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Message to the Sporting World - Do it your own way!
OK - the Olympics have finished.
Now comes the “GAMES”…………the junkets and fact finding missions the Sporting leaders from most countries are about to embark on to find out what the USA, Germany, Great Britain, South Korea, China and Australia are doing to be successful in the Olympics.
The logic seems simple enough.
“Our country didn’t win any medals at the Olympics” says the Minister for Sport.
“Country XYZ won lots of medals at the Olympics”, says the CEO of the Sports Commission.
“Therefore if we want medals and we copy them we will win medals”, thinks everyone in the room.
“Hooray!!!! Problem solved - let’s buy some air tickets”.
Seems like common sense.
Waste of time.
Waste of money.
Waste of energy.
If the past has taught us one thing it is that high performance systems, structures and models do not work outside of the culture that created them.
September 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tags: Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Beijing Olympic Games, Boxing, Cycling, Diving, Equestrian, Gymnastics, Hockey, Judo, Olympics, Rowing, Sailing, Softball, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Triathlon
Beijing Blast Number Five: 10 things to include in your Beijing Review
So Beijing 2008 is over.
Now is the time to start planning to win in London 2012.
Or World Championships 2009.
Or Commonwealth Games 2010.
Or the next World Cup.
All sports in all nations will do some sort of Beijing Performance Review in coming months.
Some will do it well - many will just do it as a “tick the box - we have to do a review” exercise.
How many athletes, coaches and support staff will actually use the review process as an opportunity to improve their performances in future major competitions?
How many will just see the review as a pointless waste of time enforced on them by the Funding Agencies or the Board?
So what are the 10 most important things to include in any Beijing review?
Reviews are critical in assessing three key things:
What did you do that WORKED - WENT WELL?
What did you do that didn’t WORK - WENT BADLY?
What did you learn and you can introduce to improve your performance NEXT TIME?
A good review asks questions - the trick is in knowing what questions to ask, why to ask them and who to ask.
Even more importantly, is knowing what to do with the answers to those questions.
August 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tags: Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Beijing Olympic Games, Boxing, Cycling, Diving, Equestrian, Gymnastics, Hockey, Olympic Games, Olympics, Rowing, Sailing, Swimming, Track and Field, Triathlon
Athletics in Australia - Time to Say what Everyone else is Thinking.
Athletics in Australia is a joke.
Everyone knows it.
Everyone - outside of the sport - thinks it.
Time to say what everyone else is thinking.
August 14, 2008 | 5 Comments
Tags: Athletics, Track and Field
Where is leadership in sport going: the future of leadership.
First…there were the LEADERS. The autocratic, dictatorial, “my way or the highway” type leaders.
Then came the LEADERSHIP GROUPS, LEADERSHIP COUNCILS, LEADERSHIP TEAMS.
So what’s next?
There is a revolution in leadership coming: the way we think about it, the way we talk about it, the way we develop it is all about to change.
Read on………………….
July 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tags: AFL, American Football, Baseball, Basketball, Cricket, Football, Hockey, Netball, Rugby, Rugby League, Soccer
Why Bench - marking is a waste of time in High Performance Sport.
Benchmarking.
It has become one of the Buzz words in high performance sport.
Benchmarking means that someone in an organisation decides to find out what the best people in the industry are doing, learn from them and usually copy what they are doing.
For example, coaches in professional football codes will sometimes visit successful programs in other codes - maybe even in other nations - to try and learn what they do and how they became successful.
Institutes and Academies of Sport and Government sporting authorities often send people to other countries to benchmark systems, structures, programs and innovations.
It seems like a good idea. Travel to see another program, get some instant solutions to problems and some new ideas to help enhance performance - seems like a great idea.
However…………..
- It’s a waste of time
- It’s a waste of money
- Even if you have the time and the money it doesn’t work.
July 10, 2008 | 1 Comment
Tags: AFL, American Football, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Coaching, Cricket, Diving, Football, Netball, Rugby, Rugby League, Soccer, Softball, Swimming, Triathlon
Ten Reasons Why Change is so Hard to Introduce in Sport
Change is one of the most talked about aspects of sport.
But change is also one of the hardest things to actually introduce successfully and sustain in any sporting environment.
Why?
Because people who introduce change are often seen as radicals or “ratbags” or people who know nothing about the sport or people who don’t understand the sport’s culture or similar negative label.
Change innovators in sport have to fight through three phases to make a real difference:
- Ridicule - Real innovators, lateral thinkers and change drivers have to first face the conservative thinkers in the sport who will label their push to change as stupid, ill informed and ridiculous.
- Resistance - If the idea gets through Phase 1, it then meets hard opposition from people who are benefiting from the current thinking and who will fight hard to resist new ideas and any challenge to their position and beliefs.
- Acceptance - finally if you can get through the days, weeks, months or even years of fighting, political maneuvering, back stabbing and other obstacles you have to overcome, you can introduce real change and ensure the sport progresses.
June 10, 2008 | 1 Comment
Tags: AFL, American Football, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Cricket, Diving, Football, Gymnastics, Netball, Rugby, Rugby League, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field, Triathlon
Hiring and Developing a COACHING / PERFORMANCE TEAM
Gone are the days of the “GURU” coaches.
Sure, the great names of coaching have all been “one man bands” - strong, decisive, authoritarian, leadership focused head coaches who controlled every aspect of the team’s performance.
However, elite sport has developed at an incredible rate over the past twenty years and the knowledge and skills required to win an elite sporting competition are greater than any one person can bring to the table.
Think of the advances in sports science, sports medicine, analysis, IT, nutrition, psychology and technology since the 1980s.
How can we expect that any one person can be THE expert in all performance areas plus coach the team, deal with the media, work with Club Board and Executive, recruit new players, talk to sponsors, meet the fans etc etc etc?
So - the Coaching Team and Performance Team concepts are born.
June 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tags: AFL, American Football, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Coaching Tips, Cricket, Diving, Football, Netball, Rugby, Rugby League, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Track and Field
What’s all this Leadership by Empowerment stuff about?
Leadership groups, leadership teams, player leadership teams, team councils………
What’s going on here? Players making decisions? Players leading? Players taking ownership of their training and playing programs?
What’s all this empowerment stuff about?
What does engagement mean? Is someone getting married?
And what the hell is a leadership group?
I thought coaches coached, managers managed, fans cheered, doctors doctored and players played.
All of sudden every AFL, rugby, football, cricket, netball and rugby league team has embraced a player empowerment leadership model. Five years ago, most of us couldn’t even spell it.
Let’s have closer look at what’s going on.
May 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tags: AFL, American Football, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Cricket, Diving, Football, Hockey, Netball, Rugby, Rugby League, Soccer, Softball, Tennis, Track and Field
Improve your Coaching by NOT Coaching
You read right - improve your coaching by NOT coaching.
Coaching improves performance.
But too much coaching - over coaching - can have a negative influence on performance.
Who OVER coaches?
Typically five types of coaches OVER coach:
- Young, inexperienced coaches who are trying too hard;
- Coaches who lack real belief in themselves and who try to make up for it by giving too much information. These coaches will often want to be liked - and feel the more coaching they do, the more the athletes will like them;
- Coaches who lack belief in their athletes and feel the need to control every element of preparation and performance;
- Coaches who are being evaluated or assessed and aim to impress by being SEEN to control every element of the training session, i.e. they believe that great coaching is talking more;
- EGO driven coaches who see athletes / players as a vehicle to promote themselves and their reputations.
May 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tags: AFL, American Football, Baseball, Basketball, Cricket, Football, Netball, Rugby, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Triathlon
It’s not the head coaches fault……not all of the time that is.
Here’s a typical football Club scenario. Pick a club - any club - any code - it doesn’t matter.
The team loses a few games, has a couple of bad seasons and the decision is made to sack the head coach.
In fact, Legend AFL Coach David Parkin once said, “There are two types of head coaches. Ones who have been sacked and ones who will be sacked”.
So the club sacks the coach, goes through a search process, finds someone else to be head coach and prepares for the next season.
Next season the team loses a few games, has a bad season and surprise surprise - the Club starts looking for another head coach.
Some Clubs have recruited and sacked several coaches over the past ten years and have not had a change in their on field performance.
Many of these same Clubs have had the same Board, CEO and management team in place throughout that same ten years.
So what they are saying is, “we are doing everything right, we have all we need to win a title, we have a great culture and leadership - all we need is a great head coach and we will be back on track”.
Is it just me or is this a really silly way to run a business? Read more
May 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tags: AFL, American Football, Football, Rugby, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer
