Together Alone?

Don't worry this isn't me offering a TikTok style rendition of the 1993 Crowded House classic. It's me reflecting on the end of an era - the end of the Sporting Edge office.

In early March last year, I waved our team farewell to work from home as a temporary measure to keep them safe. We made the decision a few weeks before the government directive as it seemed the right thing to do, uncertainty and anxiety were rising and we agreed that this was a novel short-term solution. We hastily grabbed a laptop, mouse and the packet of emergency biscuits from the second drawer. It was an exciting opportunity.

As the eternal optimist, I genuinely expected it to be for 3 weeks. But 58 weeks later, we haven't returned. So over the Easter weekend - we packed up the office and shipped out.

Exodus - scattered paper shreds are all that remain (they've gone now!)

The cost of carrying a fully functioning office for a year will be something that many businesses have had to bear. Despite the sunk cost, the mammoth task of clearing the office combined with the hope that things might rebound to 'normal' were the perfect cocktail to fuel my procrastination. I knew we had to do it but it wasn't the cost that tipped the scale.

The decision was made, the furniture was shifted and a thousand flights of stairs were scaled. We sold the desks, chairs and filing cabinets to local entrepreneurs excitedly setting up their home offices. This left a pile of paper as high as a giant redwood - a decade of documents to sort. Some were sensitive, some were hilarious and some should never even have been printed. The waste was astounding. To think that we've hardly printed a document in a year is remarkable and set's a new sustainable ethos. So after cooking a family meal on our South African style Braai and armed with a nice glass of Malbec - I started the process. Early business plans, hundreds of workshop handouts and scribblings of logo's and straplines that we'd kept 'just in case.'

Reflect and Ignite - a decade of paperwork goes into the Braai

All of them were interesting but few of them were useful. Two sheets from the thousand got reserved in a special pile under the wine bottle - they articulated our purpose from the early 2011. This was quite a ceremony - a fireside chat with my last ten years of building a business from scratch. Reflecting on the people, the exciting conversations, the hopeful proposals and the wounding setbacks along the way. But the flames also marked a new beginning - a very exciting one at that.

During the last twelve months the Sporting Edge team has been truly outstanding. We've always set high standards as we strive to deliver a premium experience whether it's through our thinking, our content or our client management. This is easy with a warm tailwind but pressure reveals people's true character and I have been proud and amazed to see the personal integrity and quality of work the team has produced in adversity.

With much of our traditional revenue coming from my face to face senior leadership events and keynote speaking, the pandemic restrictions meant that we needed to pivot pretty sharpish. Within a few weeks we'd scoped out a brand new proposition which would provide a pioneering digital coaching experience for our clients whether they were a blue-chip corporate or an ambitious solopreneur.

Since 2010 we've interviewed some of the world's brightest minds from elite sport, business, academia, the military and performing arts to understand the secrets of their success. It turns out there are very few secrets but a set of shared attributes emerged which became central to our approach. Our two-minute video insights take clients 'Inside the Mind of Champions' to gain fresh perspectives and solutions to their current challenges. Imagine how Cirque du Soleil, the All Blacks, F1 or leading thinkers at Google would solve the same performance issue. We all think our organisation is unique but fundamentally we're all trying to get the best out of ourselves and our teams and achieving this calls for a certain mindset and culture.

The video interviewees we'd filmed showcased inspirational stories of how to navigate pressure and setbacks, how to build trust in teams and how to innovate which is exactly what we all face now. We'd always delivered our content face to face but we needed a new solution to make it accessible to a virtual audience through lockdown, so the Sporting Edge Members Club was born.

We built a brand new technology platform with learning architects and UX designers fusing stunning design with function and categorised over 700 insights under 70 performance themes. We created test groups across all devices and made sure the enrollment process was seamless and secure. For our small team of learning experts, tech gurus and advisors to pull together and deliver this project on time was a joy to be part of. It would have been a remarkable achievement if we were all in the same office but to co-ordinate this while working remotely was stunning.

In fact it fundamentally changed my view of work. I have grown up in professional sports teams where banter, interpersonal chemistry and competition are the lifeblood. The idea of working together but remotely is very alien and to be honest, it's not why I set up my own company. I miss the impromptu conversations and the spontaneous gags - that you 'had to be there' to understand. But I also realise that my team have worked brilliantly alone - they have better work life balance and are able to sustain periods of focused work for longer. (I think I was the main distraction tbh!)

Other benefits are emerging. The chance to recruit from a diverse global talent pool rather than within a 30 minute commute and the chance to meet more clients at neutral venues when the restrictions are relaxed. There's a cost reduction from having a hot desk style hub rather than our large, fixed commitment. My team can be more flexible around their families and build exercise breaks into their day to replace traffic jams. We trust each other to get the job done.

But alongside the benefits, more questions remain. How do we recruit and induct a new team member and can we foster the same emotional connection to the brand that we generated from our buzzing around the same hive? Which of our policies and rules need to flex and how do we maintain that shared mental model that we had from working in an open plan office. How often should we schedule thinking/planning/working together to keep our momentum but to avoid it feeling like a chore? As a small business, we'll need to find our new rhythm and be ready to adapt. My definition of being in a team has been challenged - so I'll remain open-minded as to how I can update it, any suggestions are welcome.

It's clear that we need to combine the best of both world's in this new era for Sporting Edge. Our 'together' time of creativity and collaboration should be fun, passionate and energetic and our 'alone' time should bring deep focus, quality and personal balance.

The two sheets of paper that survived the inferno were an early draft of our strategic intent and shared purpose. I'd written them in 2011 - I wanted our content to inspire thousands of people to be happier, healthier and more successful in their careers. Through our events, and digital coaching programmes, I know that we have come a long way to achieving this. And as we look to the future, our exciting new Members Club promises to deliver even more confidence and success for our ambitious community.

Sometimes it takes a transition to force reflection and to recalibrate your goals. I'm incredibly proud of what we achieved working in our office and my job is to ensure that in our next 10 years we become even stronger, guided by our inspirational purpose as we work - together alone.

Experience our Members Club here - use the discount code LINK21 in the checkout to get the first month half price for just ￡15 inc VAT. I'd love to you to try it, don't worry - you can cancel anytime.