INNOVATION INSIGHT: Find a tipping point

Part 4 of the behind-the-scenes story of the FHL's first Power Play – a three-month social innovation sprint to increase female leadership in hockey.

The first major a-ha of the weekend FHL Power Play innovation sprint hit around the same time as the second round of coffee Saturday morning.

After weeks of preparation and then a day of travel for many, the team was hunkered down in a room overlooking the arena at St. Mary's University in Halifax to take their big ideas to increase participation in female coaching to the next level.?

They started out by building two MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) to tackle the problem. One would be a peer support network of female coaches.? The other would be an education program for men interested in being mentors.

But when they tested the first round of MVPs out, they got some game-changing feedback.?

Although they'd uncovered dozens of barriers to female coaches, it turns out that (almost) everything comes down to one core problem.

Women in coaching feel excluded and alone.

They describe coaching in the current culture and system as constantly swimming upstream. To succeed, they need allies, mentors and support.

Power Play designer Alex Ryan explains.

“When we'd done our initial preparation, we'd done it around a coaching journey. So it might be that you need some help with your hockey skills or you need some help with your leadership skills and so forth. But with this insight, the focus shifted from the skills side of things to the allyship, which deals more with power dynamics.”

There's no shortage of resources available to help coaches with the technical side of hockey. But there is a huge void of authentic, courageous and meaningful support.

That insight was transformative for the group building the support system. They realized that they could let go of the idea of building a complex digital platform from scratch and focus on finding the absolute simplest way of creating a support network of female coaches. That's when they discovered the answer right in front of them.

“The team realized that they already have a WhatsApp channel they've been using for a year for this project that's doing a lot of things they're talking about. The solution could be as simple as a WhatsApp group that we could literally start right now. So there is no barrier to doing this.”

At the same time, Power Play designer Cailin Ahloy shared another huge insight with the male ally group. Instead of focusing on the 6% of coaches in the system who identify as female, why not focus on the other 94% of (male) coaches? That way, they wouldn’t have to "educate and develop" male allies – they’d just have to find and activate them.

"What would happen if we have one male ally for every female coach? Then we've doubled the change movement. That's 6000 females and 6000 males. And then what if we get those 12,000 people to go out and each recruit one more male ally? Then we're at 24% of the coaching population. That's a tipping point in the theory of systems change that creates unstoppable culture change."

By reframing what they were trying to do and making ideas tangible with MVPs, real numbers and feedback from users, the Power Play innovation team generated two major breakthroughs. From there, they pivoted and adapted their theory of change to something like this:

“If we build supportive networks for female coaches that actively engage others as sponsors and mentors, then we'll create a tipping point that triggers cultural and systemic change.”

Based on this ground-breaking work, they spent the rest of Saturday iterating on their original ideas to build out new MVPs they could test with their audience of real coaches the next day.

The male allyship concept evolved into a matching network where existing female coaches would nominate male allies, who would then work with new coaches to provide not just sponsorship, but real-world support. For example, instead of mentoring the coaches with advice and feedback, male allies would partner with them to figure out how to navigate the system and deal with difficult parents or administrators. They’d come to meetings with them, and stand up for them even when they're not in the room. In essence, the male sponsors would become their advocates, their champions.

When the team shared their new MVP with half a dozen real coaches Sunday morning, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The female coaches all had stories about times when that kind of support would have been invaluable, like when they are the head coach with male assistants, but officials and others always talk to their assistants, not them. And the assistants don't correct the situation. They even identified a large hockey association in Ontario that would be the perfect place to test the program.

At the same time, the What's App group branded their idea as the Coaches Coffee House (deliberately avoiding the "women's” label) and shared it with the test group of coaches. It immediately resonated, as some of the coaches had already set up their own, informal networks and knew how valuable that kind of just-in-time peer support could be.?

However, the Coffee House would need a bit of structure and administration – not just to keep the conversation productive – but also to identify emerging needs and patterns that could be addressed with additional support and resources. The coaches were also quick to point out that the Coffee House would have to be independent from the formal hockey system, for safety and credibility, and suggested that having the FHL manage it as a "neutral" party might be best.

Though the weekend was exhausting and intense, the Power Play team is energized by their new focus and keen to move forward.?

In particular, they love the shift away from expecting women to solve a problem they didn't create and engaging everyone in the solution.

Alex summed it up perfectly in the debrief.

"The males have to be part of the solution. If we are expecting the 6% of female coaches in the system who are already marginalized and in a difficult environment to lead the change, you've got to be kidding me. It's everyone's responsibility, but it's the males, the 94% who can really make a difference. And many of them want to help. So we're going to work with the early adopters, the willing in that group. And double or even triple the amount of people pushing for change in the system."

Now the team faces their next big decision. Do they try to develop one idea, both or iterate and start again? Much depends on potential support and buy-in from the hockey ecosystem. Follow along and find out!