Business

A change is gonna come . . .

Tyrone's Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher
Tyrone's Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher Tyrone's Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher

CHANGE management is simple to plan, yet can be frustratingly difficult to execute well.

The basic ingredients should be pretty familiar to people who work in HR (or project management): Identify a need for change using appropriate and sufficient data, model outcomes, conduct gap analysis between current and future state, identify key stakeholders, understand potential barriers (and solutions), create a vision and plan, resource properly, understand how to measure success (and have a clear picture of what it looks like in the first place), communicate effectively, create agents to evangelise and support the change , implement, find quick wins where possible, embed and review.

There can be subtle differences in how the parts fits together (and some can run concurrently) but these are the main elements.

It’s not just businesses however that experience change; it can happen in all walks of life.

If we look at the local GAA world for example we can see one of the most significant changes in recent times happening at the moment, with the Tyrone senior football team moving on after almost two decades of leadership from Mickey Harte.

They too, consciously or unconsciously, fall into the same process:

• They have established a need for change: On one hand Harte led the team to two semi-finals (2017, 2019) and one final (2018) in the last five seasons. On the other hand, they still have not managed to overcome any of the ‘big 3’ in these and the last time Sam was brought home was in 2008. Accordingly, the County Board appear to have felt it was time to try something different to get over the line.

• The new managers have a vision of what their brand of football will look like and what they want to achieve. They have selected the backroom staff and composed, trialled and refined the panel of players into what they fell will work for them.

• Logan and Dooher (L&D) have done a reasonable job of communicating publicly what their vision and plan is and how they want to play ‘front foot football’. The key element will be how well they have communicated this to the players.

• It’s virtually impossible to full embed a new system in four games. It typically needs at least a proper preseason and a full program of games for players to understand what’s being asked of them and then another cycle for it to start becoming second nature, especially if there is to be a significant change from the old system.

• Every change plan needs evangelists, to positively promote what’s happening. L&D have a swathe of the 2015 under-21 All Ireland winning side on the panel and quickly appointed Padraig Hampsey as captain. Hampsey knows the two managers well and has already won major honours with them. He will be relied upon to keep the mood in camp positive and instil belief in the more senior players about what’s being done.

• Quick wins: League One status has been achieved. Beat Cavan and put up a decent showing against Donegal (assuming it’s them), while playing a more positive brand of football and that should stack up enough in the positive column for this year.

• Evaluation: This is an ongoing process. The management team have had few games to assess how things are moving and very often you learn more from games like Kerry than from winning easy. Four games however is not a big data set and opportunity for radical experimentation was always going to be tempered by a need to retain top tier status.

Ultimately all change management programs must have a sense of realism attached. While quick wins help, there should be a realistic timeframe applied for success and associated milestones to be measured against.

Only the County Board and management team will know what the specific targets are, but it would be fair to say that one season, with Covid restrictions, should not place winning the All-Ireland as the make-or-break barometer of success.

Smaller, progressive measures toward the final goal are more realistic: staying in division one, playing attractive football, winning an Ulster title, winning an All-Ireland semi-final.

Change will come, maybe just not tomorrow.

:: Barry Shannon is head of HR at STATSports