Chapter Three: High Performance Organisations

2020 will be remembered as a year of global crisis. Crisis created by a pandemic whose reach and repercussions have posed questions with no obvious answers. Which changes will persist? What will the ‘new’ world look like? How will people and firms adapt? How do sports organisations pivot towards recovering from the crisis and setting themselves up to thrive in the next era? The ongoing pandemic has significantly depressed revenue streams for clubs at all levels of sport (grassroots to elite). The probable imposition of future bio-secure environments will inevitably result in the extended diminution of spectator numbers well into next season (2020–2021) that will adversely impact upon the financial wherewithal of all sports organisations. Existential change (caused by the pandemic) and impending global recession will inevitably force change and challenge existing business models. CEOs and their counterparts must now reconsider traditional ways of working and reassess what and how they operate, and how they can forge stronger and more direct relationships with customers and fans (Deloitte, 2020). In a world in which decisions are increasingly made through artificial intelligence visualised in virtual reality and transacted using a token on the blockchain, the challenge for a CEO is not only to survive but to thrive and stand out. The good news for C-suite staff is that currently they (in the majority of cases) are much better than any robot at expressing or generating emotions, building relationships with other humans, using intuition, creating ideas, and entertaining others.