Mikkel Larsen discusses the difference between being on a sports board and a FTSE100 and why "I pick one, you pick one" is still as valuable now as it was when we were in the playground.
In last Sunday's Observer, Andrew Anthony outlined how he believes the game of football is rigged in the favour of the super-rich. It’s a great piece which, even if you might not fully agree with the premise, raises some extremely important questions and reflections.
Reading it, two fairly distinct thoughts went through my head:
- It reminded me of my university days. If you go through my records, which hopefully nobody will, you’ll find several essays raging about, what I believed was, the unsustainable nature of the Premier League. I’m not going to do that in this blog, I’ve grown older and now know that real-life is more complex than it sometimes appears from a University lecture theatre. Which brings me to my next thought:
- Why I believe that sitting on a board of a national governing body of a sport or activity, in many cases, is more complex than being on the board of a large private company.
Let me explain.
When I was at university I can very clearly remember a particular lecture by my professor, Sean Hamil.
Its safe to say that Mr Hamil wasn’t always very impressed by the way association football was organised. His lectures could occassionally be hard to follow in places but he had this amazing ability to, at the very end of a lecture, come up with a simple sentence which made the last two hours suddenly make sense.
This time it was:
“I pick one, you pick one”.
His argument was that competitive balance, a concept which can appear academic and fairly complicated, is actually extremely simple.
It’s actually so simple that even primary school children in the plaground base their games on it – and yet football bosses still don't.
When a group of kids decide who should be on each team, they pick two captains which then take turns selecting their teammates.
Why do they do that?
Because even they understand that the game isn’t very fun if one team is obviously stronger than the other, it’s not fun for the losing side but it’s actually not very fun for the winning side either.
All this brings me to, what is actually my point. Being a board member of any national governing or representative body of a sport or activity, you are not just responsible for governing an organisation, you are governing a whole activity.
As it’s stated in the Voluntary Code of Good Governance:
“Good governance in sport and recreation goes beyond the oversight of an organisation (structure), and extends to the context and environment that that the organisation operates within.
"In this sense, good governance in our sector must be lived throughout not just the organisation but through the membership and experience of the participants of the activity.”
To put that in perspective let’s look at a different industry. The board of Vodafone is not responsible for governing the telecommunications industry – it's not in their remit.
All they need to care about is how Vodafone can make as much money as possible so they can return as much money as possible to their shareholders.
The board of Vodafone doesn't care about O2 being successful – in fact they’d probably rather see them disappear and leave a much bigger chunk of the market to them, because Vodafone don’t need O2 to produce their product.
As much as Manchester United might hate Manchester City, they can’t adopt the same relationship with them as Vodafone can with O2, because they need Manchester City to stay.
Why?
Because no matter how great Manchester United might think they are (and recent results might suggest otherwise), nobody would pay to watch 11 of their players on the pitch by themselves.
Manchester United need Manchester City to produce a product and their product would be worth less should Manchester City disappear.
Sitting in a national governing or representative body you need to ensure the usual features like: setting the vision, mission and values, ensure the organisation is run effectively, ensure its accountable and transparent when it comes to funds etc.
But you also need set anti-doping, integrity and safeguarding policies all of which guard the activity rather than the dealings of your exact organisation.
Your objectives are also harder to define.
Why does the organisation exist?
For most private organisations, that’s fairly easy – they are here to make money.
But does British Triathlon exists to offer services to triathletes, to get more people to do triathlon or to win more medals in international competitions or a combination of them all?
Being a good board member you need to deal with these issues on a day-to-day basis. I believe you need to be better aware of your environment and more emotionally clever then FTSE100 directors need to be and yet they will be paid so much more.
That’s why getting high-calibre individuals to join the sector is so important. That’s why here at the Alliance we have created the Alliance Directors Club – to help with recruitment and knowledge – and training courses, to make sure we continue to improve.
The next two-day director training course, run in partnership with the Institute of Directors, will take place on the 23 and 24 October. Spaces are still available and can be booked here.
Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t understand the fascination with football but at least I appreciate the complex environment they need to operate in.
