More than 90,000 people roared from the stands for their football team, some roaring for us, willing us and wanting us to experience victory. For 120 minutes we were committed, loyal, trustworthy, hard, and every player played their part. And we won that day. We won the 2005 premiership and we won it our way, the same way we had been winning through the season. Using what we knew, what we had agreed to and what we had come to internalise as our footballing culture. A 72-year drought had been broken and a new force had taken hold at the Sydney Swans.
Angela Duckworth states that grit is the key predictor and factor in success. Not talent, not title, not wealth – it’s grit. The ability to work hard for a long period of time toward a goal. To overcome, to perservere, to keep moving forward through adversity and challenges, through failure and rejection.
Grit and I know each other well.
I share this story because the organisation I was fortunate to grow in has a concentrated amount of this hardcore ingredient known as ‘grit’ woven into the fabric of its 146 year history.
The Swans were established in South Melbourne in 1874. Known as the Bloods, the team had to relocate to Sydney in the early 1980s or fold. This relocation was a troubled change from the outset and almost caused the club to close. However, a band of passionate and persistant backers continued to work tirelessly behind the scenes to keep what was a failing club afloat.
More than three decades later and who would of thought, the Sydney Swans is now a destination club for players and staff, now a club revered for its culture.
A company’s culture is not some unknown force, all mysterious and eerie. It is simply the habits that develop and grow over time.
But this does not happen by coincidence – this is created by someone having a vision. To pursue that vision, you need a seriously stacked toolbox and there is no greater tool than grit. If you can visualise the outcome you will do the work. Add to this the drive and passion of success, achievement, and perseverance to keep moving forward when speed bumps arise, and grit can be an invaluable ally.
When Paul Roos became the coach of the Swans his vision was to work towards changing the culture at the club. This was by no means going to be an easy task. Just as it took time to develop the culture and habits prevailing at the Swans at that time, it was going to take time, patience, and repetition to change our culture to something new. You had to live it, believe in it, participate, and make it internalised.
Roos wanted to enhance the professional community that was, and is, our football club. As a team, we felt that we had become okay with being mediocre and we wanted to change this.
Although senior coaches are enormously influential, they alone cannot shape the culture of a football club. Culture is the accumulation of many individuals including the players, the fitness staff, the administration, the medical team, the trainers, the IT team, and the guys that run the water on match day. Their values and norms are included in the equation. It is a consensus about what is important. It’s the group’s expectations, not just an individual’s expectations. It’s the way everyone goes about their business.
The club’s culture may have appeared to be beyond our control but, in reality, we could choose to either define the culture we wanted for the Sydney Swans or let it take on an unpredictable life of its own.
The players were empowered, reigniting our passion on a unified front by giving us ownership. After, looking into our past, we set our sights on the future. Just like for anyone finding their way, a map is always useful, so we created a map for the players. A set of values and beliefs that highlighted and typeset in bold our trademark from that day forward.
Honesty was a major vertebrate that would make up the backbone of our club. It was integral to what we stood for and what we wanted to continue to stand for in the years to come. We had to work out what was more important to us, to be liked or to be respected. We wanted a group of respected footballers, where peers looked upon you as a role model, and when they looked, they found strong examples of what was expected around the club and on the football field.
Our map was non-negotiable, and it was something that we constantly referred to if we seemed to be losing our way. It was our connection back to our history and our path to the future: The Bloods. It was, and remains, a connection marked by loyalty, trust, and open communication to inspire everyone to work hard, produce their best always and play their part.
Fast forward to 2005. The last day in September is iconic in my family and yes, I will be cliché, I had dreamt about this from when I was a young boy playing junior footy. Our trademark was intact, we had followed ‘the map’ religiously, referring to it often for guidance and it had steered us to where we wanted to be.
It’s hard to find the right words to describe just how I felt that day, but it was something I will never forget and it has created a bond between a group of young men that will last a lifetime.
Everyone involved with the Sydney Swans remains a custodian of our culture. While the people may change, the foundations of the culture that were built back in ‘03 remain evident. We are and will always remain The Bloods
