How to know if your sport strategy covers ‘all bases’
Warning: A steady stream of baseball puns incoming…
Participation strategies, or any strategy for that matter… what makes a good one, and what makes a poor one? The journey will no doubt include facilitating engagement across your ecosystem, SWOT analyses, and a lot of sticky notes. But when it comes to the final output, the most effective strategic plans I've see within the sports sector (and for-purpose sector in general) have common ingredients that consistently come up. Here's my take, in order, on what makes a home-run strategy:
"The Pitch" - Your WHY
Sports require a compelling vision which acts as its ‘north star’ for stakeholders to rally around - what is its 'pitch' to the community. Along with other elements that might form part of this stage like mission, values and purpose, the vision should be easily recitable to anyone who operates under it. All of the elements that follow in the strategic planning process need to align with this ‘pitch’, so it’s important to give it plenty of thought.
“Home Base” - Your Impact
Once you have your destination mapped out at a zoomed-out satellite level, you need to zoom all the way in to ground level - your community. ‘Community’ in this instance refers to whoever the strategy seeks to benefit. The community within a high performance strategy may relate to its cohort of athletes, coaches and officials - or it may cast its net further to the fan and participation levels according to its scope.
The best pitch aligns straight over the home base plate.
The organisation needs to set clear and measurable markers of performance - ‘what does success look like?’ A common pitfall we see organisations fall into here is being too vague or unrealistically aspirational with their goals - SMART goals are a must here.
“1st Base” - Governance
It's written in the rules of baseball, the only base you can't steal is first base! The same is true here, you can't start thinking about capability or programs until your governance is in check. There’s two main reasons why this is so important:
If there are shortcomings in the organisation’s governance that aren’t addressed in the strategic planning process, it will make every task for those implementing the strategy feel like riding a bike into a headwind.
Committing to governance also signals humility and accountability by the board and executive leadership team, and creates a feeling of shared investment in the strategy across the organisation or system. You don’t want your strategy to convey that those at the bottom of the tree are the sole problem and the ones to be changed.
“2nd Base” - Capability
Enabled by good governance, it’s vital that the strategy take steps to build the internal systems (people, processes, partners) that are the engine for the outward-facing, impact-achieving activities.
“3rd Base” - Programs
You’re one degree of separation from the community, and the impact you seek to achieve.
'Programs' are the activities that will be the face of your strategy, the initiatives that your community interacts with in order to achieve the desired change. This may include a mix of initiatives such as:
Events
Experiences
Competitions
Working groups
Education and training
Marketing and communications
Policies
It’s important that the programs are gift-wrapped in a compelling way for stakeholders, to maximise buy-in and uptake.
“Home base” Your Impact - 2nd time
So important, it's listed twice! But it's crucial to make sure there are clear monitoring and evaluation measures in place to ensure the programs are delivering the desired outcomes for the sport, linking back to the vision. Did our trip around the bases actually deliver an impact on the community we sought to serve?
Need support developing your next sport strategy?
We work with community clubs through to peak bodies on developing both their strategies and operational plans - get in touch at darren@forwardpivot.com.au.
