Another failure of governance in Australian rugby.
Why do I care to comment beyond being a frustrated fan? It’s a great case study of the absolute criticality of governance in business transformation.
What do I know about rugby to justify commenting? I know a hell of a lot about governance in business transformation, and enough about rugby, to recognise how the failure of rugby’s stuttering program to improve itself, and future failures, follow inevitably from what are recognised in business transformation governance as faulty fundamentals.
The NRL outmanoeuvre Rugby because the N stands for National: it’s a proper peak body with appropriate powers to make decisions of national significance for the game.
The ARU by contrast is an afterthought, an add on vainly trying to “influence” the State bodies to agree that any given matter is of national significance, to see it the same way, to come to the same conclusions, to agree on a way forward and to execute the plan in a coordinated and cooperative manner. It never happens because of power dynamics and self defeating politics between the States.
Centralisation failed under McLennan and is failing under Waugh, not due to their talents and efforts but for fundamental reasons. It’s not something that can be fixed incrementally, without radical surgery leading to the establishment of an entirely new governance structure, a proper peak National body and appropriate mission-aligned division of powers.
That will require winding up the current corporate structures and starting again …or, of course, waiting for them to be compulsorily wound up in Administration and salvaging whatever wreckage is left.
It’s usually better to act than react but the existing power centres won’t even acknowledge the true nature of the underlying problem as they chug down another chardy.
#rugby #governance #transformation #managementlearning
Manager - Golf & Retail Operations at Invited
1moGreat golf game and really knows how to “grow the game”.