Governance Bites #105: collaborative governance in sport, with Professor Lesley Ferkins

In this episode, Mark Banicevich talks to Professor Lesley Ferkins about collaborative governance in sport. Lesley outlines what she means by "collaborative governance", and how it relates to federated sports structures (e.g., with national bodies, regional bodies, and local clubs). She talks about critical success factors for it to work effectively, common pitfalls, and challenges. Mark asks about whether this can lead to conflicts of interest, the role of communication and information sharing, and issues of power imbalance. They also discuss the impact of organisational and national culture. Lesley shares advice she would give to a new director of a sports organisation with a collaborative structure. 
Professor Lesley Ferkins is Professor of Sport Leadership & Governance, AUT Sports Performance Research Institute NZ. She has over 25yrs experience as an academic in sport management. Prior to academia, Lesley held senior leadership roles in sport & recreation as Executive Director for national and regional entities in NZ. Lesley is currently Professor at AUT and former Director of the AUT Sports Performance Research Institute NZ (SPRINZ). Before joining AUT in 2015, Lesley was Associate Professor at Unitec (and formerly Program Director), senior lecturer at Deakin, Melbourne, and Postgraduate Head in Sport & Recreation at AUT. Her teaching spans postgraduate and undergraduate courses in sport leadership and governance, strategic sport management, sport organisation, and work integrated learning.
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Transcript

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Tēnā koutou katoa. Ko Lesley Ferkins tōku ingoa. Hi everyone. My name is Lesley Ferkins, and I am a Professor in Sport Leadership and Governance at AUT, Auckland University of Technology. I'm actually based at the AUT Sports Performance Research Institute, which is a very cool research institute that coalesces around making a difference in the sport sector through a whole range of different research programmes, whether it be sport science or organisational or coaching. So that's where I emanate from, and I am going to be talking about collaborative governance in sport. Hi, I'm Mark Banicevich. Welcome to Governance Bites. And as you just heard, today I have the pleasure of spending time with Professor Lesley Ferkins. Professor, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate your expertise in this, because as you say, you are a professor of sport. Your expertise or your direction of research is largely around sports management, right, and governance and stuff in management. So the topic of the day is around, as you said, collaborative governance. Can I start by asking you to explain what you mean by collaborative governance? Yeah, sure. And as you'll imagine, when you're talking to an academic, what we'll say usually is that it's a contested term, which kind of just means, you know, there's lots of different interpretations. And the word collaborative is not, you know, it's a bit ubiquitous. It's collaborative, there's collaborations going on everywhere and in every sector and in every place. But we have decided to coin it and put it in the context of collaborative governance in sport, or in fact more latterly, we've decided to call it collaborative sport governance. Which for us, the people that have been researching in this area and looking at how this works, for us it is about organisations coming together to work in partnership in the governance context. So in many of the western sports systems around the world, we've got the federated sports structures, meaning, you know, we've got national, regional or club, or in Australia we've got national, state, regional, club. Yes. Same in the UK [United Kingdom], same in many western contexts. Canada is another one like that. So we've got this kind of federated system and sport kind of reflects that, the way that sport is organised and led in terms of the organisations reflects that. So that means, for example, tennis in New Zealand, Tennis New Zealand is the national body, but then it has six regional entities. Actually, it's just gone through a restructure, but let's say for argument's sake it's got six regional entities. Used to be used to be more, didn't it? Used to be more, and now it's, you know, we're opening up that, too. Consultation. And then there are a whole bunch of different clubs, 400 or 500 different clubs. But each of those are separate legal entities, - Yes. - responsible for their own mission and vision and direction, while also working, you know, with the system of others around them. But, you know, there's my patch, your patch,"Who are you to tell us what to do?" kind of sentiments. And so the idea of collaborative governance is the, "Okay, we might be"separate legal entities and responsible for the governance of our own legal"entity, but we certainly need to be doing that with a really close mind to"the whanau [family]" that we sit within," which is the,- The wider sport. - Yeah, the wider sport organisations. Right. So primarily then around federated sport structures, not so much across codes? Yeah. It's usually within a code? That's how we've been researching and using it. And you know, you could absolutely apply it in those other ways. But that's how we've picked it up and been using it. Right. That makes sense. What are the critical success factors for effective collaborative governance in the federated sports context? So I mean, you know, while collaborative sport governance, the way that we've been using it and kind of defining it and arguing it, and arguing for it, and therefore promoting the use of it, yeah, it essentially is trying to encourage the notion of let's work in partnership and together. But it also pushes back a little bit, albeit subtly, on the idea that we just need to collapse all of those different legal entities in one sport, because there's way too many and we're all fighting. We actually collapse them all into one, and there just needs to be one national body that takes over and does everything. In our research, in our understanding, that might be considered utopia. It kind of doesn't reflect the reality of what we actually have. We actually have a whole bunch of committed volunteers who are working at the local level and don't want to be kind of collapsed into one entity and driven by a national agenda. They're there because they connect with the local. So the collaborative sport governance opportunity is to enable the individual legal entities to retain their own sense of identity and the social capital that sits within, i.e. the volunteer base. Yes. But to think about, "Okay, but we can't just do that in isolation."We do sit within a family, a whanau, and in a system, and we need to think about how"we formally can collaborate in our governance thinking and structures." Yes, yeah. And that federation, I think, is I think exacerbated in New Zealand by our funding models too, because quite often the regional, well, the trusts that the gaming trusts and so forth are very regional themselves. And if you've got a national entity trying to apply for money from a regional trust, they say, "No, no, that's not our space." Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. What are the most common pitfalls or challenges that you see in collaborative governance models within sport? Pitfalls and challenges? Yeah. I mean, I think it's that the arguments against it are that it doesn't progress and advance on the challenges that we faced in our patch protection behaviour. Yes. And so, you know, if it's used as a way to just continue to stay strong and parochial and, you know, push back against having to, you know, be part of a family member, then, you know, that is one of its pitfalls, because the other argument, the other side of that argument is the unitary system, you know, the nationalised, centralised, but collaborative government seeks to not throw the baby out with the bath water. But there is some, what's how does that metaphor work? There is some bath water that needs to be reduced - Right. - or let go of, maybe the dirty bath water. Yeah. And yeah, as one of those family members, you do need to figure out how you're going to work with the other family members. So you do need to not just think about your own patch and be parochial and consider your own organisation. You do need to think about yourself in relation to others. Yes. It's based on the premise that, you know, together we can achieve more, which could be utopia, but seems pretty reasonable. Yes, absolutely. Over a decade ago now, maybe 15 years ago, I remember working in the sport area doing a lot of courses with SPARC [Sport and Recreation New Zealand] as it was then and meeting people from other sports on those courses. And one sport with which you're well familiar talking about the parochialism of two of the entities were very, very strong and coming to the national governance level fighting for what they wanted individually and everyone else be damned. I think, well, are you are you noticing more of a movement away from those old representative structures of, here's our president, here's our secretary, here's our treasurer, and here are the representatives from our various regions, which led to that kind of behaviour, right? Are we moving away from that now? Are we moving to proper board structures? Yeah, absolutely. And New Zealand Rugby was kind of one of the last bastions of that and its recent governance review. And, you know, I think one of the things about collaborative governance that it seeks to not throw the baby out with the bath water, in that it seeks to appreciate the value of the social capital of people who are so invested that they'll come, you know, with their region or their club's best interests at heart and they'll want to fight for that. So, you know, that's also a value. Yeah. But it's a value that, you know, that can be a problem in the context of a broader system and networked approach. So yeah, over the years that representative model of board appointments, of board representation if you like, has evolved. And now most national sport organisations have what we understood to be a hybrid composition. So we've got, you know, roughly maybe between 40% and 60% either way of appointed people that sit on boards through a board appointments panel and a skills matrix. And the other half or 60/40 kind of percentage being those that might come from within the sport. And I say that very carefully, I don't say representatives of. They come from within the sport. In other words, you know, they are there to think and act and offer the lived experience on behalf of their experience within the sport and not from a particular region. Yes. But they may have come from a particular region, but they're there to help with the sporting knowledge per se across the national landscape. Of course, we are moving to a model under the 2022 Incorporated Societies Act where the majority of members of the board have to be members of the sport, right, of the of the incorporated society. So that may impact that model as you suggested. Yeah. Yeah. Although it's not really that hard to become a member. No, that's true. And it's also I think quite often that's a flip side. It's trying to get board representatives who are not members to take enough interest in the sport to be involved, particularly in the minority sport space. Yeah, yeah. When you're trying to get skills and expertise and and fresh thinking, it can be really hard to get them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone, even the appointed ones, tend to be members anyway. Yeah. Yeah. How do you balance the need for centralised strategic direction for the national body with the autonomy and the specific needs of those regional bodies? How do you make that work in collaborative governance? So yeah, balancing the need for centralised strategic direction in the federated system and I suppose that is in a nutshell exactly what collaborative governance seeks to do. So it's, we use it in a kind of a formalised way. You know, governance is a formalised set of, you know, legal procedures, and we use it in a formalised sense in that collaborative governance means that, you know, your legal entity who you are responsible for and have to think and act on behalf of and mitigate risk for needs to work in tandem with our legal entity where we have the same directors' responsibilities. But in the middle there's an overlap for, you know, there's a sweet spot where there are some things that we we have common interest. So how can we, you know, what is it that we can collaborate on? So one of the things that Tennis New Zealand did in its collaborative governance processes is first of all start with identifying the roles and responsibilities of each of the legal entities in the system. So the national body, you know, can do some really cool things in the long-term strategic direction side of things. The regions are really good at delivering events and tournaments and facilities. You know, that's your patch, that's, you know, your strengths. So, you know, maybe the national body can take responsibility for the high performance policies perhaps or strategies, the, you know, that kind of, the roles and responsibilities and ways that we can work to our strengths and work with each other in different domains. So there's an element there of getting clarity of role of what's the national organisation there to do, and then what are the regional organisations there to do and the individual clubs there to do. So yeah, that that would be a huge part of it. Is there an element of streamlining the strategies? So for example, would you cascade, start with your national strategy and then cascade that down to the regional level and say, "Well, this is where we're going,"what are you doing to support it?" Yeah. Very much so. And you know, that's kind of been a push for some years now, in that the national body has been responsible for trying to create first of all it was its own national strategy and then, "Hey guys, do you like this?" Yeah."Would you like to use some of it?" And then, you know, more recently I think cricket's been really good at this with Martin Snedden, New Zealand Cricket one sport trying to create, you know, a strategy that is not for New Zealand Cricket but a sport for cricket in New Zealand, and making that distinction. Yeah. And most NSOs [National Sports Organisations] now do tend to make that distinction so that their strategic process will be for the sport in the country. But, you know, there again from a governance responsibility, you know, the people that sitting around the board also have responsibility for the organisation, for the board they're sitting on. So there is the national strategy that also needs to be for the national organisation as well as the national strategy for the whole sport that the national body would hope that the other regional entities would pick up. And that's the formalised collaborative governance process that those other entities formally agree to that national strategy. Right. That actually really nicely leads on to my next question was about this conflict of duties, because as you've said, if you're a director on an organisation, your duty is to act in the best interest of that organisation, not this group of organisations that are associated with you. So does that duty conflict and how do you address that conflict of that need to and, you know, looking back to 20 years ago when you had this parochialism and you had somebody that was voted on the national board from one region and then was out there waving the flag for their region and wasn't acting in the best interest of the organisation that was sitting on the board of. So this conflicts exists. How do you how do you overcome that? Yeah. Yeah. And you know it, we'd be naive not to think that that wouldn't create some conflict and it is important to recognise. And again that's, you know, that's the essence of collaborative governance. It calls that out. It says you have to govern your organisation in the way that you see best fit because that's your role and responsibility as a director of that organisation. But we are, you know, I think I use the word family or whanau because it is a bit like that. You know, you are a sister or a brother, but we have a common parent or we have a, you know, a common purpose, a common existence, a common mission. There are heaps of overlaps in our DNA. You know, what are those things that we can collaboratively work together on and what are the things that, you know, you need to call out as being non-negotiable for the in the best interest of your own organisation. So yeah, if you think about a family as kids grow up and create their own families, and the cascading effect of that, it's not, I think it's a helpful metaphor. I'm not sure whether you will know the answer to this question because it's quite a legal one, but I'll ask it anyway in case you do. In the corporate world, what we'll often have with subsidiary structures is essentially permission in the constitution of the subsidiary to act in the best interests of the parent. Nice. Is there an equivalent of that in not-for-profit? No, I haven't, I well, you're right, I'm not the best person to ask that, but that sounds very cool and I haven't come across that in the sport context. Right. It'd be interesting to see whether it's possible, wouldn't it. I'll have to look into that one. Make a note of that. Yeah. I'll get back on track. What role does communication and information sharing play in successful collaborative governance and can you share an example maybe? Yeah, you know, it's a great question because it sits at the heart of this whole thing. You know, it's all very well to talk in these terms and the principles of it, but yeah, it comes down to, okay, so how are we going to make this work on the ground on a on a day-to-day basis? And I think one of the reasons that collaborative governance can take hold, has taken hold and has a bright future is because of the way that we now have communication one-to-many. Yeah, right. You know, back in the old days, I talking about Tennis New Zealand a lot, I used to work at New Zealand Tennis it was in those days, the other way around. I was at age 21, I'd just come back from a tennis scholarship in the States [USA] and I wanted to work in my national body. I remember post, putting the letters to all the regional and clubs in pigeon holes, you know, the snail mail stuff, right. Yeah. You know, we, yeah. So the way that we can now communicate one-to-many and obviously all of the other communication mechanisms mean that we can bring the idea of collaborative governance together because it takes a lot of communication to make it work. Obviously face-to-face and relationships sits at the heart of that, as well, not just. Yeah, the technology is a double-edged sword, isn't it. Yeah. Because yes, it's really easy to go out to everybody at once. Yeah. It means that everyone's got full inboxes. Yeah. So you have to make sure you got multiple channel communication to make that effective. That's right. Yeah. And not to just rest on that point, but then to bring in the incredibly important value of the whakawhanaungatanga, you know, the relationships that the whole thing rests on. Yes. Which, you know, we can do, but then the challenge of that is the roll through the cycling of governance positions and people. You know, you just build great relationships and then, you know, people cycle through three to six years, or six to ten years. Is there an organisation where you've seen that communication work very well in a federated support structure? Well, I think we all have our challenges. All of the national bodies have their challenge. My usual go-to is cricket. Right. And I mean, the reason I'm hesitating is because it's a really tough nut to crack. It really is, yeah. You know, I know there's still challenges through the New Zealand Cricket system with the sense of, you know, "Oh, well, they"didn't communicate that to us, and we didn't know about that, and we don't, we feel left out," and, you know, that still occurs. Yes. But I think the work that New Zealand Cricket does in bringing its people together to creating national governance forums, region or regional, you know, forums, you know, a whole range of different ways that bring its community together. Yeah. To have these face-to-face hui [gatherings] and relationship building exercises to work through the nutty issues of its national strategy or whatever it is. And the other example I've talked about a bit, but I know Tennis New Zealand also works really hard to have these national governance forums. Got one on Friday coming up actually, and that is all about, you know, spending the time to bring your people together to help them help you work through, you know, what the challenges are, but also to obviously help the other part of collaborative governance is the, you know, is the strategy, is the co-design and strategy. Yes. So it's not just the national body creating the strategy, it's the co-design and the strategic process that is part of collaborative governance. Interesting, you know, you talked before about the value of technology and in the one-to-many communications, but both examples that you gave of where it's done very well were face-to-face. So yeah, the personal relationships are definitely the strongest, aren't they. Yeah. To what extent issues of power imbalance hinder effective collaboration? Do you still see scenarios where you've got one or two players that are stronger than others and throw their weight around a bit too much? Yeah, very much so. So I'll give an example of some of the work we've been doing recently with golf in Australia. It's a really interesting example because we're studying the process of it moving from a, you know, a unitary, sorry, a federated system to dabbling in the idea of collaborative governance. And where they've got to is instead of working at the governance level to work through these nutty issues of collaboration, they've decided to go to a one, a unitary management system. Right. So there's enormous efficiencies within the states to share their management resource. A shared services-type model. And shared services, at the management level, not the governance level. So that you maintain the governance structures, the boards of each of the state, but you. Yeah, you've got one management team reporting to all of those states. Correct. Correct. I'd rather not be the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of that organisation. That'd be tough. Yeah. So some of the states have bought into that and some of them haven't. Right. I think there's a couple of the big ones that haven't. It'll be interesting to see how that works out. Yeah, it's a really, yeah, it's a really interesting example of, yeah, I mean your question was around power imbalances and yeah, typically in an NSO there'll be the big regions, like, you know, the Auckland region or whatever, you know, that has a different set of needs to a smaller region. What sort of mechanisms can you put in place to get that balance back, to try and even that out? Yeah. Nice. Nice question. I think, you know, in the experiences of the sports that I've kind of watched and worked with and researched, it is all about the communication process of a shared mission and a shared purpose. So coming back to, we are actually a family and we have a common and shared DNA. We have a common and shared mission and purpose. So, you know, if we agree on that, how do we then move forward with the... Everyone's paddling the waka [canoe] in the same direction? Yeah. Yeah. Well, just the sense of, "So what was"our shared purpose again?" Yeah, because it's there. It's absolutely there. Yeah. Very much. In sport, it's probably easier to find that shared purpose than anywhere else. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Or sport and charities in many cases. Yes. How does organisational national culture impact collective governance? Oh jeez. Question eight. Save the best to last. Pretty fascinating, eh. Because the sort of work I do is, research work is action research. So it means that, you know, I'm in there with the national bodies in many cases working with the board to in this case to move toward a collaborative governance model or, you know, so there's, we're studying it while we're doing it. Yeah, right. While it's happening. And there's real insight in, you know, you learn about the real deep challenges of these great ideas and what their neighbours and what the barriers are. And for a while now I've, because I've worked with a range of different sports for a while now, I sort of have these kind of observations and hunches around the team sport versus the individual sport culture. And, you know, this is just kind of personal perspectives. It's not from a from a research point of view, but I, yeah, one of my hunches would be, I think the, you know, the individual sport landscape is not as used to the idea of this - Collaboration. - which is basic, essentially. You know, because I'm a tennis player. I grew up, you know, in competition with that person across the other side of the net. My mission was to beat that person. And, you know, so you, this is a mindset that you create, and it takes a bit to, you know, reconsider the value sometimes of that, you know, that perspective. So that's just a hunch. So but the, you know, it's a bit of a fun one from my point of view. But yeah, how does organisation and national culture impact collaborative? Yeah, hugely, hugely. You know what, I think you've said organisation culture, but one of the other things I've observed is how lucky we are to learn from indigenous cultures. So I say indigenous because I mean Māori and Pacific cultures in New Zealand. And, you know, my understanding is, you know, they're steeped in deep collectivism. Yes. Deeply understand collective behaviours and relationships. And so we've got lots to learn in how those kinds of ethnic cultures, indigenous cultures can uplift and enhance the way that we might outplay our collaborative cultures and organisations. Māori governance is a topic that I'm dying to dig into. And yeah, I'm looking forward to having somebody to talk to about that, for those reasons. Yeah. And one final question for you. What advice would you give to a new director of a sports organisation within that collaborative context, within a federated structure? I think I would, I think my piece of advice would be to value the perspective that someone might be coming from, even if it's potentially counter to the collaborative philosophy. So by that I mean what I said before, which was, you know, throwing the baby out with the bath water. I mean, I think we're incredibly privileged to have so many committed volunteers and people wanting to give their time to sport governance, and so committed to wanting to make their organisation work. You know, I think we should be valuing that and so to come run roughshod over that by saying, "Oh yeah, you need to be"far more nationally," you know, whatever it is, in terms of, you know, talking down the parochial kind of representative mindset. Yes. Yeah. There's been issues with that. And yeah, we need to back off that. And yeah, we need to think about, you know, how we sit within the family of organisations, but to devalue that and not to appreciate the time and emotional connection that people feel to sport would be a mistake. So yeah, that would be my piece of advice. Cool. Lesley, thank you very much for your time. Really appreciated that conversation. Cool. I look forward to catching up again soon, talking on another topic I think, and we'll see you next episode. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for watching this episode of Governance Bites. We have more episodes on YouTube and your favourite podcast channel, where I interview directors and experts on various topics relating to Boards of Directors and governance. We'd love to see you back, and please like, subscribe, and share the videos and podcasts.