All, I was contacted by John Quayle. He said that whenever he’d been presented with a well reasoned letter or article, he felt that it was appropriate to respond personally and he’d seen the NH opinion piece and wanted to respond personally so credit to him for that.
We discussed the article and I was able to add some depth to our three key points, accountability, cultural change and commitment to excellence and why we felt that they needed in some way to form part of the future vision of the club and basis for renewal. I really pitched the points we’ve agreed on, so I won’t repeat them.
He indicated that when the NRL and the new board took over, the club was in a mess and the first order of business was to stabilise the business and put new governance structures in place. They are now in place and the commercial piece continues to improve but it’s a hard road. Getting to a break even position is the first step and once we get back to profitability, more money can be put back into football operations.
He acknowledged what we already knew which was that the club had to cut deeply upfront and that may have impacted football operations but he is strongly of the view that unless we can get the front office right, then the club can’t prosper in the longer term.
He indicated that in the early days of the new structure, they consulted widely within the Newcastle business and football fraternity regarding the club and it seems that we aren’t the first group to flag the issues we have. Our position seems to be in alignment with feedback they’d received from other stakeholders and whilst he didn’t go into details, it was pleasing to see that we aren’t out there on our own with our position on the clubs situation.
He indicated that there wasn’t any quick fixes and that it would likely take years to get an enduring structure and sustained success, I did say to him that I didn’t feel that the club had years to wait and that without positive short term impact, we’d struggle to grow and thrive and may not survive.
I acknowledged that the new board had inherited a difficult situation but the reality was that they now owned the situation and would be judged on the progress. I told him that there was a level of goodwill towards the new board and that they had an excellent opportunity to re engage the supporter base.
I said that the one thing that came out of the HSG period was that the supporters craved a vision that offered a future of enduring success and that was their golden opportunity moving forward. There was an opportunity to shake things up.
He indicated that the club had recently held the strategic planning day and I understand that at some point in the future the management need to report back to the board.
I highlighted that the Titans had published a strategic plan and whilst it is thin, it had some clearly defined metrics on which to judge the club, team and board. This is a blueprint for our club.
Regarding the pursuit of excellence, he said there was some pieces in place such as neurological support via the Uni but frankly isn’t there a potential to go well beyond that. These are the types of good news stories need to hear more often and can be performance multipliers within the club.
We got onto the topic of juniors, as we all love to discuss and I made the point that could we afford to rely on this primarily as we’d always developed juniors and during the HSG reign they pumped record amounts into juniors and we hadn’t really seen a dividend and may not do so.
He felt that in our current position, it offered the best potential source of success but also acknowledged that we would need to go into the market to supplement where necessary but we wouldn’t be big recruiters.
I did say that the Hodkinson issue was a pleasing development as the club had shown an intent to be proactive, something that hadn’t always been the case.
My view is that the club better understands the need to be more flexible and I think we’ve seen more in the last 3-4 weeks than we thought possible. We will see.
He reasonably challenged us on offering something more than a vision and how our comments were broad and ill defined (his words). I indicated that the board needed to establish what the vision was for the club, then the management should define the strategies to deliver the vision and metrics to track performance. You don’t jump straight to strategies until you know what you want to achieve.
At that point he used the obvious (and reasonable) debating point of saying “okay so you are now the CEO, what would you do”. Below are the 5 points I gave him.
Now bear in mind the first thing you need to do when you take over any new executive position is to understand what you want to achieve, what you have to work with and who is in alignment with you and who may not be.
That’s the position I took when offering the following initial action items, these would allow you to make an informed decision on strategy and alignment.
1 Cultural check up and review - Conducted both internally and externally. Have the club staff and players self-analyse the culture and their influence on it but also for balance let a selected group of former players, prominent supporters and former officials offer anonymous feedback and comments on the club, engage some noted thinkers of the game on the issues as they see them and their thoughts on improvement and change.
2 Accountability audit – On and off the field. Review what metrics are in place and are they delivering the right outcomes. If there are no metrics, develop some.
3 Pursuit of excellence credo – Develop the credo, review what linkages are in place covering commercial, sports science etc. Get into the nitty gritty of it, recruitment and retention practices, cap management, internal processes. Exchange programs.
4 Supporters consultative group – Develop a group of supporters who can provide feedback and review for the club across a range of issues and provide that linkage to the supporter base that is currently missing. Selected via an independent third party and in place for one season, they can provide feedback on all issues and ask questions on behalf of supporters.
5 Work with board to define vision for club and then develop strategies to implement that vision.
John also indicated that the club had done some market research late last year. That was news to me and I suspect many of you and I said so. He didn’t dive too deeply in the methodology or outcomes but I feel that many of us would love to see the results.
I understand that we surveyed 1000 people at games etc. Assuming 25,000 plus unique attendances over the course of a year, that’s maybe 4% of stakeholders / members. Might be an area of future opportunity. John indicated that survey was supporting a number of our concerns.
We didn’t discuss it, but on reflection I am wondering whether this formed the basis of the “locals first” push?
I made the point that our campaign wasn’t initiated because we’d lost 6 of 7, but rather the fact that we’ve lost 10 of 11 was evidence that things needed to change at our club and that we weren’t interested in burning the joint down but wanted to help deliver meaningful change in whatever way we could.
He was generous with his time and I think we all appreciate him reaching out to us. He has offered us the opportunity to maintain contact with him and follow up on issues as they arise.
I indicated that I would be speaking to the group about our discussion and he was okay with that, I hope my summary does justice to the discussion.
In summary and this is just my opinion, John Quayle is a very experienced league guy, he knows what makes successful footy clubs tick and I get the distinct impression that he knows what’s going on within our club and he understands that there is much to do.
