"Gravity Shift" - Brother Cycling Podcast Episode Six
Phil Jones MBE
Managing Director | Keynote Speaker | Advisor | Running the UK subsidiary of a large technology multi-national | IIP Platinum Workplace | Investing in People & Their Potential
The COVID19 pandemic has caused a gravity shift in every area of life, from the operations of a major business like Brother UK to the future of British cycle sport. Every sector - commercial, administrative, sporting and social - must engage with the new realities created by coronavirus. As ever, the challenges of reimagining our practices and protocols are counterbalanced by new opportunities.
Success will be determined by recognising the new landscape created by this gravity shift. At Brother UK, we recognised immediately that it would affect demand patterns, routes to market, the way we sell, how we price, our product range, pricing programmes…everything. We reacted quickly to the emergence of a new normal and have pursued this forensic mode of thinking for months.
I’m hoping that the various actors in British road racing - teams, riders, organisers, sponsors, and British Cycling, the sport’s governing body - recognise the opportunity created by Covid19’s gravity shift to end the sport’s boom-bust model and embrace a more sustainable future. The moratorium imposed this year by British Cycling on national road racing created a space for the type of fundamental review we’ve conducted at Brother UK. The good news is that a review has begun.
The new episode of the Brother UK Cycling Podcast gives voice to many of the primary actors on UK cycle sport’s national stage: Erick Rowsell, British Cycling’s Elite Road Racing Manager, Jonathan Durling, Partnerships Director at SweetSpot Group, Peter Harrison, founder of the Cyclone Festival of Cycling, and Larry Hickmott, the tireless journalist and photographer who runs the Brother UK-sponsored website, VeloUK.
I contribute insights from my experience with Brother UK as a major sponsor of professional sport, including Formula One and Premier League football. I’m pleased with the outcome. Too often, the debate about cycle sport - Brother UK sponsors four British teams, three major races and a fleet of neutral service vehicles - descends into acrimony; a focus on problems, rather than solutions.
Arguably, the most significant contributions come from Erick Rowsell. A professional rider until last year, Erick has dived into sports administration at the deep end. It’s a testimony to his passion and willingness to listen that he’s already won the support of race organisers - at once, the most vital and most disaffected of domestic cycle sport’s many communities - and proposed a long-term plan to restructure the National Road Series calendar in three tiers.
Anyone who leads a major business will understand the challenges of restructuring exercises and the importance of carrying people with you to execute the strategic goal.
In our podcast, Erick speaks well about the overarching purpose of the National Road Series - the top-tier of domestic road racing and the category in which our men’s and women’s teams compete. I hope that as well as recognising its capacity to develop young British talent, he embraces the necessity of delivering a dependable, sustainable platform for sponsorship activation: the central tenet of a sponsorship roadmap.
Private business remains the sport’s revenue provider, and sponsorship is often the first of the many “non-essentials” a company seeks to free itself from when profits reduce. In these unprecedented times, cycle sport must extra take steps to reassure sponsors that platforms for activation will be restored as soon as it is safe. A business of Brother UK’s scale depends upon significant reach. A national road series, almost by definition, is essential if we’re to achieve return on investment. The time for British cycle sport’s actors to agree methods to shift from boom-and-bust to sustainability is now.
As in business, where separate areas of a company are linked in the pursuit of a common commercial goal, so cycle sport has a high degree of interdependency. Teams need sponsors, sponsors need platforms, platforms need races, and races need organisers. Those organisers need to find funding, and they also need to have the full support of the federation.
Succession planning is an important consideration for any company. Acquiring external talent and rewarding excellence within by promotion to the c-suite is vital to ensure business continuity when senior leaders seek new challenges. One of the many organisational failures of domestic road racing uncovered by our podcast is the absence of succession planning for an influential but ageing nucleus of race organisers.
Race organiser Peter Harrison is in his seventies, yet continues to run a business as well as organising the Cyclone Festival. Its challenge events attract up to 4,000 amateur riders, and Sir Bradley Wiggins and Lizzie Deignan have won its long-established elite races. In the podcast, Peter makes no secret of the lack of young organisers prepared to step forwards and take up the reins.
Any leader will recognise the value of a risk matrix, a document continually updated with ‘known unknowns.’ Our podcast removes the greatest of these – Erick reveals that British Cycling will host a National Road Series next year – but many remain. HSBC will end its sponsorship of the federation after next year’s rescheduled Olympic and Paralympic Games, and CEO Julie Harrington will leave in January. BC will certainly experience change.
The domestic sport faces a host of other challenges; almost all of them scenarios that a business leader would recognise instantly. From the necessity of a reliable platform for sponsorship activation (a racing calendar) to the ultimate ‘known unknown’ of COVID-19, scenario planning can help to identify and mitigate the risks of an uncertain future.
How ever bleak the outlook, the forecast is not all doom and gloom. Challenges always bring opportunities. While many businesses are suffering, others are thriving in the “new normal”. Teams and races must identify them and present a compelling proposal, preferably enhanced by a commitment to embrace the vast commercial possibilities of e-racing. It's often darkest before the dawn. I hope the visions and solutions expressed in our new podcast episode offer much-needed shafts of light.
You can find episode six of the Brother Cycling podcast on all usual podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7qzMTMj5zcpTqSd0FXqlIi?si=3bfCr4JpTFqGc6Sixcw7bA
Quality & Systems Manager at POLYBLEND UK LIMITED
3 年Word perfect ?? spot on to my thoughts & feelings.
Data Science Manager at Robinhood | Expertise in Financial Analytics and Predictive Modeling | Data-Driven Decision Maker
4 年Looking forwards to listening to this and the issues raised and opportunities presented.