Archive for September, 2011

Murray Coulter’s Resignation

Saturday, September 3rd, 2011

By David

Murray Coulter has finally gone. Swimming New Zealand became a better place. Is his resignation enough? Not nearly. The crisis that has affected the sport is a crisis with the entire Board and with Jan Cameron and Mike Byrne. Coulter has been thrown out in the hope that the others can save their jobs. However the disastrous management that resulted in the Ineson Report and brought us to this place was not caused by Coulter alone. It is the Swimming New Zealand Board who acted shamefully. It is Cameron and Byrne who have let us down.

If any readers have doubts about the collective responsibility of this Board, they only need to read the first public utterance of the new Board under the direction of acting Chairman Butler. This is contained in an open letter to all members posted on Swimming New Zealand’s website and attached at the conclusion of this story.

It is the meanest, most classless, bitter and nasty document I think I have ever read. If ever there was proof positive that Butler and his Board need to follow Coulter into the wilderness this first effort at communication does the trick perfectly. There is no attempt at reconciliation, no class, no breeding. This is not a Board communicating with its shareholders. This is an ill-mannered rant from an arrogant group of autocrats. Butler may have taken over but, if this document is to be believed, things have just got worse.

It is none of my business, but The Coalition’s original goal of establishing a new mandate with a new Board has not been satisfied by Coulter’s departure. The original call was for the entire Board to resign and for a new Board to be elected. When that is done and Byrne and Cameron have carried their brown boxes out of the building for the last time, then we can get on with the business of supporting the leaders of this sport.

I am not surprised that a Butler lead Board acts no differently from the Coulter version. Butler is the guy who, at a meeting in Nelson recently, publically threatened to damage the reputations of those who questioned his divine right to rule. So what is it about the Butler Board communication that is so offensive? I suggest you read it in order to understand its full and bitter contents. Here, though, are a few highlights.

In relation to Project Vanguard the Butler Board says, “Challenging the process and procedural aspects of the initiative is destructive and unhelpful.” A more common way of saying that is, “The end justifies the means.” The Regions, Mr. Butler hold the rule of law to be pretty important. You may put it into the category of “destructive and unhelpful” – which is why you should never have anything to do with this sport again. It is hard to imagine any Board putting its name to a document that says the rules of the organization don’t matter. The two SPARC representatives should be ashamed of themselves.

In relation to the high performance program the Butler Board reports that they, “acknowledge that there have been issues in aspects of the High Performance programme. At the same time there have been some considerable successes.” Clearly the Butler Board is unaware that after spending $16 million over ten years no New Zealander has won a medal at a world Championship or Olympic swimming event. Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance program has been a failure. I can think of five or six New Zealand swimmers who in another environment would have won Olympic medals. Jan Cameron, Mike Byrne and the Swimming New Zealand Board let these athletes down. And that is a considerable failure.

Referring to the Board’s communication with the Regions the new Butler Board says their values are, “in keeping with the SNZ values of being open and transparent.” I guess they must be referring to the Sweetenham Report that they sat on for three years until Swimwatch obtained a copy via the Official Information Act. Or perhaps Butler means the next sentence in this report that says, “The board is concerned by the number of clubs within the coalition regions that state they had no awareness of their region’s involvement in this request.” In the interests of being open and transparent I would imagine all the Clubs reporting their concern would be included on the Swimming New Zealand website. But alas there is only one; North Shore Swimming headed by the Clayton’s Dr. Phil.

And still this Board continue to threaten their owner Regions. Butler’s Board says, “A lack of confidence by SPARC in the stability of our governance will also affect the confidence of trusts and other funders and sponsors across the whole sport (including clubs and regions).” This Board should realize by now that the money threat does not work. The Coalition of Regions believes good governance requires that this Board be replaced. Coulter was forever using the money threat. Byrne told my friends in Hamilton the same thing. Butler will find he has no more success. As I read the situation, The Coalition of Regions is not afraid of Butlers attempt at financial intimidation. The Coalition is set firm on reform. They know that eventually funders too will see the justice of doing the right thing.

The new Butler Board then complain about Auckland’s membership numbers. They say, “For example, this has allowed the Auckland region to register approximately 3500 learn to swim members, mostly children, through a single club.” Why they refer to children, I have no idea. Is there something wrong with children? Anyway the complaint is the ultimate dishonesty. For years Regions have been registering learn to swim members. Even this year there are 7138 learn to swim registrations. Half of these come from Regions other than Auckland. The number of registrations only became a problem for Butler’s new Board when Auckland’s improved voting power joined The Coalition of Regions. And all this complaining is from the Board and Chairman who said at the beginning of his memo that, “challenging the process and procedural aspects of the initiative is destructive and unhelpful.” It seems that the Butler Board’s definition of “destructive and unhelpful” is ruled solely by expediency.

And finally the pièce de résistance. Butler’s Board says, “The AGM is now just over 3 weeks away and 10 remits have been submitted with the clear purpose of hobbling the board in its governance obligations. We are unaware of any national governance organisation that operates in this way. This begins to suggest that our sport is rapidly becoming ungovernable.” Now, I have not researched this fully. However the truth is that most of the new remits are based on rules that are normal in dozens of other sports. Providing for the removal of rogue directors, limiting the term of directors and setting time limits on the provision of information and registering constitutional changes are in many – no, that’s wrong – are in the constitutions of most national sporting bodies. Just like the Coulter Board before them, the Butler Board just make it up as they go along.

Here is the Butler Board report. See what you think.

GDE Error: Unable to load profile settings

A Time of Gentle Reflection

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

By David

I was about to write a story on the email written by Mike Byrne telling us that the current Swimming New Zealand Board rejected all ten Annual General Meeting remits proposed by the Bay of Plenty, Auckland and Waikato Regions. In fact I had written the first 399 words. I had written about the exclusion of any mention of a Project Vanguard remit and wondered whether the omission was another example of Coulter and Byrne treachery. I pointed out that the culmination of Coulter’s 10 years on the Board, with 24 other directors, was the most damming organisational report any of us has ever read. I said the Regions seemed to identify the need to ensure SNZ never ended up in this mess again.

And then I recognised I was making a huge mistake. The heat in this debate is increasing daily. The Annual Meeting and Special Meeting are very close. There is a noticeable increase in tension. Swimming New Zealand is plastering their website with all sorts of new information. Memos and emails are jamming servers all over the country. The Chairman of the North Shore Club has waded into the debate telling us that his club has the largest membership in the country and whinging about the Auckland Region not asking his permission to govern. In fact there are four clubs in New Zealand bigger than North Shore and the role of an elected Board is to govern, not to conduct weekly referendum seeking North Shore or West Auckland’s approval. Without question the tensions and heat being generated is damaging the quality of the discussion. Emotion is replacing logic. The benefits of reform are being lost in a maze of accusations. In the vacuum created by Coulter’s indecision, confusion is rampant. The need for leadership is at a premium.

Without question this is not the time for Swimwatch to add to swimming’s problems. Whenever I have been in a stressful situation I have found that by slowing things down; by quietly reflecting, the problem is best solved. A few years ago I was flying myself from Auckland to Wellington. About 100 kilometres north of Wanganui, at 9000 feet, the engine of my Piper Arrow burst an oil pipe and the engine seized. I was lucky. I found a convenient barley field and landed safely. All the way down I recall reminding myself to slow things down, to remember the goal, to never lose sight of the objective, to achieve the original purpose, to bring this airplane down safely.

I was reminded of that occasion when I read the North Shore letter and some of the other correspondence on Swimming New Zealand’s website. An oil pipe had burst and this organisation was descending at 700 feet a minute. It was time to slow things down; time to focus on the purpose of why we were here; time to bring the sport in for a safe and welcome landing.

Bronwen Radford’s email explaining how swimming has arrived at this point is an important document in this regard. She has detailed an unfortunate history that could no longer be ignored. If the Regions had not responded to the deteriorating standard of management at Swimming New Zealand they would have been guilty of neglecting their duties as owners of the organisation.

Several years ago the Regions stood by and watched Swimming New Zealand make an expensive and aborted effort to standardise data management in swimming. During that exercise the Regions became suspicious of the motives of Swimming New Zealand management. Was this simply an exercise to gather additional revenue? The concern of the Regions expressed itself in a remit that became known as the Manawatu Remit being presented to and passed by the 2010 Annual General Meeting. This was aimed at improving Swimming New Zealand’s communication with the Regions.

And from that point the relationship between Swimming New Zealand and its members lurched from one disaster to another. Instead of looking at the reasons that prompted the Manawatu Remit and learning from them and working harder to improve communication and trust, the Board of Swimming New Zealand decided the Manawatu Remit was grounds for a fight. They would show a few rebellious Regions that this Board was not to be taken lightly. They refused to ratify the Manawatu Remit and called a Special General Meeting to overturn the new rule. And they launched Project Vanguard; a whole movement aimed at eliminating Regional power. The Board of Swimming New Zealand declared war.

The Regions agreed to withdraw the Manawatu Remit but strongly resisted Project Vanguard. They saw the disaster a similar structural change had caused Surf Life Saving and Girl Guides in New Zealand and said, “Not for us, thank you.” Swimming New Zealand’s response was another disaster. They altered Annual Meeting minutes. They progressed Project Vanguard way beyond the approval given by the Regions. Without authorisation they closed a Project Vanguard Committee established by an Annual Meeting. It was impossible to imagine behaviour designed to alienate the owners of the sport more. It was just awful management aimed, as always, at accumulating naked power.

Finally, and way too late, SPARC realised there was a problem. SPARC had invested $16 million in Jan Cameron’s folly and she had returned them nothing. And now the grass roots of the sport were telling them that sector was in disarray. SPARC commissioned the Ineson Report. I never thought Ineson would reveal the shambles in swimming. I thought his report would be a cover up. I was wrong. Ineson laid bare a picture of conflict and disharmony. SPARC ordered the Board to reform.

The Board responded. They formed a Committee and wrote another report. Nothing else changed. They pushed on blindly with a dying Project Vanguard. They spent money on gala events at the Mirimar Golf Club. Jan Cameron toiled away behind the scenes, undermining the National Coach’s position, preparing personal grievances, wasting the few months left before New Zealand’s best swimmers have to compete in the London Olympic Games.

Bronwen Radford saw all this and could wait no longer. She asked the Board of Swimming New Zealand to resign. She did that, not as a punishment, or as final push in long standing war. I believe Bronwen Radford did that because she realised the relationship between this Board and the owners of the sport was irreparably broken. There simply was no way that Coulter, Byrne and Cameron could win back the trust of the Regions. That was gone forever. Swimming New Zealand’s war had caused too much damage. It was time to begin again. It was a time for healing.

The best way to do that was to form a new Board in which every Director had the full support of the membership; a new Board with a fresh mandate to govern. She recognised it was the only option. And that’s where we are today.

Bronwen Radford has done a fine job. She has guided us well. She has found a great barley field. We are on finals with good height and good speed. We should elect a new Board and get this craft safely home.