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“Why I’m deleting Stuart Lancaster’s picture”.
Or “Purpose and Values under Fire”
I got my first rugby ball for my 2nd birthday, and
have been in love with the game ever since.
Hence, I was delighted when my son won a
prize for us to join the England team for a day’s
training at Pennyhill Park in the spring of 2012.
These were heady days for England rugby, full
of promise as a new coach swept in with a fresh
start and new caps galore for youthful players
to deliver attack and enterprise.
Stuart was, and still is, a thoroughly decent man: honest, energetic, seemingly full of purpose about
winning through positive rugby. 2 days later, England demolished Ireland 30-9. Sadly, 3 years on, he
was sacked after a World Cup campaign that failed to deliver on this promise. Why? How?
Simply put, England Rugby lost its sense of purpose and strayed from those values.
A discordant coaching Leadership team chopped, changed and bickered about selection, leaving out
great players who were game-changers because they were ‘difficult’. They ended up trying to avoid
losing, rather than selecting to win, and the Players seemed unsure whether to react to what
unfolded on the field, or to go with a partially-rehearsed set of moves. Resultant muddle and
confusion was played out in front of millions….. they went into their shells and lost.
Coaches of international and other high-profile teams talk of the stress of the job.
Whilst I agree that there is obvious & intense media & public scrutiny, I run a conference production
company and in a corporate environment, this is also subject to very public scrutiny if anything
should go wrong. We have calmly and successfully dealt with and overcome a bomb scare at the
Royal Albert Hall, a company speaker collapsing on his way to the lectern, a complete power failure
during an event, a guest speaker who wandered off into the hotel and got lost 2 mins before they
were due onstage, a high-profile cabaret act who pulled out due to sickness 24hrs before the Gala
Awards, and many others….
However, whilst these are examples of the pressure to perform which come with the job of either a
sports team coach or a successful conference production, it isn’t stress, in my view.
Stress is not a penalty shoot-out.
Stress is carrying out your day-to-day work whilst actually being under fire.
Stress is holding firm to your values when you and everything around you is in mortal danger – your
family, your work colleagues, and your countrymen.
And stress is carrying on…… when it would be so much easier to stop.
So I am replacing my profile photo of Stuart Lancaster and I with one of Khaled El Mufti. Khaled is
Libyan, a visionary, and someone who recognises his purpose, and sticks to his values.
In 2009 I first met Khaled in the cocktail bar of the Hilton Park Lane. This 007-esque meeting
introduced me to Khaled’s vision of creating a knowledge economy for Libya to lead it out of its
mediaeval society and economic reliance on fossil fuels. Together with a fellow Masters graduate of
Royal Holloway College and long-standing client of ours from his days with Mars and Motorola, John
MacDonald, Khaled was setting up a virtual research facility: Tatweer Research.
(www.tatweerresearch.org) .
Throughout the turmoil of the overthrow of Ghaddafi’s regime, Khaled toiled to keep this dream
alive. We supported it through design of logos, communications materials, websites, Prezi
presentations and so on. The vision gained a boost after the overthrow with proposals for thousands
of Libyan graduates, in cohorts, to gain ‘hot-house’ MBAs at UK and American Universities. The first
group was to have had a staging-post week in Malta to help cope with a complete paradigm shift
from civil war in a Muslim country to University life in Cambridge UK or Massachusetts USA, with
big-budget production values and detailed delegate management – all of which Powerhouse put in
place, ready to press the ‘go’ button. Sadly, the lack of any experience of decision-making in the
Libyan national executive post-overthrow led to delays and meant that this opportunity to show
progress was lost.
This lost opportunity was key: before the overthrow, Libyans had a single, homogenous view of what
was ‘bad’. Afterwards, without even baby step examples of what a shared view of ‘good’ could be
like, dozens of versions of ‘good’ developed, with factions grabbing what they could.
Undeterred, Khaled set up a 4-day think-tank to help devise and develop a new FreeZone & Elmreisa
Tech City outside Benghazi, again to kick-start the knowledge economy and benefit Libyans. This was
at Judge Business School, Cambridge University (https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk) which I helped
facilitate, attended by experts in clusters and Tech City Planners & development, and UK Govt. & US
State Department representatives. Again, despite Powerhouse producing 3D video graphics, logo
design and Prezis for Elmreisa Tech City to support Khaled’s tireless work promoting the project
development, the executive in Libya has yet to make progress on this project.
In the meanwhile, conflict flared across the country, but Khaled was undeterred.
23 young Libyans from Tatweer Research came to The Judge Business School in early 2014, a project
supported by Powerhouse, to go through a Management Sciences course specifically designed for
these young men and women to return to Libya as role models.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n27vnlv7).
Recently, a “Learning for Libya” event was kindly hosted by Hogan Lovells at their London
headquarters. (www.hoganlovells.com). It featured guest speakers from Tatweer Research, the
Libyan Investment Authority, the Libyan British Business Council, and was co-sponsored by Tamweel
Capital.
Learning for Libya attracted an audience of
multinational businesses and Libyan stakeholders, as well as the UK Government, all of whom take
an active interest in supporting the redevelopment, rebuilding and transition of the country. I had
the honour of speaking from the floor, asking the audience to consider how this fine example of
Khaled’s vision starting to take shape could flourish further with more graduates in an age of acute
nervousness of large numbers of young people crossing international borders. A distance-learning
project was our proposal for the future.
Whilst today may not be the time for Libya, ‘Think Tomorrow’ surely is...
So, Stuart Lancaster, we wish you well; as we do for Eddie Jones who succeeds you.
But please, stick to your values, even under pressure.
These young Libyans will, eventually, spread the word and action that the future for Libya is the
same as the purpose, vision and values which Khaled El Mufti shared with me all of those years ago
in a London cocktail bar…..
Believe in the youth, give them training, help them to share your vision and entrust them with
responsibility… they will respond, and hopefully, prevail.
And stick to your values.
"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do." -Leonardo da Vinci