Tackling governance culture, strategic management: some European NOCs take a strategic tack

The essence of fair play, recognised at the Tokyo Games by the other finalists in the women’s park skateboarding event lifting fellow skater Misugu Okamoto after a fall?No question the Olympic Movement revolves around the athletes. To provide the chance for every athlete to realise her or his peak moment requires enormous behind-the-scenes work, much of it from the NOCs, who, after all, send the athletes to the Games.

What this work takes is collaboration, collegiality and solution. It takes one of the workaday world’s most dreaded words: meetings. If understandably there might be less than a full appreciation of this truth, insiders are fully aware: the Olympic world runs on meetings.

How could it not?So: how could these meetings be better? Profoundly yet simply: how can NOC governance culture and strategic management be better? Be – inspiring?

In Europe, they decided not only to ask but try to answer. OK, truth: even if it took a bunch more meetings. The answer promises to prove of particular import. The European sport model has emerged as a topic of considered discussion, NOCs facing pressures from an array of interests, government and otherwise.

This thus drove a 30-month EOC EU office project called RINGS, due to wrap in 2022; with 11 NOCs, it was co-financed by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ Sport Programme and, as well, included professors from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.  Though the programme decidedly included academics, it was no academic exercise. 

The intent: to better day-to-day management. At issue: Standards. Software. Stakeholders. And more. How to handle crisis management? Perfect example: the pandemic. In the months after the postponement of the Tokyo Games was announced, what was done and how to prepare for whatever might come next proved a significant RINGS focus. 

How, too, to handle public affairs? After a meeting this past March, Beat Wachter, the Secretary General of one of the 11 NOCs, Liechtenstein, would say, “The essence of strategy is often to choose what not to do. At today’s workshop, we very clearly defined who has to do what and how …”

At a meeting in May, the subject was initiatives. The Danish NOC’s: cooperation with that nation’s Amnesty International chapter regarding sports events and human rights.

In an interview, Wachter said, "For me, the most important part of the whole project is to have the possibility to meet other people to discuss our experiences and build up relationships with other NOCs. If I have a question, I can send an email or make a call and get feedback from the Netherlands or Belgium and all over Europe. It’s very valuable to have this network and share experiences and have that knowledge.”

Then Wachter shared the thing that makes all those meetings so very worth it: “This is the Olympics. You meet new people. You’re sharing experiences. You’re learning from each other. You’re learning from different cultures. You’re seeing a new approach — how other people are trying to solve their problems or their challenges. “That,” he said, “is very inspiring.”