10th February 2021 | Boards | Sports
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#1: Younger shadow boards keep the C-suite in touch
Company boards tend to be older, less inclusive, and prone to groupthink. They also tend, in the 21st century, to live in a world of wealth and ease. So they miss a lot.
One solution is a “shadow board”—made up of younger and more diverse talent from across the business. HBR research suggests they’re effective in opening the eyes of the leadership—as long as they are respected.
The research (published pre-Covid) is by academics at IMD, and their examples mostly come from Europe: the US: Prada, Gucci, AccorHotels, Stora Enso (Finland), as well as GroupM India.
The lessons are mostly the obvious ones: it needs to be sponsored by the CEO, you need to iterate as you learn what works. The outcomes can be significant reinvention and redesign. But one finding was striking. Leaderships tended to gravitate to a nomination process, based on younger colleagues they thought had high potential. The younger colleagues preferred a more open process:
Stora Enso’s Haggstrom pushed for an open-application process — allowing anyone who fit certain criteria to apply. Doing so not only created a more diverse cohort; it also allowed the company to discover some hidden gems who would not otherwise have been on the radar. Interestingly, they tested the performance of the company’s top forty high potentials (who were clear shoo-ins for the program) against the employees chosen via open enrollment. On abilities such as data analytic skills, sense-making, and teamwork, the open-enrollment members outperformed the high-potentials.
#2: The future of sports fandom
(Image via Zwift newsroom)
The aftermath of an American SuperBowl is a good moment to mention a recent piece in s+b on the future of sports fandom. The interviews are with American sports executives, and their focus is on US sports, but I think the main points apply more generally:
Studio thinking. “Pro sports have long been primarily staged for the fans in the stands, with cameras showing up to capture the action for viewers at home.” But when teams are playing in empty stadiums, the stadium effectively becomes a huge studio. But again: the lack of a live atmosphere makes people less likely to watch.
Which takes you to esports, which are still growing like topsy. In fact: “PwC’s most recent annual Global Entertainment & Media Outlook shows that esports revenue is growing faster than that of any other media and entertainment category.”
But: sports viewing in the US is declining, especially amoung young people, possibly because they watch less broadcast TV. On Fortnite recently, “players could take their muscled avatars to a post-apocalyptic setting and watch a giant version of rapper Travis Scott perform. About 27 million players showed up. Compare that to the 2020 baseball World Series, which was watched by only about 10 million people.” Maybe there’s a logic to going beyond broadcast and streaming live sports on Fortnite.
I’m less persuaded by the other two. Yes, there’s a lot more data on sports now, a lot of it live, but the minute that gets linked to microgaming, you’re in the realms of potential manipulation and corruption. And simulated games? Really? I’d say it’s probably only good for geeks who want to argue over whether the 2020 Klopp version of Liverpool was better than the 1990 Dalglish edition.
Because the whole point of sport—the reason we love it—is that real people are pitting themselves against each other in real time. Even if they are using a virtual interface to do it. And for that reason, I think we’re more likely to see fandom blending with virtual participation, as it has done on Zwift during the pandemic: amateurs in the same settings as pros, awestruck at the gap in performance levels.
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