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This has been a
huge learning year for me in my
first year as CEO, I came into
the job without all the
preliminary apprenticeship years
such as a Regional Association
or a Regional Councillor, so you
might say that I have either
been untutored in the ways of
the PNZ, or I have brought a
fresh pair of eyes to bear on
the organisation.
My background in
business has given me a big
advantage in looking at the
organisation and structure of
the PNZ, and in assessing the
suitability of the PNZ's
processes to its needs.
I could fill this
report with the year's major
happenings such as National and
International Tournaments, the
Trans Tasman Test Matches, the
Women's' Worlds and so on, but
these are by and large "business
as usual".
I could talk at
length about the great results
achieved by our Trans Tasman
teams, and all the members of
the PNZ applaud their great
success against our traditional
Aussie sporting rivals, but in
the time available to me here I
would like to highlight three
major topics which I believe
have had the most impact on our
year, and on the future
development on our sport in NZ.
Before I deal
with these topics I want to
thank all those individuals who
have stepped up to the plate and
been involved in the sport of
petanque in NZ - from the club
officials, the umpires, the
coaches, the tournament
organisers, the magazine editors
and contributors, the managers
of the international teams, the
managers of official websites,
the unofficial websites, the
blogs and so on.
Most importantly,
I want to thank my colleagues on
the Executive: Barbara
Whittington and Brian Smith, in
particular, who get through a
mountain of work during the
year. I would also like to thank
very sincerely the members of
the wider executive - Trevor
Neilson, our tournament
director, Andy Gilbert, our
Director of Umpiring, Neil
Goodwin our Director of
Coaching, Joanne Lippard our
Director of PR and sponsorships,
and Liz & Michael Rocks for
their continued support in the
areas of overseas liaison and
tournaments.
I would like to
make a mention of David Lippard
and Michael Emerson who have
both achieved International
Level 2 Coaching Certificates
under Victor Nataf. All of
these people have worked behind
the scenes to make this year
function, and I believe that all
of the members of the PNZ owe
them a vote of thanks for their
continuing support and
contribution to our sport.
Two of our
Directors retire this year.
Andy, our Director of Umpiring
has got our organisation of
umpiring on the right track, and
now feels that he wants to spend
more time honing his game. I
wish him well and thank him for
his contribution to our sport.
Neil, our
Director of Coaching, has, in
conjunction with David Lippard,
started the process of coaching
the coaches at club level in the
North Island; and has
demonstrated the great value of
formally coaching and qualifying
coaches.
This process has
not yet reached the South Island
due to the Neil's unfortunate
ill health, which has also
forced his resignation as the
Director. I wish Neil a complete
return to good health, and thank
him for his major contribution
to our sport.
So now to return
to my main themes of this
report. I want to highlight
three major topics which I
believe will influence the
direction taken by us in the
foreseeable future.
These topics are:
-
The visit of
the French team and coach to
NZ.
-
The
development of proposals to
create a structure for
coaching and selection
processes in the PNZ.
-
The
development of proposals to
change the structure of the
governance of PNZ.
I believe that
the recent visit of Victor Nataf,
and a team of three world class
French players to NZ in Jan/Feb
this year, will in time be
regarded as the watershed of our
sport in NZ, in terms of the
level we aspire to in the game,
and more importantly, in terms
of our approach to the
organisation and structure of
the game.
There is a
saying: "If you are in a rut,
the edges of the rut are your
horizon". With the exception of
those players who had travelled
to international tournaments,
and had seen the skill levels
and tactical understanding of
the game at the highest level,
most of us had no idea of the
levels we could aspire to in the
game, and what it takes to reach
those levels.
We had developed
an idea that the levels we were
playing the game at - even at
National level - were reasonably
competitive. The French visit
quickly showed that the game in
NZ needed to take a good hard
look at itself, if those who
aspired to compete on an
international level were to be
properly trained, coached and
selected to a standard at which
we could compete on the world
stage.
There are those
in our sport who believe that we
should not even be thinking of
competing on the world stage,
let alone aspiring to excel at
that level. NZ sportsmen and
women have repeatedly shown that
we can produce world class
athletes who can compete on the
world stage and be successful,
provided we chose to join the
mainstream of our sport, and
prepare our athletes to compete
with other nations on an even
footing.
I believe the
time is right to move into a
more professional approach to
our sport, the time of the
gifted enthusiast, who can just
appear at a world venue, with
minimum preparation and
organisation, and have a fun
time and win is now over in
every sport in NZ.
We must now
decide whether we are going to
compete on the world stage, or
whether we are going to keep the
status quo, and just continue as
we are in the certain knowledge
that we will stay in the same
league as we currently are. If
we want to stay in the same
league as we currently enjoy -
the "also ran's" league - we
need do nothing more than we are
currently doing. But if we want
to join the big boys of our
sport - even in our own region -
the French visit told us that we
have to do things a lot
differently.
To this end, the
Executive will recommend to
Council that the PNZ adopts the
recommendations of the paper
detailing new proposals for
implementing a structure and
process for the coaching of all
interested players in NZ and for
the selection and coaching of
regional and national teams.
This paper has
been prepared by David Lippard,
with some input from those of us
who were privileged to have a
series of discussions with
Victor Nataf during the visit of
the French team. I believe that
this structure and the system
behind it will make the
selection of players for
international events a
completely objective exercise,
where the players themselves
will be able to see what they
need to do at every stage of
their career, in order to make
the NZ team for a series of
international tournaments -
ranging from the Trans Tasman
tournament to the Asian,
Women's, and Open World Events.
I believe that
the development of a strong and
objective selection process will
be one of the defining issues
for our sport in the next few
years. We may not achieve all we
wish to achieve in the first
year, but as long as we have a
long term objective, and defined
steps for achieving this
objective along the way, I
believe we can go a long way
towards solving one of the more
divisive issues of our sport.
I see the
development of a strong coaching
structure and the development of
an objective selection process
as going hand in hand, and I
believe this will be the major
goal of the Executive in the
coming year.
Almost as a
corollary to this objective is
the desire to change the actual
governance structure of the PNZ.
We moved to our present two tier
structure about 5 years ago, as
a result of a dissatisfaction
with the older structure which
represented a copy of a typical
club governance structure of a
President, Secretary and
Treasurer and a number of
committee members - drawn from
the organisation as a whole - in
other words a structure designed
for a small club.
When this model
proved unsatisfactory, we moved
to a model recommended by SPARC
for large sporting bodies - a
split governance/management
structure, with a Board to set
strategy and an Executive to
carry out that strategy and do
the day to day management.
However,
shortcomings in this structure
for PNZ have been apparent for
some time, especially with the
"regional representation" model:
-
Having the
governing body made up of
people elected primarily on
the basis of where they live
does not provide for the
election of people with the
skills, knowledge and
expertise required to govern
and run the organisation and
take it successfully into
the future.
-
Regional
representation is
effectively meaningless when
there is no strong, formal
regional association in some
areas, such as "Central
North Island" and
"Canterbury/Tasman". Many of
the clubs do not consider
themselves part of the
designated "region", and
their interests do not
necessarily converge.
-
The current
structure is a very unwieldy
and cumbersome communication
channel between the
governing body and members
(Council <> Executive <>
Regions <> Clubs <>
Members).
It is recognised
in the literature that the
formal split
governance/management structure
may be less appropriate for
small voluntary organisations,
such as PNZ, where there area
limited number of people willing
to take office. In this
situation, everyone has to have
a job, "do" as well as "think".
We just do not
have the luxury of having
"thinkers only" in a Council,
who meet once or twice a year
and then expect their decisions
to be acted on by others. We
need "doers" and lots of them if
we are to move forward in the
PNZ.
It is therefore
proposed that we should simplify
the structure by removing the
"regional" layer of
administration, and move to a
single Board consisting of a
President, Vice-president and 3
other Directors. These people
are to be elected for their
skills, knowledge and expertise,
by the membership, through their
clubs. We have put detailed
proposals to all the regions and
clubs and these proposals will
be voted on this weekend.
There is one last
observation that I would like to
make to our organisation. As an
executive group we are heavily
criticised for not putting our
energies into a myriad of
possible actions to improve our
sport. Some of this criticism
may be justified, but without
human resources to do some of
the work involved it becomes a
matter of prioritising the work
we do.
As a symptom of
the malaise, we have the
incident of the out going
Chairman of the Council
presenting 26 remits for this
AGM, and well over 100 agenda
items for his successors in the
Council to handle at the next
Council meeting. This volume of
possible topics is either a
measure of the person's
creativity, or the measure of
his frustration at the lack of
progress in some areas of our
sport.
Either way, not
many of these topics will be
handled either in a few hours of
this meeting or in the year to
follow, but I sympathise with
his problem. There are areas of
action we are failing to take
because we simply do not have
the people to carry them out.
The new structure
we are presenting to Council
this weekend will go some way to
alleviating the situation, but
without members at large coming
forward to offer their help in
many areas ranging from fund
raising, to coaching, to
umpiring, to managing teams, to
taking on the roles of team
captain, organising uniforms,
accommodation, transport etc,
the level of activity in our
sport will remain largely as it
currently is.
It seems that
everyone wants to play the
sport, and have everything
organised on their behalf, and
few are willing to give of their
time at the expense of playing
the sport. This is my call for a
reality check by our members.
Either take an active part in
the management of our sport, or
expect the level of activity to
be much the same in 2008/09 as
it has been in 2007, and before
that.
Bryan wells
CEO |
