This global Covid-19 pandemic has turned both our personal lives as well as the economy upside down. While we’ve had a couple of global challenges over the last 20 years (2000 dot com bubble bursting and the 2008 financial meltdown), this current crisis is a completely different animal. Now that we're in the second week of social distancing, if not outright quarantine, what is Covid-19 revealing about your club's ability to adapt or organizational agility? Given this unique situation, what other experiences can we draw upon to develop solutions and improvement plans?
Converting weaknesses into strengths
When I was coaching my daughter’s competitive travel soccer team, we would ultimately be matched against one of the top-ranked teams in California during the State Cup tournament. Playing against a truly superior team was always a humbling experience, the silver lining of which was our opponent’s ability to brightly highlight our weaknesses, something we wouldn't otherwise see playing our normal level of competition. Those “humble pie” lessons created weeks of training plans that would guide our improvement goals of converting weaknesses into strengths.
Covid-19 is similarly creating this unique situation where organizational weaknesses are brightly illuminated. This level of insight is just not revealed during "normal" times. And perhaps more importantly, Covid-19 has created a pause in operations that is providing an opportunity for club leaders to better investigate and understand the root cause of their challenges, something they would not have the time to explore during normal operations. Sports clubs have been contacting SquadFusion to share some of their challenges including manual processes grinding to a halt due to social distancing directives. For others, outdated systems are not working or scaling well in the new normal of WFH – work from home.
What's your responding mode?
While some organizations are locking down everything and freezing budgets, others are attempting to power through using their same playbook. There’s a third mode though – some organizations are taking advantage of this pause to investigate and better understand the weaknesses that Covid-19 is revealing, including re-evaluating and upgrading their systems and processes to provide even greater operational efficiency and agility. Converting their weaknesses into strengths.
There’s no single right answer. What’s right for one club may not be right for a different club. However, if you find yourself in that third mode – re-evaluating your sports club management systems and processes, SquadFusion would enjoy the opportunity to open a dialog and discuss how we can help.
