Gerard Murphy of Management by Design in full flight. Mr Murphy was engaged to improve the club.
Review of the review #1
There’s some good material floating around by management by design. We can learn what they are about.
Mr Murphy arrives at the club with an extensive background in tutoring clubs in an effort to improve results and culture.
People will remember that the review was very critical of the existing culture, the mysterious “DNA” said to be lacking. This was supposedly evidenced in players ignorance of the rich and proud history of both the St George Dragons and Illawarra Steelers.
General Managerial Thesis:
Basically he gets the players to imagine and nominate characteristics and behaviours of good sides and then once that is down pat, the players are to be held up to them.
That they are all to “ buy in” to a standard they believe in and following any deviation or failure to live up to this, he believes in the prevalence of “honest discussions”
Player Rank and Seniority is not an issue. For example Tristan is welcome to criticise Ben with no comeback.
It seems to me that this would account for the historic “presser of shame” with the alleged delinquents. Part of the “honesty process” although as we saw, it was not only brutal it all but cemented Frizs decision to leave with a pointed message about the clubs prospects ( aka a p.r disaster).
It is my sincere opinion that the humiliating public “honesty” session in this case was misapplied because I did not see any lack of intent or effort from these players. Heat of the moment errors, slips and innocent misjudgments under the most intense club pressure imaginable. But they tried, they had a red hot go.
Those of us who know nrl players, know that many of them take failure very personally. They can sometimes be their own harshest critics. They have already internalised and been honest. There’s no need to burden most of them with additional insecurity.
Friz was not wandering around after the game telling people how great he played. He wasn’t in a delusion of self importance or grandeur, thus the Management By Design model as applied by Mary- the “ honesty” model -had no application here whatsoever.
What he needed was probably some care and comfort and a buying in of his intent. Share his dissapointment and be reassuring. After all, he tried his ass off. Show some respect, especially to the group leader.
To assume he wasn’t internally honest about his performance was grossly disrespectful and hurtful. In his eyes, there’s no point having a go, if you are going to get a public flogging anyway. So he sees the direction the club is heading in and wants out. He won’t be the last.
Mr Murphy was summarily sacked by the Geelong cats prematurely for allegedly causing extreme player discord, discomfort and disharmony. Some players were very critical of his style and behind the scenes tactics.
In his defence, if you don’t see your tenure out, it’s hard to ascertain your impact over the whole year plus club politics. It’s not going too well at sgi at the moment, but who knows?
In my next review of the review, I will examine and focus on the Meditation group. I seem to have found that they have well established links to persons already providing services to sgi and third parties. I am not going to suggest a jobs for the boys (and girls in this case) rort, but let’s say, there is no evidence of services being put to open tender -if that was a more desirable approach.
The mass sacking of junior and support staff is also of interest and I’m not quite convinced that the grounds for these dismissals were backed up and the team results 2020 suggest otherwise.
I wonder if Mr Murphy has had the same discussion with the board about “ honesty”?
Their appointment of him suggests a new hard direction, most definitely a slight on Mary and by intent or misapplication or just ignorance, he’s doing a good job of cruelling its success.
