Chapter 3 Preview: When Strategy Sits on the Bench

Strategic plans are common in sport – but strategic follow-through is not.
Chapter 3 of Kick’n Goals & Growing Strategically reveals one of the biggest challenges facing sports organisations today: well-intended growth plans that gather dust the moment results dip, pressure rises, or competing priorities take over.

In this chapter, Bill Kostandas explores why strategy so often gets sidelined, how emotion and success cycles influence decision-making, and what happens when clubs forget that long-term direction matters just as much as short-term performance. From abandoned plans to top-down disconnect and board-level blind spots, this chapter highlights the real-world consequences of letting strategy “sit on the bench” — and the powerful turnaround that occurs when everyone buys in.

Enjoy the free preview of Chapter 3 below.

“We Have A Strategic Growth Plan, But Often It Sits ‘On The Bench’ And Doesn’t Get The Attention It Deserves”

If you ask most sports organisations if they’ve got strategic planning in place, they’ll tell you that they have. When you really push them on the subject, however, you may find that it’s a little looser than you would expect.

I have heard everything from “We’d just like to finish as high up the table as possible” or “We’d like to move to a new facility someday.”

Those aren’t strategic growth plans. They haven’t articulated their vision, deconstructed and simplified their mission, concentrated their values or created the strategic pillars that the plan is going to rest upon.

Sport, as we’ve previously discussed, has an emotive layer that makes it far more than just a simple business. The effects of this emotion manifest in numerous ways depending on the fortunes of the club. As a result, strategy can become transient.

When things are good and the team is successful, strategy feels like it’s a part of the process. When things aren’t going well, it’s easy to think short-term and abandon strategy in order to fix the cycle of bad results and get back on top.

Bums on seats

For a lot of sports teams, clubs and organisations, the lifeblood is membership, sponsorship or participation – or a combination of these. Like the winning and losing scenario, there are peaks and troughs that can affect the mentality of the directors at the top and filter through to staff and volunteers.

A few years ago, there was an organisation that was experiencing issues with membership, governance and success. There was a strategic plan in place, but the negativity that manifested from this lack of success began to take hold.

Board members began to drop like flies, and suddenly there was only the Chairman left. Sensing an opportunity, the Chairman replaced the exiting board with people he wanted, from his ‘mates network’ (more on this in Chapter 7) and proceeded to abandon the strategy and simply focus on getting more people through the door.

The thought process behind this was simply to turn a blind eye to results and achievement and focus on participation numbers. The Chairman hoped that a bottom-line increase in revenue would be enough to fix the problems and keep stakeholders happy.

Without a strategy, there was no real direction the club could take, and the implemented short-termism showed by the director lead to a negative spiral of staff leaving, worsening results. Eventually, the initial spike in participation numbers ebbed away and turned into a route of departures.

Winners have it easy

As we’ve discussed, when a team or a club is under pressure and the results aren’t good, the scrutiny increases. This, in turn, leads to the abandoning of long-term goals and strategy in favour of short-term fixes.

You would think, then, that those clubs having a successful run would have their strategy on point and their staff and stakeholders surging towards every goal they have set.

Incredibly, this isn’t always the case. There are, of course, those teams that are following strategy. However, successful teams and clubs can quite easily forget all about strategy because they are winning, and the day-to-day scrutiny has dissipated.

The problem with this outlook is that, as soon as the results start to dip, there’s no fall-back plan and the problems in the business are suddenly magnified.

This problem is exacerbated by the competitive nature of sports and the incredible pressure to succeed that is felt by all of those involved in the club. This isn’t a new perspective either. The famous Liverpool Football Club Manager, Bill Shankly famously said:

“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you it’s much more serious than that.”

360 thinking, or not…

As a huge fan of strategy and strategic thinking, I am always keen to help out when organisations want guidance on the subject. Over the years I’ve helped a lot of clubs and organisations think carefully about the future and take steps to ensure their viability as a going concern for years to come.

During that time, I have seen a lot of organisations get very confused between what’s good for the directors and what is good for the stakeholders–the users of the club.

It’s actually a very common mistake and easily done. The directors have a perceived view of the club, as do the stakeholders. The directors or board members make decisions that they think will drive the club forward, only to find out much later down the line that nobody else has really felt the benefit.

This situation has even occurred at the governing body level. A strategy was implemented to create a change in competition structure and rules. The eventual aim was to try and include more clubs in the competition and diversify the offering. The decision was made at the board level and there was no consideration for the players, coaches and fans. Only club committee representatives were consulted.

Had the players, coaches and fans (and the teams) been consulted, they would have said that the competition needed to be reduced to make it more competitive. They felt that increasing the number of teams simply added to the burden of the season. It meant more games, more travelling, more costs–for very little in return.

It is crucial that a strategy being considered has a consultative element which seeks to ensure that the needs of all those involved in the organisation–not least paying customers or participants–are catered for.

Top down, bottom up

The thing about strategy is that it unifies the aims of the entire business. It is equally important to board members and admin staff, to players, coaches and volunteers.

Without buy-in from all levels and an understanding of what those aims are trying to deliver, the organisation can never truly flourish.

I have been involved with lots of clubs who have promised to create and adhere to a long-term strategy, only to abandon it when the going gets tough.

In one particular instance, the funding and expertise were even organised by a governing body seeking to ensure the long-term prospects of the clubs under its stewardship.

Not only did this governing body hire a professional to consult with the clubs, but they also even laid down long-term goals and checked in with each club regularly to ensure that milestones were being met.

After an initial flurry of activity and some follow up meetings, the board of one club  eventually began to renege on their promises and all the strategy efforts were in vain. Old behaviours began to resurface, and the lack of top-down cohesion meant that the rest of the staff quickly followed suit.

In this instance, the Board hadn’t bought into the strategy fully. For whatever reason the changes didn’t have a strong enough resonance with them, or they simply couldn’t be bothered to hit all the checkpoints to make it work.

The club fell back into the same old habits and continued to struggle. On the other hand other clubs, who adopted the standards and hit their checkpoints, saw a marked improvement in an operational sense, with a smoother running day-to-day. They also saw improvements in their staff and eventually in engagement from their fans.

The moral of the story here is that strategy is a long-term set of objectives, and the only way to ensure that they work over time is to make those day-to-day changes and keep at it until the results come. Strategy is not a quick-fix–it’s about addressing the sustainability and viability of your organisation.

If you haven’t done it already, think about adding some strategic thinkers to your board of directors. Without anyone familiar with strategy in the leadership team at the club or organisation, you may find that you aren’t able to galvanise the organisation in the way that you ought to.

Keep it simple

One of the issues that a lot of sports organisations face when addressing strategy is that effecting change in large organisations can be time-consuming and a drain on resources and really feel like a slog.

It can be hard to manage the adoption of new tasks and behaviours from the staff and even harder if those changes require constant monitoring. Additionally, some strategic plans may feel like they are a complete redesign of the club or organisation and its internal workings.

In order to have a successful strategy, it has to be related to the core values of the club. Changes have to be made in a timely and understandable way so everyone can see the benefit.

Sometimes this requires significant levels of patience. Changes may need to wait until the off-season, so staff can be trained. It might be that you have to break certain changes down into sub-sections and action them over an extended period.

Understanding the nature of your new strategy and fully buying into the eventual goal is crucial. You have to have a vision of how the organisation will run when the strategy is complete.

Let’s also remember that strategy can be fluid and can change after six months or a year. It is supposed to move with the times, as should you and your organisation.

Seek Help

If there are significant road blocks to executing a particular part of your strategy, then perhaps you can seek advice or try a new avenue. The eventual aim of the strategy, your target, should remain.

Even if you have had some consultation from a governance perspective as to what your strategy should be, you may still benefit from some help when it comes to creating an action plan and managing the day-to-day adoption of those elements.

In my experience, you should be able to put your goals into a very simple document that can be understood by the entire staff and stakeholders.

I also believe that it is crucial to communicate your strategy with those staff and stakeholders. If they are aware of the eventual goal, then they can understand why they are being asked to alter what they do.

Armed with a decisive document, a determined attitude and a workforce unified by a vision for the future, you can begin ticking off the behaviours, practices and tasks that will allow you to achieve.

Using a goal-oriented system for achieving objectives will give everyone some positive feedback and make the process feel like less of an undertaking and more of an action plan.

The psychological benefits of hitting milestones should be deeply rooted within the organisation–we are talking about sports, after all. Use that to your advantage and get the feel-good factor flowing freely from the top to the bottom of your club.

Your long-term strategy is typically a three-year ambition with some significant changes that should occur at the end of the project. However, you should be monitoring these on a monthly basis at the very least.

 

Key Takeaways

• A strategic growth plan is not a vague assumption about being in a better position from one year to the next. It is a purposely formulated action plan.
• Short-termism is the antithesis of what you are trying to achieve. Stay strong and look at the bigger picture.
• Get everyone involved. Strategy is about moving the whole organisation forward. Everyone has to understand it so they can buy into it.
• Keep it simple. Make changes in small but significant ways. Rome wasn’t built in a day, as they say, and neither is a sports empire.
• Strategy is fluid. Revisit your growth plan regularly and update those elements that need to change.

Why is my book free?

“Besides the importance of building a profitable business off the field, sports organisations occupy a special place in the community. They bring people together to play or watch their favourite sport. And in doing so, encourage positive social interactions. This, in turn, helps people develop the principles of fair play, motivation, discipline, hard work and reward. All of which strengthens the social and financial integrity of a community.

This deep belief that sports are a terrific way to improve our lives and communities inspired me to choose a career in the sports industry.

So by giving away free copies of my book, ‘Kick’n Goals & Growing Strategically’, I’m making a positive contribution to the industry by ensuring sports remain sustainable and continue to produce well-adjusted people…”