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Final Paper, Option 1

North Carolina FC YouthOrganizational ChallengesRachel Harris

Organizational Context

The formation of North Carolina FC Youth was announced in early 2017 as the

result of the Capital Area Soccer League (CASL) entering into collaboration

with the North Carolina Football Club (NCFC) and the Triangle Futbol Club

Alliance (TFCA). The North Carolina Football Club is the professional men’s

soccer organization based out of Cary, NC. CASL served the Triangle

community for more than 43 years and TFCA has been in operation for 17

years. The collaboration of these three parties has allowed North Carolina FC

Youth (NCFC Youth) to become the largest youth-to-pro soccer club in the

country. Through the transition, CASL’s CEO, Gary Buete, now serves as the

CEO for NCFC Youth and the CASL Board of Directors has become the NCFC

Youth Board of Directors.

The mission for NCFC Youth is to provide positive, high quality soccer

opportunities at all levels of play for youth and their families and to serve as a

valuable community partner. This mission mirrors the previous missions of

both CASL and TFCA, and the club is looking to use this mission to

appeal to all members of the Triangle community.

NCFC Youth is now able to offer programming in Raleigh, Cary, Apex, Wake

Forest, Garner, Durham/ Chapel Hill, and Holly Springs/ Fuquay-Varina. The

Wake County Government reports that Wake County’s current growth rate is

62 people per day. With the expansion NCFC Youth is now capable of, the club

has strategically positioned itself to appeal to as many of these new Wake

County residents as possible.

Prior to the collaboration between CASL and TFCA, the clubs were widely

known as rivals. Both clubs offered programming ranging from recreational to

top-level competitive teams, so the rivalry continued to grow each year. Now

that these clubs have come together, the culture has become extremely

interesting. Both staff and members of the organization are now in uncharted

territory! Before the transition, CASL’s office culture was very team-oriented

and it was a close-knit group. Leadership has set out to foster a similar

environment in the NCFC Youth office.

Perceived Problems

North Carolina FC Youth leadership faces a significant challenge in the

unification of the club staff, as the staff is composed of both former CASL and

TFCA staff members. The club must find a way to unite these staff members in

a manner that buries the rivalries and strengthens the NCFC Youth product

2 Rachel Harris, PRT 506 (601)

and image. This is a challenge that must be overcome by the club; the

NCFC Youth staff must support and push the NCFC Youth mission for us to

even hope to have our membership do the same. Many members of our clubs

had played for both clubs at some point in their soccer career, and had

harbored negative feelings towards the club they had left. The staff must lead

the membership out of those negative feelings and through the difficult

transition, and their attitude towards the collaboration in those moments will

be extremely important to the members’ perception of it.

Another challenge facing NCFC Youth is the distribution of responsibilities and

role clarity among staff members. There are several directors within the

Classic program alone, as can be seen in the organizational chart attached as

Appendix A. There are several responsibilities that fall on the Classic program

directors and these responsibilities often overlap, which has recently lead to

miscommunication and confusion among both staff and members. The roles

need to be clarified and restructured as several members have been

negatively affected by these misunderstandings and errors. I will outline this

problem with the example of our recent struggles in communicating schedule

changes as a result of inclement weather.


Problem Analysis- Uniting CASL & TFCA Staff

Members

This is a challenge to the NCFC Youth leadership, but not a leadership

problem. The NCFC Youth CEO (also formerly CASL CEO) has been very hands-

on in the transition and has been accessible to both the staff and membership.

He led multiple open house events in our many regions to ensure proper

communication throughout the transition to NCFC Youth. Due to the extensive

histories of CASL and TFCA, this is a truly complex leadership challenge. The

challenge has structural, human resource, political, and cultural components

rolled into it.

Structural- With the merging of two organizations, each with full

sets of staff, the club must do some significant restructuring. As

there is not a need for multiple directors of operations, etc., there

must be substantial changes to the staffing. The realigning of

these roles will need to fit the tasks and needs of North Carolina

FC Youth and the changing external environment of the club. The

structural frame will also play an important role in goal setting for

the direction of NCFC Youth and will guide leadership actions.

Human Resource- In bringing together rivaling organizations, an

open decision-making process within NCFC Youth will allow for the

development of commitment to the club. The organization will

need to hold informal meetings involving the new staff where their


needs and feelings on the state of things can be openly

communicated and discussed. This approach can prevent small

issues from evolving into much larger conflicts. Additionally, the

staff can be motivated by their massive opportunity for growth and

career advancement through North Carolina FC Youth; we’re no

longer working for successful youth soccer organizations, we’re

working for the largest youth-to-pro soccer club in the country

(and we hope to soon be MLS-affiliated).

Political- From a strategic planning perspective (within the political

frame), the former leaders of both CASL and TFCA will need to get

together to discuss current and potential conflicts in the transition.

The realigning of power will be closely watched by the members of

both TFCA and CASL, so it is imperative that North Carolina FC

Youth’s leadership sufficiently prepare for disagreements and

grievances that may accompany the staff changes that emerge.

The club’s structure and dynamics need a great deal of

reorganizing as the two groups come together as one, and through

the political frame NCFC Youth can redistribute power and put

together a new structure to represent the various regions and

programs of the club. Throughout these various sources of change,

NCFC Youth can use the goal setting process to demonstrate to

the new united membership that the club leadership remains

committed to excellence.


Cultural- The cultural frame to this leadership challenge is perhaps

the most important. Sport often becomes a way of life for those

involved. The decision-making process in NCFC Youth needs to

establish new rituals and offer staff opportunities to bond and

come together. Conflicts that arise must be used as an opportunity

to develop and sharpen the new shared values of the club. Proper

communication of the collaboration through the cultural frame is

pivotal to the acceptance of the collaboration, both on a staff and

membership level. It is essential to simultaneously celebrate CASL

and TFCA’s great histories and highlight the future opportunities

the collaboration presents.

Solution & Prognosis- Uniting CASL & TFCA Staff

Members

The leadership team within North Carolina FC Youth has already organized

various team building events to get the TFCA and CASL staffs familiar with

each other, such as a staff ping pong tournament, building a house with

Habitat for Humanity, etc. These events have been extremely helpful in

getting the staff acquainted with each other, but have not specifically

addressed the collaboration of our staffs. I propose the leadership organize a

staff retreat to provide the staff with a more comprehensive introduction and

orientation to our new relationships.


The retreat’s content would be guided by Kouzes and Posner’s Five

Practices of Exemplary Leadership. The retreat will feature discussions and

activities centered around applying the practices of modeling the way,

inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and

encouraging the heart within our organization.

This solution will be effective because it provides staff a bonding opportunity

that is leadership based and topically relevant. Not only will the staff become

more comfortable with each other, but they will also have a greater

understanding of the leadership NCFC Youth is looking for and the vision we’re

operating within.

Of course, the majority of the program directors coach teams, so the retreat

would be a one-day event lasting 8 hours (replacing a standard work day)

during the week. Due to the flexible nature of our work environment, this

would not be a difficult event to pull off. Our organization has various sponsors

that could become involved and provide a venue, such as Daly Seven Hotels or

Mellow Mushroom.

The retreat would be a fantastic way to cover a great deal of information

quickly and get the staff up to speed. In looking at the long-term maintenance

of the results obtained from the retreat, it would be wise to implement regular

interdepartmental meetings reinforcing those concepts.


Problem Analysis- Role Clarification

The transition to North Carolina FC Youth swelled our full-time staff count to

almost 65 people. That is an enormous amount, both in comparison to our

previous staff size and to other similar soccer organizations. As shown in the

organizational chart attached as Appendix A, the greatest number of full time

staff can be found within our Classic program. With more than 160 teams, the

Classic program is a massive competitive program that spans across four

regions (North, South, Durham/ Chapel Hill, and Holly Springs/ Fuquay-Varina).

Each region has its own director, who reports to the Classic director. Within

each region, there are age group and gender directors. There are 15 total

directors within the one Classic program. As a result of overstaffing this

program, there have been various miscommunications and important tasks

have slipped through the cracks.

This problem has become so pervasive that I will pare it down and simply use

the issue of inclement weather schedule changes as the challenge to

overcome.

We use a service called RainedOut to notify our members of cancellations or

schedule changes occurring due to inclement weather. Because we operate in

six regions (Raleigh, Wake Forest, Garner, Holly Springs/ Fuquay-Varina, Cary,

and Durham/ Chapel Hill) and have many different programs on different

surfaces (recreation on grass fields, classic on turf, etc.), we need to send very


specific weather updates to very specific subsets of our membership.

We have done this by having our members sign up for the updates for each

program with a different code, i.e. texting NCFCREC to 84483 to receive

Recreation program updates. However, each weather update comes from the

same phone number and comes from “NCFCY”. A large majority of our

membership has multiple children involved in our club, so they are signed up

for multiple sets of weather updates.

All the details of the system are very organized and efficient! The problem

properly executing the weather updating system lies with our directors. If we

close fields for the Classic South program, historically the Classic South

director will send a text to his program membership saying, “All fields closed

today due to inclement weather in the area”. The parents receiving that

message do not get told that it came from the Classic South director; it simply

indicates it is coming from “NCFCY”. Therefore, we have had a great number

of players miss practices because of our vague weather notifications. Parents

get particularly upset when they miss a practice they have paid for because of

a club leadership error.

This problem requires immediate attention. We cannot continue to have

players miss out on opportunities to develop as a player because of our own

inefficiency. This is purely a structural issue, as it can be resolved simply by

clarifying roles and putting a system in place. As Dr. Bocarro described in the

lecture on the structural frame, we can push for the strategic apex and reach

more centralization of this system. This alignment will limit the opportunity for


mistakes and conflicting messages being communicated to our

membership.

Solution & Prognosis- Role Clarification

Our directors have realized the weather communication has been poor and

have had several meetings in an attempt to resolve the problem. They have

since put together an organizational chart, attached as Appendix B, that

outlines which director will send the weather text to which group of our

members. This plan does not, however, resolve the issue of message clarity.

To another point, having 15 directors giving input to a solution on what should

be an easily fixed problem has added further discussion on the solution than is

necessary or effective.

My solution to the weather update communications is to employ the use of

template messages. Within our text update system, we are able to create pre-

set messages within our log-ins. Each subset of our programs has its own log-

in information, so we can create the necessary templates for all frequently

encountered scenarios. For example, the Classic South program will have a

pre-set message they can select that says, “All Classic South trainings are

cancelled today”. By including the program name and “today”, we limit the

opportunity for the directors to make mistakes or leave out important

information.


This solution would be extremely useful to all of our program directors.

They are frequently having to send the weather updates from the field, which

is likely a strong attributing factor to the mistakes made in the process. By

providing the pre-set messages, they can eliminate the inconsistencies in

messages and allow parents to receive clear communications from the club.

Prospecting the Future

In a period of significant change, such as the one NCFC Youth is currently

experiencing, it is extremely difficult to take time to look at the future.

However, as Kouzes and Posner emphasized, thinking about the future of your

organization is imperative to its success.

It is exciting to imagine the future of North Carolina FC Youth! We are still in

the very early stages of our new club, but the partnership with the pro club

has quickly added a great professional look and feel to our organization. We

saw a significant hike in registrations this season (within all programs we offer)

following the announcement of the collaboration with TFCA and North Carolina

FC. We are still gathering the numbers and analyzing the data, but we do know

that there was growth in all team programs (camp data is tougher to compile

and will take more time).

With the growth we’ve already seen, and the relatively positive feedback we

have received, the future is bright for North Carolina FC Youth. Over the next 3

years we will continue to expand into our newer regions (Holly Springs/


Fuquay-Varina and Durham/ Chapel Hill) and grow participation in our

home regions. Considering how quickly we have been able to branch into

these two regions, I predict that within 3 years we will also be able to offer our

programming to the Knightdale community.

I work within our recreation department and I believe this is the program in

which we will experience the most growth. My perception of the Classic

(competitive) program leads me to believe that competitive soccer players in

our outlying communities have already begun to join our club and are willing

to commute for the quality of the program and training level. Recreation

players, however, are unlikely to want to commute for our programs. In more

rural communities, like Knightdale, we would mostly be competing with their

parks and recreation programming. In a brief glance at Knightdale’s

programming, it seems underdeveloped and the community could be open to

some sort of recreational partnership. Perhaps we could come alongside their

program and offer our resources and time to help get more of their

community’s children on the soccer field. There are a lot of possibilities for our

future!

As we continue to grow, our most predictable challenge will be our customer

service and community perception. While we want to offer the most

professional and organized soccer programming as possible, we also want to

have a close-knit “#NCFCfam” feel. With a club as large as ours, that will

certainly be a significant challenge!


Currently in our recreation department, we have two full-time staff

members and one part-time staff member managing a 5,100-player program.

While there are difficult times, we do very well at ensuring each call/email is

addressed within 24 hours. This example of our staff-to-player ratio shows that

even though we are a large club, we are able to personally talk to and work

with anyone in our club! I am confident that we will be able to keep up with

the growing interest in participation with our club!


Appendix A


Appendix B


References

Bocarro, J. (2017, October 8). THE STRUCTURAL FRAME: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE & DESIGN. Lecture presented at PRT 506 (601) at North Carolina State University.

Bolman, L.G. & Deal, T.E. (2013). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. 5th

Edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey‐Bass.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2007). The leadership Challenge. San Francisco:John Wiley & Sons.

“NCFC Youth History.” History, North Carolina FC Youth, 1 June 2017,www.ncfcyouth.com/Default.aspx?tabid=1475320.

Published by Stephen R. Walston on Wednesday, January 25, 2017. (n.d.). People & Places.

Retrieved October 08, 2017, from http://www.wakegov.com/planning/peopleandplaces/Pages/default.aspx.


http://www.wakegov.com/planning/peopleandplaces/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.ncfcyouth.com/Default.aspx?tabid=1475320