Shiny shoes

New year, new sporting you?

Photo by Mark Rabe on Unsplash

New year. Time for a career shift? Perhaps turn a love of sport into a full-time living? Or add a part-time sporting position to your diary? The prospect may be enticing but the task of landing a role daunting. Rest assured, sport’s border is porous and it finds skills learned in other industries both valuable and transferable. Just steel yourself to have the mindset of an elite athlete to make the breakthrough.

It is nearly two decades since I traded the dubious skills of a stockbroking strategist and manager into a leadership role in sport. Rarely a week has gone by since in which I haven’t been asked how I bagged that first post. The questioner’s assumption is often that sport is a closed shop, open only to those who have competed at a high level or worked their way up the career ladder having found an entry point as school leaver or graduate.

That first position was as chair of UK Athletics. I stumbled across news of the impending vacancy in the sports pages of The Guardian after the GB team had failed to shine at the 2006 European Championships. The needs of the organisation at the time were substantial, ranging from financial through to high performance. With London 2012 on the horizon, it’s fair to say that athletics was widely regarded to be in need of an overhaul.

This was a situation ripe for an outsider’s perspective, but one who empathised with the sport. As a keen (but not especially fast) club runner with a business background, I surprised myself by trumping both athletics insiders and industrial grandees who couldn’t demonstrate genuine fan credentials.

I’ve never worked so hard to win a recruitment race as I did that one, determined that I wasn’t simply taking a fun punt on a long-shot, but was going to maximise my chances however long that shot was. I knew nobody within sport but spinning through my contacts I found people who knew people who were. All were happy to talk to this stranger. One was willing to ensure that the search firm running the process wouldn’t instantly bin my application for being from a relatively young unknown.

Once in the rounds of interviews, I made sure to be able to answer the ‘why’ question clearly and with enthusiasm. “Why are you interested in this role?” Of course you should expect to be asked that in any job interview, but there are many layers to the enquiry when attempting to move into sport.

When I’m interviewing CEO and board candidates, I’m always looking to root out those wearing rose-tinted spectacles who are dazzled by the apparent glamour of the industry and blind to the necessary hard yards involved. Similarly, super-fans can be dangerous beasts around the table, lacking perspective and sufficient detachment. As a chair of governing bodies, I want colleagues who are keen to watch the sport concerned at all levels - grassroots to elite - but not obsessives.

As sports governance has become more codified in recent years, so board directors and trustees have tended to take on prescribed oversight responsibilities. These range from finance and governance through commercial and marketing to high performance and safeguarding. This makes it easier for applicants to match their skills and experience to vacancies, but harder to build a board that can collectively roam across the full range of issues that it might face. Candidates with specific skills but broad business experience are all the more valuable, therefore.

Memo to any aspiring non-executive on a sporting body - brush up on A Code for Sports Governance. A very dry read, yes, but it paints the governance touchlines for all publicly-funded organisations. You can find it here

As in any industry, sport comprises a plethora of businesses and organisations of all shapes, sizes and purposes, as well as a sub industry of recruitment and networking firms oiling the wheels of the jobs market. The ruling bodies in the biggest sports capture the media’s attention, along with the government funders, broadcasters and major agencies. Their boardrooms are commensurately tough to get into.

For every ‘big’ seat, though, there are very many more in other governing bodies, charitable foundations and commercial enterprises. Many of financial necessity have only small retained staff and rely heavily on volunteers both to deliver their services and to oversee their activities at board level. The skills they require are the same as in the biggest organisations, as is the commitment to their cause. Believe me, the emotional reward can be just as great too.

So, think honestly about which sports really turn you on, contact those specialist headhunters, scour the jobs section of the UK Sport website, work those friends of friends of friends, shine your interview shoes, and very best of luck! Hope to meet you on the circuit soon.

New balls, please

One application deadline you might have missed is that for chair of UK Sport which was scheduled for 7 January. But you’re in luck if interested, as it has been extended to next Wednesday.

Outgoing chair Katherine Grainger was a surprise choice eight years ago given her lack of boardroom experience at the time. But as it turned out, a truly inspired one. She is now off to the BOA to oversee TeamGB.

Detail of the UKS role and how to apply here

I can think of a few administrators in British sport who would be excellent in the UK Sport hot seat. Priority number one: maintaining and then growing government financial support - via the National Lottery - for Britain’s Olympians and Paralympians. I wonder, though, whether DCMS might be tempted to repeat the Grainger success by looking for a recently retired sportsperson. Andy Murray may not have had to rely on Lottery funding to win his gold medals, but he’s clearly a lover of the whole Olympic experience. Room, surely, for the two day a week role alongside coaching Novak Djokovic?

Testing the market

Latest attempt by cricket’s leaders to saturate their market - the suggestion of a two tier structure for the Test match circuit that would leave West Indies in the lower tier but ensure that England, India and Australia play each other more often. I’ll return to this as the situation develops, but my first reflection is that you undermine the attraction of any sporting contest by increasing its frequency.

The Ryder Cup works because it is biennial and, therefore, on either side of the Atlantic only every four years. The FIFA World Cup and the Olympics have a cachet in part because of the lengthy accumulation of anticipation between quadrennial editions. The Lions only tour every four years etc etc.

Yes, Test series between the three most powerful nations are commercially compelling but, rather than increasing their frequency, the ICC should focus instead on raising the broader appeal of Test cricket if it wants to ensure the format has a long, healthy future.