Building a winning team
Major sports are no longer the preserve of enthusiastic amateurs and lifelong fans, but multi-million pound businesses with highly paid stars and a global customer base. Almost two years after taking over as Chief Executive of UK Athletics (UKA), Niels de Vos reflects on the challenges of making the governing body fit for the future.
Joining an organisation with responsibility for supporting athletics from the school playing field right through to the Olympic arena presented a whole host of issues for Niels de Vos. His track record in the business of sport - as commercial director of Manchester Commonwealth Games and chief executive of Sale Sharks Premiership rugby club - certainly equipped him for the strategic planning and income generation side of the role. But his understanding the factors affecting sporting performance was just as crucial to success.
"Sport can definitely learn some lessons from business and needs to be run in a businesslike manner," he says. "But athletics is not a business - we don't control our means of production (the gene pool, schools and clubs) or employ our athletes; much of our 'workforce' consists of volunteers; we have fans not customers; and we don't control the major athletics meetings which form our 'retail outlets'.
"The key to successfully managing a sport business, therefore, is to take the essential lessons of business which are appropriate and weave them closely into a specific sporting environment, to ensure complementary strands are linked within a single focus.
"When I joined UKA, there were two fundamental shifts that had to be made. First, ensuring that the performance aspect of the organisation was working as well as it should be, and second managing a relatively small but complex service organisation so that everyone was pulling in the same direction."
Questions about the achievements of elite athletes were being asked by fans, the media and funders. The sport was also fragmented in its leadership, with separate governing bodies for the four UK nations and at regional level. The internal politics between the various organisations had led to a lack of cohesion and strategic vision.
"A key priority for me was to ensure the right people were in the right jobs at UKA to deliver results. UKA had a dedicated and passionate team of hard-working people, but they were not really sure what the organisation should actually be doing, nor where their particular function fitted within the overall direction.
"Across the country schools, colleges, local authorities and athletics clubs were delivering support but had no sense of belonging nor guidance from their governing body. There was a definite consensus that change was needed, beginning with strong leadership, clear vision and priorities."
After extensive consultation, UKA reduced its head office team in Birmingham by around a quarter, building a leaner, more responsive organisation from the bottom up over 12 months. Better relationships were established with the home country governing bodies, with money devolved to them to deliver results at regional and grass roots levels.
"Both public and private sector organisations often equate getting bigger with getting better. But this can lead to a dislocation between local delivery of services and trying to implement a national strategy. Having a high headcount is no use if the people don't have the skills, experience and capacity to make a difference. For public sector bodies in particular, tying up funding in salaries restricts flexibility."
Niels tackled the performance side of UKA's role, at the elite level. It was agreed that this phase would begin after the Beijing Olympics, rather than unsettling athletes beforehand.
"Athletics is by far the largest team in the Olympics, with UKA representing over 30 different Olympic and Paralympic disciplines," he explains. "Having a single Director of Performance was too large a role, so we recruited a Head Coach for Olympics and Head Coach for Paralympics. We wanted the top people in the world for these roles, and had to make the funding available to attract them. Traditional salary bands would have hamstrung us from getting the best."
The scale of the sport had led UKA into the temptation of employing managers rather than investing in the best head coaches. "It's perhaps a bit like the scenario in the NHS or in education. Good management is of course necessary but in the end it’s the surgeons and teachers - or in our case the coaches - who make the difference. Our performance responsibility now lies with two of the world's leading coaches and this makes a very clear statement to every stakeholder about our priorities."
With the right management structure and a clear set of objectives in place, UKA is now entering a consolidation phase and planning for the post-2012 landscape. "We're in a strong position financially, with public funding agreed up to 2012 and a raft of sponsorship agreements in place through to 2013, so the credit crunch is not affecting the support we can give to athletics.
"However, there will be less public money available after 2012, so we're working towards maximising the London Olympics legacy for both elite and grassroots athletics. Clubs and regional organisations need to be in a strong position post-2012, with secure income streams and a good base of athletes, fans, volunteers and administrators.
Adds Niels: "UKA's key role is one of strategic leadership and income generation, rather than actually running athletics on a day to day basis. What we are doing is creating the climate for change. Ultimately, the future success of athletics in the UK depends on the home countries, clubs, schools, local authorities, colleges and universities providing facilities and identifying talent. Plus we need to help and encourage the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who coach athletes, run meetings and recruit youngsters into the sport. It's a huge challenge, but we're definitely going for gold."
Spring 2009
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