Key Goals

By David

Let’s get back to Project Vanguard. Swimwatch has established to the satisfaction of New Zealand’s best sport’s attorney that Swimming New Zealand has probably acted illegally on at least three occasions during the Project Vanguard exercise. If that opinion is right then Coulter, Byrne, Berge and Toomey are crooks. The stench of suspicion is everywhere. The moral authority to govern is in tatters. SPARC is auditing Cameron’s folly. The organization is in serious danger of running out of money unless Coulter can successfully seize the Region’s bank accounts. What a disgusting mess.

On Swimming New Zealand’s website we are told Project Vanguard has nine “key goals”. This report will look at each of these. But before we do, readers may recall that the only authority Coulter was given by the Regions was to determine how “the current regional structure” could be “optimized”. Coulter has turned that very specific instruction into nine key goals. He has assumed powers way beyond anything the owners of the sport had in mind. No wonder he was dropped from the Olympic Association. Swimming should follow their good example.

However, ignoring the illegality of the “key goals” let’s look at what Coulter wants them to be.

To be a single organisation with a one team approach

There it is – in black and white. SNZ’s constitutional goal is to have everyone doing the same things, the same way, under their control. And it’s nonsense. There is no evidence to support the idea that we will be better if Southland is forced to run their affairs the way Auckland finds best; or Taranaki is made to comply with Wellington; or Canterbury is ordered to tow the line with what works best in Northland. In fact the opportunity for Regions to develop their own solutions to their own local problems; the opportunity to have a variety of systems is an organizational strength. No one expects Countdown to be exactly the same as Foodtown. Having a choice is the power of a free market. Duncan Laing would never have produced Danyon Loader if Otago had been run from Wellington. Remember it was Swimming New Zealand’s Wellington office who described Laing as “lacking man management skills”.

We need to remember that Jan Cameron sold the same line of rubbish when she pushed to have all the high performance money and power centralized at the Millennium Institute. Centralize everything in her hands and medals would flow, she said. And it hasn’t happened. Since she took over we have won nothing. She got her socialism. For ten years she has controlled everything and New Zealand lost. Our country’s swimming is poorer because she sold us a “single organization” approach. In fact her empire is so rotten; it is now the subject of a SPARC audit. The rest of the organization will suffer the same result if it follows Coulter down the path of his clearly expressed socialist fantasy.

To deliver a better service to members

I agree with this goal and of course that’s all Coulter was instructed to do; optimize the performance of the current regional structure. He was never given license to dash off on a quarter of a million dollars flight of fancy. That guy needs to learn to do what he is told. A national sporting organization is no place for those unable to exercise the disciplines of leadership. By definition Regional people are closer to the sport’s membership than Coulter or Byrne will ever be and certainly better placed to provide a good swimming service. Only the overwhelming arrogance of Coulter, Byrne and Berge would think otherwise.

To champion swimming from grassroots to High Performance

Who would have thought we’d see the day when Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance management would be trumpeted as the way the whole organization should be run. In case you had not noticed Murray, SPARC, that’s the people who pay you to administer the Millennium program, think that it has performed so badly; think that it is in such disarray that, they have ordered two of their directors to sit on to your Board and commissioned their own audit of your High Performance program. Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance program is exactly why Coulter and Byrne should never get anywhere near the grassroots portion of this business.

To create sustainable change

Of course good change is good. Our problem is that the four models recommended by Swimming New Zealand all involve central control. We never asked for that. We don’t want that. We will never accept that. Please, go away and do what you were told. Look at ways that the current federal structure can do its job better. On second thoughts there is no need to do the “what you were told” bit. Just go away.

To support volunteers

This goal is deeply dishonest. Here are the guys who in report after report have told us that although the sport’s volunteers have done a sterling job it is now time to replace them with Swimming New Zealand paid professionals. Even the last “goal” on this list says “to adopt a more professional approach” Project Vanguard is not about supporting volunteers it’s about replacing swimming’s volunteers. Getting rid of volunteers is not called support. Coulter and Byrne want to create a small coterie of sport’s management graduates who will run to their every beck and call; not like those pesky Regions who enjoy and do a good job of managing their own affairs. New Zealand Surf hired professional administrators and now the volunteer base is bit by bit getting smaller and smaller. And they are killing themselves financially in the process. New Zealand swimming does not want to go down the same path.

To take advantage of technology

The inclusion of this goal is simply an attempt by Swimming New Zealand to make the case that the Regional federal structure is responsible for the sport’s inability to apply modern data management systems. That’s ridiculous. Probably the most important technological company in the world is Microsoft. And Microsoft is used in MBA courses as the gold standard of a federally managed corporation. If Microsoft has found their federal system best manages the world’s most advanced technology, Swimming New Zealand can hardly blame federalism for their failure to install half a dozen PCs. That failure simply confirms that Coulter and Byrne are not up to the job. Federalism has nothing to do with it.

To grow membership

Is Mike Byrne really trying to tell us that his Wellington office is better at recruiting members than the Regions and Clubs? Experience tells us the opposite. As the number of staff and influence of Byrne’s Wellington office has grown, the membership of the organization has steadily declined. Coulter and Byrne are the problem. They probably go for weeks without seeing a new Swimming New Zealand member. I saw three new members this afternoon. And I’m not unusual. With the exception of Cameron’s Millennium Institute staff that’s the common lot of every coach and swim teacher in the country.

To secure and increase funding base

Here we go again – the blame game. Swimming New Zealand’s story goes something like this. The insurance company support Brian Palmer secured for the Auckland League competition hurt Swimming New Zealand’s deal with State Insurance. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard Byrne and Hemsworth make that claim. And it is just rubbish. It contains not an atom of truth. I challenged Byrne months ago to produce a letter from State Insurance saying they were upset about the Auckland League sponsorship. No letter ever appeared.

I don’t believe for a moment that the funding base of swimming will increase in a sport centrally controlled by Wellington. The Regions earn swimming $1.5 million every year. Would the same level of support be forthcoming from the Southland Licensing Trust, from Otago pubs, from Hawkes Bay RSA’s, from dozens of Regional raffles, swim meets and sausage sizzles if the whole lot was run from Wellington. Of course it would not. Without the work of the Regions local funding would be cut in half. Just look at surf.

To adopt a more professional and business- like approach

Byrne and Coulter revel in the message that they are ‘professional”. They know about business. That is really ironic when 60% of their funding comes in the form of SPARC government welfare checks. They can’t even generate enough real business to cover half their expenses; nothing much private enterprise in that. The sixteen Regions however stand on their own commercial feet. These regional “amateurs” are not on the sporting dole. They manage successful commercial operations. They run swim meets, apply for commercial grants, run sausage sizzles and car washes and sell caps and t-shirts. Their commercially generated income has to meet 100% of their expenses; and it does.

The problem in eliminating the Regions is that the one section of the sport that pays its way will disappear. The whole sport will go on the dole. It becomes government welfare dependant. The number of raffles, sausage sizzles, meets and grant applications gradually declines as the membership decides to just leave it to the professionals. A whole section of self supporting income disappears. Financially the sport will be in a very much poorer place. And that’s where the Coulter gang wants to take swimming. Coulter and Byrne have made much of the fact that Surf and the Girl Guides adopted a professional services delivery constitution. Both organizations centralized power in their Wellington Head Office. However the adulation of the Coulter gang is premature. In both organizations there has not been time for the negatives to appear – until now. Gradually the cracks are beginning to show. Volunteers, membership and fund raising are all in decline.

I have known a dozen unpaid regional administrators who have forgotten more about swimming and business administration that the combined knowledge of Byrne, Coulter and Cameron. In New Zealand I know of one who runs a multimillion dollar sign writing business, another owns his own bank, another is the wife and the sister of two New Zealand sporting icons and another is a multimillion dollar property developer. Would I trust these “amateurs” or Mike Byrne with my $6 million investment in swimming? Let me tell you, the answer is not even close. I don’t know how many of you have read Cameron’s letters from New Delhi. The standard of English is dreadful. Worse than the eighth grade classes, I’m told, she once taught. The other day one of Swimming New Zealand’s “professionals” had to ask one of the Auckland Region’s volunteers what a Rangitoto relay meant. Clearly, paid does not mean good.

So that’s Swimming New Zealand’s nine key Project Vanguard goals. We have explained what we feel about them. Good luck in deciding what you make of it all.