Tag Archives: AFL

Five Business Lessons From Community Volunteers

If you are leading a business and want to know how to provide great service, then read on and learn how a team of volunteers from the Montrose Football Club who play in Division 1 of the Eastern Football league provided an experience that the USA Revolution will never forget. This story will teach you about the power of creating a shared vision, the preparedness to tap into the special skills that people bring to their work and the willingness to work with competitors to create a service that produced mutual benefits for all involved. What business wouldn’t like to learn these lessons!

Gary RyanThe AFL International Cup (AFLIC14) has recently concluded with Papua New Guinea defeating Ireland in an exciting and dramatic game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

18 countries competed over 13 days in both mens and women’s competitions. Every player had to be a citizen of their country so no ex-pat Australians were included in their teams. This was truly an international competition.

In a stroke of genius the third round of the competition saw local teams throughout Melbourne host teams involved in the AFL International Cup, culminating in the Community Round where AFLIC14 games were held as the curtain raiser to the ‘main local game’.

My twin brother Denis Ryan is both the President of USAFL and the mid-field coach for the USA Revolution (the men’s team).

Montrose Football Club, who compete in the Eastern Football League were assigned as hosts for the USA Revolution. The “Revos” (as they call themselves) travelled to Montrose to train with them on Thursday 14th August before their game versus the New Zealand Hawks on Saturday 16th August.

The USA Revolution squad, coaches and support staff were ‘blown away’ by the hospitality shown by Montrose Chairman Rob Ewart, Senior President Tony Eastwood and their dedicated Sub-Committee that was led by Rod Buncle and Terry Dean as well as their band of merry helpers. While the USA Revolution were hoping for a ‘good’ experience from the Community Round, what they received was better than any of them could have imagined.

Lesson #1 Identify mutual benefits

Like most success stories the real work started many months ago when the EFL sent out an expression of interest to all its clubs about applying to become a ‘host’ for one of the games. Senior Club President Tony Eastwood saw the opportunity as one that would enable Montrose to take significant steps toward bringing its vision of being, “Seen as a quality EFL Division 1 club” into reality. He immediately contacted his Blackburn Football Club counterpart and discussed the possibility of putting in a joint expression of interest with Montrose to host the USA Revolution and Blackburn to host the New Zealand Hawks.

While fierce competitors on the field, the Montrose and Blackburn Football Clubs understand that they both have a responsibility to grow the game and to set high behavioural standards for their members, players and communities. The clubs play off for the One Punch Cup which is a game where they raise awareness about the dangers and injuries that arise from nightclub fights. (Kyle Matthews was playing for the Casey Scorpions as an up and coming VFL star. He was punched in a fight at a nightclub, fell and hit his head causing serious head injuries. Kyle has an association with the Blackburn Football Club and his best friend plays at Montrose)

Leveraging the success of working together on the One Punch Cup the two clubs’ application to the EFL was accepted and the third round game of the AFLIC14 was scheduled to be played at Montrose.

Lesson #2 Give talented people the autonomy to use their talent

Gary RyanTerry Dean and Rod Buncle quickly formed a sub-committee to make sure that the day was a success. They worked with their team including Jenny McArdle, Kerry Schilling and members from the Montrose Coterie Group to make sure that the day was a special event for everyone. Using his corporate skills, Rod created a very detailed schedule of events that also included a link to the AFL’s vision for the community round. This ensured that everyone involved in hosting the event, which was upwards of 35 people, knew exactly what they had to do and when to do it. This is an example of letting good people use their talents and skills in the service of a vision that truly is shared.

Lesson #3 Identify, develop and share your vision of success

The Montrose and Blackburn Football clubs wanted to make sure that members from both teams had an experience that showed them what playing community football in Australia was really like. As a result of their research they became aware that the Revolution players rarely played at anything other than make-shift fields, and most often got changed out of the back of cars or in tents.

In light of this understanding, Rod, Terry and their team went to extraordinary lengths to create the experience that the international players would never have imagined. They approached the EFL and requested that the football Record for the EFL 17th round be designed to feature the USA Revolution and New Zealand Hawks teams. The EFL accepted the request and ensured that both the cover of the record and the middle pages were dedicated to the AFLIC14 game. This is an example of ‘managing up’. Through Rod and Terry’s influence the EFL was able to see how they too would benefit from helping to showcase the AFLIC14 game (they also provided 250 extra copies of the record at no charge!).

The Revolution squad members, coaches and support staff were all provided with a ‘showbag’ that included a membership to the Montrose Football Club, a miniature Montrose Football and a Montrose club cap. In addition, each locker in the changeroom was adorned with information about one of the USA players including their jumper number, name and other details. This information also adorned the walls of the social rooms. Rod and Terry explained that they had done this so that not only would the Revolution players feel at home (and have a real experience of having their name on a club locker), but it would also make it easier for the Montrose players, committee and supporters to engage with them and use their names.

It is this level of thinking that drives high performance. To bother to find a way to help their own community to engage with the Revolution players on a personal level is exactly what high performing organisations do.

Daniel Pink in his book Drive describes ‘Purpose’ as one of the three key elements for creating engaged and self motivated employees. This story highlights the power of a purpose that really matters to people. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. Why else would all the volunteers from the Montrose and Blackburn football clubs go to such lengths to create the experience that they provided for the Revolution and Hawks players? The question for you is, “How do you create a sense of purpose for your employees? One that will genuinely engage them and enable them to use all of their talents in the service of that purpose.”

Lesson #4 Connect with all your stakeholders

Gary RyanA lasting memory for me is the image of the USA Revolution players leaving the field at the end of their game clapping the Montrose community as a sign of their appreciation for their support. In unison the Montrose community clapped them back. It was a pure moment that was about Australian Rules Football and the (now) international role that local clubs are playing in helping to take the game beyond Australian shores.

More than 1,500 people attended the game including many local residents who hadn’t been to a game (This game would normally attract about 600 people). As an introduction to the club they could not have had a better experience. The term “win/win” is thrown around a lot these days but on this occasion the Montrose and Blackburn football clubs did themselves proud and could not have been better hosts for our international guests.

This entire story was driven by volunteers, all of whom have busy lives. The success they created was because of the power of sharing a vision that was bigger than any person, allowing talented people to work together for the common good, and through understanding the expectations of the community they were serving and doing everything possible within their limited resources to exceed those expectations.

No doubt a lot of hard work went in to hosting the event. No success comes without hard work. No doubt you work hard too. But you might not be getting the success you desire. If not, re-read this article and pick out the many lessons that will help you and your team achieve the type of excellence that the Montrose and Blackburn football clubs provided the USA Revolution and New Zealand Hawks Respectively.

 Lesson #5 Great service builds lasting relationships

As an anecdote to this story several Revolution players have already commenced talks with Montrose to come out and play with them in 2015. Montrose views this as an opportunity to strengthen their ties with USAFL and are eager to build on their AFLIC14 experience.

 

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

Life’s journey teaches values

Mike Sheahan’s Open Mike interview with former Brisbane Lion’s coach and three-time premiership player Michael Voss provided a clear insight to the relationship between personal values and workplace decisions.

Sheahan queried Voss about his fallout with former teammate Daniel Bradshaw who left the Brisbane Lions at the end of the 2010 season. Voss shared that he had spoken with Bradshaw on a Tuesday at the end of the season and informed him that there wasn’t any truth in the speculation that Brisbane was making a deal to include Bradshaw in a trade to Carlton so that Brendan Fevola could be recruited to Brisbane. Three days later Voss said that he called Bradshaw to tell him that things had changed and that he was in fact, being considered as part of the deal for Fevola.

Gary RyanBradshaw then left the Brisbane Lions on his own terms and moved to the Sydney Swans. Voss admitted that he had lost his friendship with Bradshaw as a result of the process and that he felt that something wasn’t quite right with the change in the club’s position about Bradshaw over a three-day period. Voss also revealed that despite not feeling right about what was happening he contacted Bradshaw and spoke with him about what had happened and their relationship deteriorated from that point.

The big lesson for Voss was that the experience highlighted the importance of staying true to his values and as such he became a far more values based coach after that experience.

This example highlights that life’s journey will place you in positions where you need to make values based decisions. While this example involves an elite sport ‘workplace’ it is a workplace none the less. You too will face values based challenges in your workplace.

A challenge is that you may not really know what your values are to help you in such circumstances. From my perspective, you never stop learning about your values and even if you do know them, life will continue to offer you opportunities to understand them at a deeper and deeper level.

If you are not clear about your values then one way to gain a better understanding of them is to reflect on the way you feel about the outcome of your decisions or actions on an issue that has been a dilemma for you. How you feel will ‘tell’ you whether your actions were aligned with your values or not. As an example Voss said that his actions didn’t ‘sit well‘ with him and he felt that somehow he ‘…hadn’t done the right thing‘.

None of us are perfect. In an ideal world you would have absolute clarity about your values so that any workplace scenario that confronted you could be easily navigated by your values. But sometime your values won’t have been truly tested to see how important to you they are. It is the result of being tested where you really discover what your values mean to you and how you can use them throughout your career.

On this occasion Voss admitted that he got it wrong and I applaud him for his courage and honesty. The important thing to do is to learn from these experiences. You are no different. Use life’s journey to help you to clarify what your values are and then use them to guide your behaviour at work. You will find that will go home each night feeling more calm and satisfied with your behaviour as a leader despite the challenges that work can throw at you.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

Walk Tall

On a good day I am 170 centimetres tall (five foot seven). It’s fair to say that I’m not a tall man.

Confused, young businessman looking at chalk drawn arrows on a cGrowing up in suburban Melbourne, Australia I dreamed of being an Australian Rules footballer. Unfortunately I forgot to get in the queue for skills and talent when I was being made! So I didn’t have much natural talent when it came to sport. That said I loved sport and coupled with being a determined little fellow I made the best of what I did have and played and coached Australian Rules football until I was 30 years old.

Dreams, however, have a funny way of coming true. As a result of my professional career in November 2006 I was invited by Ray Mclean, a founding director of Leading Teams Australia to be interviewed by Kane Johnson, then the captain of the Richmond Tigers and some of his fellow Leadership Team members about taking on the role of mentoring Kane and facilitating a program for the leadership group at Richmond.

Despite having many years of public speaking and leadership facilitation behind me I remember feeling extremely nervous as I drove to Swan Street in Richmond for our meeting that day. Who was I, this guy who was a ‘battler’ at best to tell these elite athletes about leadership? What had I gotten myself in to! I kept thinking to myself.

My negative self-talk was making me more and more nervous. You know the feeling. I started to feel sick in the stomach. Maybe I should cancel the meeting, after all I clearly don’t feel well. My mind was racing.

But then the skills that I had developed over time, which was one of the reasons why I had been asked to take on this job, kicked in.

I can do this. I am good enough. I do know a lot about leadership. Just be yourself. If they don’t like you, that’s okay. Not everybody has to like you. Just be yourself, listen to them and be honest in your answers.

As I got out of my car I was still nervous but I felt more in control of the situation and more in control of my mind.

Walking toward the cafe where we were to meet I kept saying to myself, Walk tall Gazza, walk tall!

No doubt that may seem strange coming from a man only 170 centimetres tall. But it summed up all of my positive self-talk. I felt a sense of calm in terms of preparing to meet these champions of the game. Ray Mclean had confidence in me so why shouldn’t I! If it turns out that I’m not the right person for the job, then that’s okay. It doesn’t make me less of a human being.

Needless to say the meeting went well and I ended up mentoring Kane and working with the Richmond Leadership group, the coaches and the playing list. In fact, I sat in the coach’s box in the 2007 Round 1 game versus Carlton and had the opportunity to stand in the middle of ground before the game, at the quarter-time and at three-quarter time. There was a crowd of nearly 80,000 in the Melbourne Cricket Ground and here I was standing in the middle of it. While I wasn’t a player, I was there as a professional! In fact, I was being paid to be there.

I teach people that it is important to let your dreams come true via a thousand pathways. Life is too complex to limit yourself to a single route toward success. Constructive self-talk, as demonstrated by my story is critical along this journey. I don’t believe that it is possible to 100% eliminate negative self-talk. I do believe that when negative self-talk occurs then you have the power and control to change it to something more constructive so you can take whatever action you need to create the success you desire. This may be relevant when you are going for a job interview, a promotion, delivering a presentation, speaking with senior executives or starting an exercise program. Learning to master your self-talk is a strategy that enhances success and will enable you to bring your dreams into reality.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

Mastering the exponential effect of performance improvement

 

The Western Bulldogs in the Australian Football League (AFL) have ‘suddenly‘ improved beyond most commentators’ expectations. Gerard Healy, a legend of the AFL and a commentator for the Fox Sports Network repeated several times during the Western Bulldogs victory over the Adelaide Crows, “Where has this improvement come from?“.

Performance improvement of any kind does not occur in straight lines. Rather it occurs in curves. These curves are not well understood.Yes For Success, Gary Ryan

The performance improvement of the Western Bulldogs over the past six weeks is not due to any single thing that the club’s coaches and players did seven weeks ago. Rather, it is the cumulative effect of learning over a 20 month period. It is also the effect of mastering a model; a theory from the head coach Brendan McCartney about how the game should be played. No doubt, as a first time senior coach Brendan has been constantly developing his model.

That said, when reviewing his post-match comments over the past two seasons he has been very consistent about the fact that the players have been learning and that the longer the players are able to stick with the plan throughout matches the more likely the team would start to see on-field success. Over time this approach requires that the players have more and more faith in the model and need to be able to see that, at least in patches during a game, the model works. The coaches have to be able to identify these patches and to show the players the evidence that the model really does work. This process in itself is very challenging because there may not be a lot of evidence to show at various stages of the learning journey.

The challenge with curves and performance improvement is that at the beginning of the curve time can pass without any noticeable performance improvement. The flat part of the curve is the most challenging part of this journey because pressure can build. While time is ticking the outcome of the work you are doing isn’t producing the desired results, and as more time passes people start to question the model. The short-term focus of our world can kill a model, even if it was just about to hit the ‘performance curve‘; a seemingly sudden spike in performance. The challenge is that you never really know how long the flat part of the curve will last. One thing you can hang your hat on is that you never reach the exponential part of a curve, where performance improves at a seemingly fast rate, without first going through the flat part of the curve. This is a fact of performance improvement.

This is where leaders have to have absolute faith in the model and their model needs to be based on experience.  When everyone else starts to say that your model doesn’t work and they have the short term evidence to prove it, you need to stay true to your model and plan and stick with it. Seth Godin in his book The Dip calls this pushing through the curve.

These performance improvement curves happen everywhere where learning and/or change are present. They occur with a child’s reading and writing, with a salesperson’s selling methods, with your fitness improvements, learning a new software program and just about anything where performance improvements are desired.

If you don’t understand these dynamics you will kill models before their time. Moving onto a new model in the short-term doesn’t guarantee results; instead it guarantees a new flat part of a new curve to learn your way through. This delays rather than creates success.

If you have faith in your model and the track record to know that it will work, have the courage to stick with it to create the improvements you desire. Once you have mastered your model a new learning challenge will arise – and you’ll have to move on to a new updated model…there is little time to rest for those seeking genuine performance improvement!

Over time how have you experienced the exponential effect of performance improvement?

 

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.