Does your cricket club have a vision statement? Possibly not. I have found few clubs who promote or even profess to have a Vision.
Many, if not most, clubs have club development or action plans. Some have an articulated strategy. I suspect most clubs have a mission statement even if it isn’t called that and buried in the club’s rules or constitution since the dawn of time.
So that’s the what and the how? But what about the WHY? Why does your club exist? Why do you bother? Why do you, personally, allow the Club to take up so much of your time? And, moreover, why DON’T others commit more?
From looking at organisations like sports clubs, where there is an explicit or implicit Vision, it tends to fall under one of two broad headings:
1. To survive
2. To be the best club you can be ……….I call it BCYCB
Survival tends to be an implicit, rarely stated, Vision. It is an innate motivation to keep the plates spinning even if the reason has been forgotten.
BCYCB is generally more explicit. It is requires an action plan that defines what ‘best’ is but usually the strategy and action plan have long since overtaken and now define the Vision. Your vision is now dictating that you run a club, build facilities, recruit members, earn money, sell clothing, run 2 teams on a Saturday and 1 on Sunday, coach better players, train more coaches, cut the grass, make teas, etc. etc. Your vision has become the club, the organisation and its structures. You get out of bed on a Saturday morning for a clubhouse.
But WHY? I wonder if a restored Vision that played to the Why? might excite more people to do more to deliver it. Take a few minutes to sit back and think…….what impact on your strategy and the club action or development plan objectives would come from a Vision that responded to WHY your people want to do what they do? Something about wanting to play cricket, play more cricket and involve more people playing cricket, perhaps?
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