After ‘the Great Lockdown’

Simon Weatherill considers the leadership challenge facing fi tness, recreation and sport

We all know that the impact of the Coronavirus crisis has been massive with borders sealed, large parts of the leisure industry closed, unemployment rising and financial markets impacted.

With Coronavirus not just a pandemic, but a supply chain, macro-economic, social and geopolitical crisis that is affecting us globally we are facing a large amount of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

As a result, we need to manage the staggering technical challenges of mustering surge capacity in the health system, ensuring business continuity in essential sectors of the economy, delivering massive tax relief and income support programs in real time, while discovering effective techniques for halting the speed of the disease.

While some elements of the Coronavirus are being eased - potentially earlier than was initially anticipated - fitness, recreation and sport have many challenges to overcome in order to make our facilities and services as COVID-19 proof as possible.

And while sport is a $14.3 billion industry in Australia (representing 1% of GDP) it is critical for community mental health and social and physical wellbeing.

We know that the path forward will not be uniform and smooth, it will be hellishly difficult for every sporting organisation due to the complexity of the crisis we are now in.

Potentially lasting into 2021 and beyond, program and facility management will be very different in the future. What Can Leaders Do? The leadership response should be to put the organisation’s survival first. The actions you take as a leader are very challenging because if you have to make cuts to reduce costs you are harming your people. Yet you have to prioritise what is the greatest good for the greatest number and how can we ensure the survival of the business. While we are all apprentices in dealing with this crisis as a leader you could prioritise as follows: •Overall Survival of The Business •Your Employees •Your Customers •Your Shareholders or Stake holders

You must put the business first, employees second, customers third and shareholders stakeholders fourth. If you are laying off people give them all the support that you can and try and spread the pain across the organisation by everyone taking pay cuts or working until we start to come out of the other end of this crisis, remembering that when we come out of this and establish what the ‘new normal’ will be, we will want to re-employ these people.

Leadership in Action How a leader reacts is paramount in being a role model for leading in a crisis. •Be transparent and remain positive •Develop a set of principles around what you know

•Ensure the business is economically viable and preserve core revenue streams where possible, for sporting facilities monthly debit at a lower cost by using technology to maintain customer loyalty. •Share the Pain •Plan for the worst but expect the best •Assume a minimum of six months business disruption •Conserve expenditure where possible - ‘cash is king’ •Develop a business reestablishment strategy

As a leader ask yourself who do you want to be and how do you bring your ‘A game’ to every meeting and encounter with your staff, other organisations, government and the like. •Keep a calm and clear emotional state •Thank and appreciate others •Look for new ways to adapt and change •Live in the present, focus on the future •Practice gratitude and patience, relationships and creativity •Make your talents available to those who want to use them •Be empathetic with yourself and others

Protect the Business It is more than likely that we will have to live with COVID-19 as the probability of a vaccine is a long way off. Therefore, how do we cope at an operational level? •Work at breakneck speed to visual map our capacity to protect our core business and monthly debit. While at the same time reimaging future operations. Monthly debit and the membership base should be protected at all cost even if you are only charging $10 a month for your services you need to keep the membership base alive •Set up two teams, one to work on the core business and to communicate with your membership and community customer base and the other to look at delivering the services via technology •Undertake a stocktake of all the services that you offer and determine how you will offer some or all those services after the lockdown •Carry out an audit of your current technology to develop a road map of what will be required to deliver up to 50% of your services via zoom or other webinar-based technology •Consider developing an App that can handle bookings online and can be used for a loyalty rewards program, that also has the capability to communicate with your members and customers in an easy effective manner •Develop plenty of digital content for your members •Map out at a facility level how you make your facility bio secure to minimise the spread of the virus when your customers return to the facility. Also map out social distancing requirements and maximum numbers for the services you offer •Develop a clear set of reworked business principles and budgets •Start now. This is not a time for hibernation, it is a time to rework and reimagine your business in order to be effective in the new environment that we will all face •Smart business operators will use the crisis to transform the way in which they operate, by digitising processes, changing ways in which they interact with customers. Simplifying decision making processes and providing a clear path for the future

As John Daley, Chief Executive of Australian public policy think tank the Grattan Institute, suggests “the best-case scenario is an orderly, globally synchronised, deep recession, which will take several years to recover from.”

So plan for the worst but expect the best. Simon Weatherill is Managing Director of World Wide Sports Management. www.weatherill-leadership.com

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