@twentyforty said in [Pathways\. What pathways?](/post/1436215) said:
I would suggest the board encourage Pascoe to recruit/contract either a HR scientist or OD professional to put in place some organisational structure and performance/procedures manual in order to create some accountability.
No offence but I find that stuff to be gobbledygook, especially in the context of running a football club.
My personal experience with HR is that, in an organisation comprised of strongly varied roles and skills, the HR department can barely keep up with the true needs and concerns of their total talent pool. So I mean the difference between managing 100 people with the same job/outcome versus a team with highly varied responsibilities.
A football club would be an organisation with highly varied skills and responsibilities - almost nobody has the same role or KPIs, not even within the football team itself.
My opinion is HR should do their fundamentals (pay, appraisals, crisis/performance management) and support the decision-makers to hire excellence.
Given that I don't even really understand what the HR scientist or OD professional roles, I tried to do some research online to find an explanation. For example (and these may be bad examples, I just took a cross-section):
https://www.hrtechnologist.com/articles/digital-transformation/the-rise-of-chief-hr-data-scientist/
https://www.visier.com/clarity/hr-data-scientist-top-skills/
Honestly I can barely understand what these articles are saying. It reads like the creme de la creme of management speak. I can only imagine how it would go down inside a football organisation, to have some HR Head come in and start talking about "procedure manuals" and "Diversity program evaluations".
I couldn't even imagine where a HR scientist would obtain a sufficiently robust dataset to be undertaking those kind of analyses, in a company of maybe 100 employees who all have different roles, and for whom half the staff mostly need to "run and tackle large men".
And apologies I don't mean this as an offence, I have an impression you know what you are talking about, but I'm thinking about this from the perspective of a football operation that has barely laid down their new plan for recruitment/performance pathways.
Hahaha, I don’t disagree with your points, but surely the club could do with some improvement in its organisational structure. These guys seem to be getting in each other’s way, even when they go on a mission as a group(Pangai ) they stuff it up. I’m thinking it’s the underlying issue which prevents players signing on and dampens the enthusiasm of existing players? Let’s face it, the organisational culture is driven from the top down. I’m not suggesting the OD consultant be there full time, just long enough to departmentalise and introduce some accountability, maybe 3 years? ?
I think it's impossible to judge that from the outside. Or, conversely, we don't know that they haven't hired consultants.
For example there's a new video from Kimmorley about starting his new role and who his boss is. He seems very clear on his role and responsibilities, from the outside. And given they've now installed several new pathways roles, it would make sense they'll take some time to figure out what they really want to achieve and how they will achieve that.
Sure, it may be impossible to judge what is needed from the outside, but we all know something is wrong right? My guess is when decisions are being overridden one or more people aren’t aware of their responsibilities, or the level of their authority?
No, I honestly don't think "we all know something is wrong" with Tigers, internally. I think a lot of people assume something is wrong, because it's an easy answer (honestly, a throw-away answer) to the complicated question of why Tigers don't play finals enough.
The NRL team doesn't win enough. Clear as day. Bad recruitment decisions were made under Ivan Cleary, but people like Madge and Adam Hartigan weren't at Tigers at the time. Tigers haven't signed a big-name player for a long time.
But apart from that external situation, we have extremely little insight into what goes on behind closed doors, particularly around recruitment discussions. As part of The Ambush I've sat down with Tigers management a good number of times in the past 12 months and they seem like pretty sensible, invested, smart people.
I would guess that my impression is about as close as the average joe gets to Tigers internal operations.
Now that's not to say Tigers don't have faults on the inside, I know they do, but my opinion is that is mostly about total spending (i.e. budget) rather than lack of understanding of roles. I think the lack of wins on the park puts a lot of pressure on the general staff, because they never get a leg-up from results (the first grade side). They are always fighting against lack of results and I think they would spend more money and have more staff if they could afford it. I was told Tigers are not in the bottom tier of club spenders, but nothing like a Broncos or Storm.
So for example, I don't speak to Adam Hartigan often, but he has met with us for Ambush meetings a few times, and he's a calm and sensible guy. Whether or not his particular opinions on recruitment targets are valid, they are undoubtedly well-researched and the strategy he has presented is sound. You may not agree on the particular player, but the rationale makes sense. I did not get any indicator that the Tigers recruitment team were not aligned on their strategy, nor were they anxious or rushed.
I don't really believe the media noise that Tigers don't know what they are doing, or that failing to sign some arbitrary "big name" is indicator of a process problem, apart from perhaps Tigers are not a top-tier destination (and that's not a reflection on the recruitment team necessarily, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear).
And I won't forget what Adam said the first time I met him - he said basically everything you hear in the media comes from the player managers, and as such, they are always working an angle on behalf of one of their clients. He said unless you hear it directly from the club, quoted, then you need to assume it's not the whole story (or true at all).
Now Adam might be covering himself, but if he wasn't genuine about that, he's an extremely good actor.
