(PART THREE) FIFA FORWARD 3.0 (2023-2026): BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN STRATEGY AND IMPLEMENTATION

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted association football across the world, mirroring its impact across all sports. Across the world and to varying degrees, leagues and competitions were cancelled or postponed. On 17 March 2020, the CAF announced that the 2020 African Nations Championship had been postponed to a later date due to the pandemic. ?On 30 June CAF announced that the tournament would be held in January 2021. Both the CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup semi-finals were postponed from their original schedules, to be resumed in October 2020.

Structurally, football associations in Africa generate little or no cash flows and their equity is limited. At best, as was the case before the COVID crisis, the best-managed associations made no (or few) losses. From this point of view, the COVID crisis put a spanner in the works and it would take several years to return to pre-crisis levels. In response to this crisis, FIFA immediately started to gather data from MAs, confederations and other stakeholders: the estimated impact of the disruption was around USD 14 billion, or roughly one-third of the USD 40-45 billion generated annually by football worldwide.

In response, the FIFA Council on the 25th of June 2020 approved the COVID-19 Relief Plan making USD 1.5 billion available to support all 211 MAs and the six confederations to help alleviate the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In close cooperation with the confederations, FIFA developed a three-phase plan, largely funded from the organisation’s solid financial reserves, and governed by regulations setting strict compliance and audit requirements as well as clear loan repayment conditions, under the supervision of a steering committee, chaired by Governor of the Bank of Finland Olli Rehn.

The novel Covid-19 pandemic taught us that there is a need to be prepared for the unexpected. As we enter into this “new normal” era, member associations, regions and confederations need to show resilience in our strategic planning and implementation.

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Resilience in Strategic Implementation

The FIFA Forward Programme 3.0 allows building on football programmes after the Covid 19 Pandemic. The plan should not only rebuild but rebuild better through resilience strategic implementation. Resilience is the ability to not only recover quickly from a crisis but to bounce back better—and even thrive. Resilient organizations don’t just bounce back from misfortune or change; they bounce forward. They absorb the shocks and turn them into opportunities to capture sustainable, inclusive growth. When challenges emerge, leaders and teams in resilient organizations quickly assess the situation, reorient themselves, double down on what’s working, and walk away from what’s not.

Resilient firms foster a diverse workforce in which everyone feels included and can perform at their best. They deliberately recruit the best talent, develop that talent equitably, upskill or reskill employees flexibly and fast, implement strong people processes that are free of bias, and maintain robust succession plans throughout the organization. Culture and desired behaviours are mutually reinforcing, supported by thoughtfully developed rules and standards to which adherence is enforced, while also promoting fast and agile decision-making.

To achieve a resilient strategic implementation plan, Mckinsey has given the 5 following guidelines:

1. Establish a common purpose and clear communications:

● Develop a common purpose that holds in peacetime and focus on more frequent communications with employees.

● Agile organizations often speak of a shared purpose and vision—the “North Star”—which helps people feel personally invested in the company.

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2. Set up structures to allow rapid decision-making:

● Retain the rapid decision-making cycles implemented during the COVID-19 crisis, but in a way that ensures long-term sustainability.

● Agile organizations emphasize quick, efficient, and continuous decision-making, rather than making big bets.

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3. Create networks of local teams with clear, accountable roles:

● Continue to develop networks of local teams and business units, encouraging sharing of lessons learned and best practices between them.

● Agile organizations go beyond empowering local teams to creating dense networks of teams with clear, flat structures.

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4. Develop a culture that empowers people:

● Ensure people continue to feel empowered, rather than returning to central control and rigid processes, and invest in leadership that develops people.

● In agile organizations, leaders act as visionaries, architects, and coaches.

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5. Provide people with the technology they need:

● Consider which new technologies to embed in ongoing ways of working.

● Agile organizations seamlessly integrate technology—it is core to every aspect of the organization.

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Agility in Strategic Implementation

To cultivate organizational resilience and ensure adaptability, member associations, regions/zones and confederations will need to think differently about how teams are structured and managed. Strategic agility is an attitude, a mindset. It is not about a quick reaction to a major threat or event but, rather, a constant ability to reshape the course of action. It also, critically, includes continuously checking, challenging, and where needed renewing the enterprise’s business model. It involves overall organization design and not just the rearrangement of products or categories. It entails requirements in terms of capabilities, e.g., sensing, leadership style and decision-making. It does not exclude strategic planning, but, rather, integrates it in a more flexible way that avoids rigidity and inertia.

Agile approaches were pioneered by software developers aiming to bring new products to market faster. Since then, Agile has evolved across industries to help teams create solutions faster with user feedback, iteration, collaboration, and better team design. Your organization may refer to this approach as Agile or use a different term. Regardless of what you call it, it has four foundational principles.

Focus on end users.

Connect early with users (internal or external) to gain insights and develop solutions that fit their needs or solve their problems. You can use design thinking, such as creating user personas and analyzing user journeys.

Be Team Oriented

Work in small teams with experts across relevant functions. The team is responsible for the solution and empowered to make decisions—leaders have removed cumbersome approval processes and other roadblocks.

Drive Continuous Value

Focus on the end goal, starting small and working incrementally to create the most valuable elements first. Your team should have concrete ways to measure success.

Experiment and Learn Quickly

Work in short test-and-learn cycles to create the right product, service, or process—remaining flexible without consuming lots of resources.

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Conclusion

Orchestrating change can be difficult under the best of circumstances. The chaos and complexities inherent in today’s change-stricken world often make it even tougher to determine, focus on and link all of the required efforts into one cohesive plan. Try as they might, most leaders are neither prepared for nor have direct experience stitching together the domains comprised by the organizations they lead. Leaders who can transform themselves, the critical relationships between and with those they lead, and the organizational components demanding change, will fare dramatically better than those who attempt a change in discrete, haphazard and impulsive ways.