 13 years...
In 1996 Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy qualified two gymnasts onto the 1996 Gold Medal
Winning Women’s Gymnastics team. Because 2 of the 7 girls on that team were from their
gym, Mary Lee Tracy, the owner, was named the Assistant Olympic Coach. Her responsibility
as the Assistant Coach was to train the athletes. The Head Olympic Coach was responsible
for the news interviews, politics, judges, etc. Because Mary Lee was responsible for
training the girls, she was the coach on the podium with the athletes during the actual
Olympic event. And because that was her role, NBC put a microphone on her and this woman’s
life turned upside down. The world heard for the first time an Olympic level coach
treating athletes like people instead of property. They heard her asking for their
opinion and valuing what they had to say. The response was enormous.
Within a month of the Olympics ending, 13 of the 50 training elites in this country
moved to Cincinnati to train. Coaches from around the world began to come to Cincinnati
to see how to coach a different way. They had believed that tearing children down and
building them back up as robots was the only way to keep them safe and help them reach
their Olympic goals. Now they knew it could be done a better way and they no longer
wanted to coach in the toxic way. The culture in the industry of gymnastics was changed
forever, and it all started with a humble woman from Fairfield, Ohio, who pulled together
a few like-minded, everyday people and focused on a few core, human truths.
When you help change an industry, the business world takes notice and individuals
began asking for help with their organization’s culture. Thus Perfect 10 Corporate
Cultures was founded with the sole purpose of creating cultures where people are
respected and feel valued at work, where employees want to work and customers want
to do business!