You love your national sport. Seeing the Jamaican (or West Indian) flag soar above a global stage fires you up. But you also see that in football and cricket, we’ve fallen as a country. Could it be related to a lack of long-term thinking?
When the West Indies men’s cricket team dominated the world in the 1980s and 90s, other countries envied them. They all tried to catch up, but Australia’s response was unique.
They decided to invest in youth cricket like never before. Why? They recognized a long-term problem. Quick fixes wouldn’t solve it permanently.
Fast forward a decade, and their success since then shows their planning at work. While we in the West Indies struggle to find talent, revive interest, and fix governance problems, Australian dominance continues.
Simply put, they built a system to win international cricket.
Meanwhile, the West Indies continues to fail, except for occasional successes. We get lucky sometimes and win, but those wins happen despite our system, not because of it.
I’m not criticizing our setup; I’m not an expert. But if we learn from Australia’s long-term focus, can we apply it to our national football team?
We Jamaicans got lucky and competed in the World Cup once, but a sustainable system is still missing there. More importantly, is there something our sporting federations can do differently in their planning? Here are three ideas if you’re part of one.
1. Pick a Target Year and Visualize
First, set a planning horizon 10-30 years ahead, and name it your Target Year. Be careful; picking too close or too far has downsides.
If you pick a year too close, it becomes selfish. You’ll be pushing aside future generations. Also, if you’re too aggressive with your short-term goals, others won’t believe you. As a result, they won’t take action.
On the other hand, if you pick a year too far away, your plan could become irrelevant as soon as its developed. There won’t be enough urgency for stakeholders to respond.
But the key is not just choosing the right year. The idea is to commit to milestones between now and your target date. These milestones should create the right mindset on a large scale. They should inspire people of all ages to make the sacrifices needed for world-class performance.
After setting a Target Year, create a vivid vision or end-game. This isn’t just a vague “vision statement” but a numeric, measurable list of outcomes. Together, they describe your desired future.
Within this space, generate up to three unique but alternative visions. Then, choose one.
Many organizations make a big mistake by stopping here.
2. Strategize Backwards
To connect your vision to reality, you need to backcast, or plan backward from your desired future to the present. As you do, you’ll correct two common anomalies.
The first anomaly is that some of your initial, visionary outcomes are probably unrealistic, and some will be overly ambitious.
The second anomaly is when the Target Year itself has to change to make the plan work.
Don’t remove these anomalies randomly. Your team needs to find a careful balance between aspirations and reality. As such, this is a task for insiders and can’t be outsourced.
If your team fails to achieve this balance, you’ll lose fan support. For example, if they sense that the planning team said yes to too many things without making tough choices, they may turn away.
Your plan needs to make logical sense.
3. Build Social Support
Sporting federations need widespread fan support, but the old way of “selling” your plan to people doesn’t work anymore.
Instead, the modern approach is to involve fans in the process from the beginning. But this doesn’t mean filling a room with hundreds at every meeting.
The key is to incorporate both divergent and convergent activities in your schedule.
Divergent activities are invitations to gather more input. They benefit from broad participation.
However, convergent activities involve making tough decisions using that same input. This is a consolidation step where you summarize and draw conclusions.
Use both in a sort of dance, and you’ll bring your fans into your long-term thinking and the planning needed to achieve success in your sport.
