What the Blitzboks could teach Team SA
The SA Sevens rugby team make good decisions under pressure and the players are supremely fit. They also exhibit an excellence SA business — and all of us — can learn from
● “If you can’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if you’re not excellent it won’t be profitable or fun, and if you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?”
That paragraph constitutes the entire chapter on “Excellence” in Robert Townsend’s book Up The Organisation: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits.
Thoughts turned to Townsend after reading of a business leader who wished SA would “fix the culture of mediocrity and complacency”. Then you watch the SA Sevens rugby team win a final, in audacious style, nearly two minutes after the final hooter. The Blitzboks are the antithesis of mediocrity. They exhibit an excellence Townsend would recognise and SA business — and all of us — can learn from.
The Blitzboks are a highly skilled group dominating their sport. The fact that Fiji and New Zealand, two of the most successful teams, are not participating because of Covid means the impressive statistics (34 consecutive wins this season and six tournaments in a row, having won four this season and the last two of the previous season) are skewed. The more important point is that the Blitzboks have been performing brilliantly and consistently for more than a decade.
Townsend, who famously transformed Avis Rent a Car from a tiny company in the red to a profitable and growing concern, would agree that coaches Paul Treu (2004-2013) and Neil Powell (current) are examples of “true leaders” because “somehow or other, [their] people consistently turn in superior performances”.
“Promotion, from within” is another Townsend chapter title and he approves of it. All senior coaches were players themselves. Since 2004, the men’s team has had two coaches, a huge difference to the stop-start nature of the earlier operation. Lack of continuity applied to coaching staff, support staff and players, who owed their allegiance to their unions and the 15-man game. That started to change when the team began using Stellenbosch as a base and players had to choose between codes.
Powell and another former player, Marius Schoeman, took this concept to another level with the support of SA Rugby and sponsors, and became fulltime tenants of the Stellenbosch Academy of Sport in 2011.
Treu says: “No-one else was doing that, contracting players and training every day”.
When it comes to getting an organisation to concentrate on its objectives, Townsend quotes the man who popularised management by objectives, Peter Drucker: “Concentration is the key to economic results.”
When the Blitzboks were struggling to keep up with the competition, a five-hour, clear-the-air meeting was held in an Australian hotel. “The end goal of the meeting,” says Treu, “was that we were not going to leave the room until we knew exactly where we were heading with Springbok Sevens.
“The players decided that they wanted to create a legacy, they wanted to create something unique.” A year later, the SA team became overall world series champions for the first time.
Since the Sevens got their own home at the academy, the men’s team under Powell have won three world series titles and the 2022 title will almost certainly be secured sooner rather than later.
Consider some key areas where Drucker said objectives are vital: innovation (the Blitzboks often kick and chase, and once won a tournament by sticking to lineouts and rolling mauls, Sevens purists were shocked); productivity (one Bok routinely contests for possession at the breakdown and the average number of passes that create a try is four, so efficient is the switch from defence to attack); managerial performance and development (see promotion from within); social responsibility (the Blitzboks look like the country they represent) and profitability (that’s winning).
In a talk to a group of coaches from Nelson Mandela University, Powell listed the most important values for the Blitzbok team culture: family, integrity, humility, diversity, excellence and leadership. Excellence is backed up by a commitment to constantly improve. The objective is to be the No 1 team in the world, but the goal is grounded in shared values.
The Blitzboks at their best are patient, have great spatial awareness, make good decisions under pressure and are supremely fit.
The consistency that Treu, Powell and Schoeman were searching for has become the norm, with brilliant new young players turning up at nearly every tournament, well schooled in Sevens disciplines from the SA under-18 and academy ranks. Townsend’s exhortation to be profitable is easily transferable to the idea of winning. The fun part is something you should see for yourself next time the team appear on TV. The Blitzboks look like they’re having fun and, boy, are they fun to watch.x
The nine-tournament HSBC World Rugby
Sevens Series finishes in Los Angeles in