CEO's Blog - What I've learnt so far from running a charity.

I consider myself very lucky to have been able to work at Fulham Reach Boat Club full-time since January 2014. In fact, that’s a bit of an understatement, I feel ridiculously lucky and unbelievable grateful to be able to turn my passion into a career and, in a small way, give back to a sport that has done so much for me. Having said that it has also been a near vertical learning curve and if I’d known what it would have been like from the start I would’ve almost certainly been overwhelmed about what lay ahead.

So far I’m still in one piece, FRBC is still helping to unlock the potential of young people through rowing (over 1,200 this year) and so I thought I would share some of my learnings from the journey so far…

You have to love your job

There’s a lot of job/entrepreneur/life gurus out there that go on about this but I have to say that I am firmly in their camp on this one. Before FRBC I had a career in digital marketing and was working for a major London agency, it nearly broke me. I was in an environment of bickering colleagues, unrealistic expectations from the leadership and working on projects and products that I simply wasn’t passionate about. As a result I used to really suffer from the ‘Sunday night fear’ and spent my free time feeling stressed and then getting more worried that I wasn’t making the most of my time outside of the office. It was a horrible cycle to get into and I’m certain it would have led to more acute stress and anxiety had I stayed where I was. The final straw for me was when I was at my desk at 2am, hole punching a document for a meeting later that same day. I looked at what I was doing and decided that if I had another 60 or so years of work ahead of me I was going to make damn sure I enjoyed it, they couldn’t pay me enough to keep getting stressed. The next day I quit and shortly after took up a coaching role at Barn Elms Boathouse in Wandsworth. Professionally, it was the best decision I ever made and whilst certainly a step backward in terms of salary and a ‘normal’ career path I’ve spent every day since then looking forward to going to work!

Be brave

If I look back at the person I was when FRBC got going I really didn’t have much of a clue what I was doing. I’d never run a business before, I’d never managed a team of more than two people before and I’d certainly never dealt with major developers such as St. George. Having said that, I was sure that the idea myself and our Chairman had for FRBC was right and our intention was good. I also decided that no matter what the audience I was sat in front of was during the construction of FRBC, I was almost guaranteed to know more about them then rowing so hung onto that when trying to give off the air of a belligerent boardroom warrior.

Positivity is King

This is a key one for everything we do at FRBC. We are constantly breaking new ground in the sport in terms of opportunities for access and our approach to delivery and you wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve heard, “Yeah but….”, or, “Nope, that won’t work.”. If we had listened to everyone that’s tried to shoot down our ideas then the doors would have closed for the last time months ago. We also have some simple day-to-day processes to keep the positivity high. For example, if someone on the team comes into the office or club with that frown or a bit quiet then everything stops until we chat about it and it’s resolved. Some people may think that’s a bit too close to crossing into people’s personal lives but we can’t be an innovative leader in our field without a team of people that are fired up and ready to go. 

Leading is lonely

I really enjoy leading the team here but whilst it’s great to be a mouth-piece for all of the good work that’s going, I’ve learnt that leading from the front is the loneliest place to be. When things are going well, it’s absolutely right that the people doing the delivery are put front and centre, celebrated, rewarded and acknowledged to have delivered on what they said they would. When things are going badly it’s the leader that has to step up and take the blame, you’re the last line of defence and ultimately, everything is your fault! 

Bad communication is the Achilles heel of any organisation

This has been a recurring theme for us over the last couple of months and something we are trying to aggressively focus on for the next year. It’s amazing the number of times that people within the team are delivering great work but not telling anyone about it and bang, someone doesn’t get the info they need at the right time and the wheels come off.  We have a weekly sit down as a management team to look over the next 7 days and try to cover off any potential issues before they arise but as we’ve been going through the busiest part of year it’s clear we’ve all (including me) heard what our colleagues have said but haven’t necessarily been listening to them.

Done is better than perfect

This is my favourite approach at the moment. Lots of people are great at debating, at giving their two cents, at running the plan and coming up with multiple versions. There’s a time to plan and there’s a time to just get on and make things happen. Once something is done you can evaluate real-world results, adapt and overcome. If you ask your colleague for one more review it’s just another item left on the list. In the words of that famous clothing brand, Just Do It!

Steve