Culture & the Rebuild

I have worked with clubs and colleges for a few decades now, typically brought in to implement a significant amount of change. Because we have been asked to push both quality of coach, player service and timeline, we have had a unique experience at operating in and around this threshold of managing successful stressors that many others trip up on. 

I will give full credit to the military for developing my attention to detail under immense stress, and I have been able to transfer that to the soccer world.

CHANGE

One interesting subset of this change is the "rebuild". This can be of team, a program or an entire club. The Rebuild is a significant challenge because there already exists a perception of the organization, their abilities, prowess and value. There is an existing Brand in the marketplace. 

Change will fight your history to that point. Most people start the gimmicky way, looking to co-brand, or re-brand in an attempt to bypass the work needed to create meaningful change. This usually manifests in a new uniform, new logo, new pathway, but same staff, same abilities and same deficiencies. Same ol with a new coat of paint.

This is because only the immediate marketing bits were addressed in this strategy. I'm not saying this does not need be addressed in some capacity, but it is not the core of the issue.

CULTURE

Almost inevitably, the problems have a range of expressions, but as you dig into any rebuild or project of CHANGE, the issue inevitably becomes the underlying culture. 

Your organization as a car...

I learned to see culture as the engine of any project. Your curriculum or development plan is the steering column, pointing the vehicle in the direction that culture will push it. Metrics are the gauges to regulate your speed and monitor the car as a whole. The marketing is the paint job. If the underlying car is solid, then the paint job becomes a factor. If the car underneath is a jalopy, no paint job will overcome the obstacle. 

On these projects, there is a sequence to a solid operation: 

• CULTURE
• DEVELOPMENT PLAN
• METRICS
• MARKETING

If there is a problem in a foundational component, do not skip over to work on next tier issues. Fix the foundation or the crack will show over time. 

Is the culture too strict, too undefined? Is the culture dictatorial or collaborative (this is a spectrum, not right or wrong. Right or wrong depends on the problem to be solved). Is the program leveraged against its membership, making culture control difficult. How is the board set up if a club? What is the athletic department involvement in operations if a university? Are expectations clear? Are they inline with the ethos being marketed?

I cannot tell you the number of organizations I've worked with or around that say "development" is their priority, but the coach incentive plan is based upon "wins" or "titles". These same clubs post a lot about results on social media. If this is about development, all of these will celebrate and prioritize developmental markers, knowing results are the inevitable by-product of continued development. This is a typical footprint of a culture misaligned. 

If you are a college program, rebuild years (or versions of them) will most certainly happen throughout a coach's career. Not every class will be the same skilled, same IQ and same competitive drive and maturity. 

So let's take the team as an example:

1. LEADERSHIP: Make leadership change soon. This may be natural if school based where a senior class is leaving, but they are still around for several months. Identify next years leaders and empower them immediately and bring them in to collaborate on what you want changed. If its a rebuild, there is always something to change, so your internal leadership team needs to know your vision of that change. You should also solicit and consider their input. You are the leader, so you will have to make the final call, but look for opportunities to consider and implement their input. As their input is incorporated, their ownership will go up along with their accountability.

2. REGULAR COMMUNICATION: Set regular meetings to get feedback on all the things you do not see (including their perspective of whats happening)

3. UNDERSTAND CHANGE: Know that change, even positive change is an unsettling experience that will be resisted. Expect dissatisfaction in various moments and know when to consider the feedback and when to push past it. You are the one with the vision of where you are going. The more that vision can be adopted, the more the struggle has purpose and is meaningful. If the complaints are increasing, even if wrong, the problem is likely in your communication of the vision.

4. MONITOR & EVALUATE: Review all actions. Are actions consistent with stated goals? If they are in conflict, they must be resolved. Either the action must change to match the goal, or the goals must be adapted to match the actions.

5. Metrics. This is one of the most common missing pieces in the rebuild. Not all things can be measured objectively, but I have found many more can than what people think is true. Even if subjectively, there is a way to minimize biases in subjective evaluations. This is critical to a successful change. Progress is an emotional estimation at best. Remember, your opponents will not care how you feel about your progress, they only care about the actual progress that they will have to experience. Part of the job as the coach, is to be able to see his own players through the eyes of the opponent, so that preparation can be meaningful and effective. The metrics must show progress to the specific goals. Do not just take generic metrics if they do not have a tangible impact on the objective. This will introduce confusion and possibly mistrust. I see this all the time with college programs demanding a certain fitness level, and then having fitness levels in no way correlate to the starting lineup. Break your metrics down into reasonable way-point standards so that you can make evaluations and consider adjustments along the way. Smaller adjustments are always more likely. Stay on or ahead of track to avoid late large adjustments to meet your objectives. You want the final adjustments to be easy, so that they contribute to a confidence level within the staff and players. If they last ones are sizable, you may get the opposite effect, even with a solid plan (poorly executed). 

6. PLAN THE HARD DECISIONS: Finally, people tend to avoid thinking of the hard times when planning strategically, and focus too much on the common ground already agreed upon. Not every problem can be anticipated. For those that can, pre-script how you, the staff and players will respond. If the navigation process is already established, the problem is perceived as anticipated, and the confidence in your ability to steer the ship increases. I usually have asked my player-leaders to establish a framework for how/when problems will be addressed. Take the fire-drill out of it. Players should be able to bring concerns to you. I always set the framework to be: you will 100% be heard, in return for them understanding that at the end of their presentation, I must be allowed the ability as leader to agree, agree in part, or disagree and we all move one. This is a byproduct of role clarity. The coach must come up with the planning and tough decisions. Players must execute on game days and train in a fashion to be able to do this during practices. Player-Leaders (the NCOs of the team) have the dual role of communicating players concerns to leadership, but also supporting and enforcing the resulting decision within the team, whether they agree or not.Problems need to have a life expectancy measured in hours instead of days.

7. WRITE THE MOVIE FIRST, BACKWARDS. Imagine your rebuild as being successful a year or 2 from now. Write the script of the movie now, starting with the end. What happened right before success was achieved. What before that? What struggle (there's always struggle) happened along the way? How was it resolved? Write the successful version of the project you are about to embark on. It may not play out that way exactly (it won't), but it gives a blueprint of steps you should roll through (or roll near) on your way to the movie. Use the skills of visualization you learned as a player (theoretically for some) and the more detail you provide, the more your brain believes it. The more you believe it, the more you begin to self-correct to it along the way. Change is hard, put all tools on the table. 

If the culture can be reset, a new engine is put into the car, potentially giving it new life. Now you can begin to consider the steering column, the gauges and the paint job.