THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT.  BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, WE CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

TX:  1.3.17 – Ep 11. Sally Munday – CEO on Rio Gold and why hockey matters

HOST:  TAMMY PARLOUR

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TP: Welcome to A Question of Performance. I’m Tammy Parlour and in this series I’ll be talking with leading figures from sport and business about what improves, limits and drives performance. Join me for 20 minutes of discussion twice a month to hear a range of views on what it means to be successful, how to cope with failure and what people have learnt along the way.

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I’m thrilled to be talking with the Chief Exec of England Hockey, Sally Munday, today. We find out what happens behind the scenes as we discuss her role at the Rio Olympics and what it was like for her on the inside when GB women won team gold. We also discuss her approach to being Chief Exec of a national governing body, how she builds an environment that enables success and her future aspirations for the sport of hockey in the UK. But first, I asked her if she had always been passionate about hockey?

SM: The short answer is yes. I played from being sort of early teens, really got hooked actually by the 1988 Seoul Olympics when I was 15 when Great Britain won its first ever gold medal and joined a local club a mixed club and just loved it. I wasn’t particularly good, I was a very average player but it’s the sort of sport that you don’t need to be very good to get a lot of enjoyment out of it. And from playing I got into coaching and team managing at quite young age and always wanted to work in sport but never, probably when I was younger, thought that I could end up working in the sport that I loved and played. So yeah, there has always been a passion there for me but I probably, when I was young, didn’t really occur to me that that could actually become my fulltime job.

TP: Do you think you need to have played hockey or coached hockey to work at your level within an NGB?

SM: No, you don’t. The skills that are required for certain jobs require hockey knowledge and experience, but there are quite a lot of jobs in NGB’s that don’t require that sort of knowledge. We’ve got a lot of people that work for us here at England Hockey that didn’t have any knowledge at all of hockey before the joined us, and I think to be a CEO to the job that I do requires a certain set of skills. Having said that you don’t need it, I do think that sometimes it can help and certainly…

TP: In what way, on a credibility line or confidence?

SM: I think it can help with – not credibility in ‘you were good at hockey’ but credibility when you’re out and about talking to volunteers or in clubs that actually you’re just kind of the same as those people?

TP: Yes.

SM: You played in a club, you coached in a club, you’ve volunteered in a club that you’ve been where they sit and you may not have had the same experience that they have, but because you’ve had a real experience yourself sometimes it just makes some of those conversations easier. But I don’t think that’s an essential requirement that’s just a kind of bonus that sometimes I’ll use when I feel the time is right.

TP: In the sporting press there are often stories about managers, coaches or performance directors being blamed for failures or controversies, what buck stops with you? What bit is your responsibility of the pie?

SM: Ultimately, and this is my feeling as opposed to probably, I feel the entire buck stops with me. But I think the responsibility you have as CEO is to execute strategically what the business is trying to achieve. And I’m very fortunate that we’ve got a really strong Board at England Hockey who are very good at working with me and the Executive team on the strategic direction for the sport, but also very good at then empowering us to get on and translate that strategy into action. And so my job of CEO is to execute effectively, translate that strategy effectively so ultimately if we don’t achieve any of it the buck does stop with me. So if we fail internationally then I would definitely take some responsibility for that, and there might be times where I think I have to take a larger share of the responsibility other times a smaller share. And it is interesting having, like since I’ve been CEO, we’ve had success and we’ve had failure, and I probably dwell more on the things that we fail than we have the successes. But whenever something doesn’t go as we want it to in this business generally the first thing that I always do I’ll kind of take myself away for some reflection about what could I have done differently to have influenced an outcome? And sometimes however much soul searching you do kind of like, actually, I don’t think I could have done anything different and I don’t think I would have done anything different, and other times you’ll be like yeah, I think I made a key decision there that was wrong. So when you look at the success of teams – yeah, you’re not there coaching but the decisions that you’ve made the year before, two years before, three years, five years, ten years before might have influenced the outcome in some way shape or form when it comes a match.

TP: What do you find are the biggest stresses of your role?

SM: Well people that know me well will tell you that I don’t really get stressed very much, and I’ve learnt – interestingly, I’m generally a really positive person, I’m a very glass half full person, which I’ve spent probably my entire career thinking as a really good thing. Like yourself, I really believe in wanting to constantly be better and so one of the things I’ve learnt over the couple of years through some stuff actually with my colleagues here is that having thought through my entire career that being little miss positive was a really brilliant attribute, it actually has some weaknesses to it as well. And so, I guess going back to the question about what stresses me out, I think because I’m a positive person so I fundamentally believe that there is a solution to everything is when I’m faced with a situation that I can’t see what the solution is, I can’t work it out, and I wouldn’t say it stresses me out because I don’t really do stress, but that’s they are the things that probably vex me the most.

TP: What effect does it have – a dip in motivation is that how it translates itself?

SM: The timing of this interview is really interesting because I’ve just been through a real example of this, and I won’t go into the details of the situation but it’s fundamentally about a partnership relationship with another organisation and we just can’t seem to make it work. And yet, on paper, it should be a brilliant brilliant partnership, and I’ve come at it – we as a business have come at it from so many different angles to try and get it to work. And it’s all come a head where I’ve just sat there and asked myself the question do we just forget it now because we’ve invested so much time and energy? And so how that manifests for me is the day when I became particularly frustrated with not being able to move this relationship and partnership forward, I’m generally quite good that I go home and I don’t find it difficult to switch off and think about other things, but when stuff like that happens it’s just there in my mind. I guess, probably with my own frustration that I can’t find the solution and I can’t…

TP: So you keep worrying away at it or?

SM: I wouldn’t say it’s worrying it’s just there, it’s there in my head thinking, ‘Well why?’

TP: Distracting you?

SM: Yeah it’s a distraction. And I’m generally pretty quick to ask for help, as I said, I’ve got a really really really strong Board here and some really excellent individuals who I feel very comfortable to pick up the phone and say, ‘Look, I’m grappling with this, can I just use you as a sounding board?’ But even so, with this particular situation I’ve not been able to solve it even with good advice and help and then it just sits there thinking, ‘Well, how much of this is it my fault? Is it the way I’m approaching it? Is it actually what can I do differently?’ And yeah, it is it’s a distraction, that’s a good word it’s a distraction it’s sitting there knowing that it’s not been solved.

TP: Taking up energy, yes.

SM: And there are plenty of things that I think I’m a bit of a fixer, I like to fix things if they’re not right, and I don’t mind if something takes a long time to fix as long as I’ve got a plan of how it’s going to fixed. And so I guess my biggest issue is, like the stress question is, when I can’t work out what the plan is? Even with help, if there isn’t a plan then that’s almost my…probably what allows me to stay focussed that I know that there’s a plan. And some plans are things that you want to achieve within a day, other things are ten year plans, and I have no issue with a ten plan year as long as I know what the plan is – I know what the outcome is trying to get to and I’ve got a route to getting there, comfortable that the route my change as we go along, but there is a general plan and I think that’s probably when I find hardest when I can’t see how to get to the outcome.

TP: Yes. You’ve been Chief Exec is it seven years?

SM: 2009, so coming up eight years.

TP: Eight years, okay.

SM: Yeah, eight years.

TP: Has your approach to that role has that changed over time?

SM: I think it probably has. Before I got the job, I wasn’t sure I wanted the job. Part of the reason why I wasn’t sure I wanted the job, we previously had a Chair/Chief Exec and Executive Chairman and he appointed me as Development Director so I’d worked with him for five or six years, we had a really good relationship, very very different in background and personality that kind of our value system is very similar and so it worked really well. And it was decided in the lead up to the London Olympics that we needed a fulltime CEO, and when it was first decided I just assumed that he would become fulltime, which I thought was brilliant because I thought he was great, and then he straightaway said, “Actually, no I’m going to move into the non-Executive chair role and we’re going to advertise for a fulltime CEO.” And I was really angry at first because I wanted him to do and I was kind of like, ‘You’re letting the sport down, why can’t you do it?’ And, fundamentally, he was Chair because he’d retired from corporate life; it wasn’t about working for him it was about doing something and something he enjoyed so he didn’t want to work fulltime. And he encouraged me to put my hat in the ring and I was reluctant to begin with, because one of the things that I’ve always quite valued about how I work is that I think I’m able to apply quite balanced judgement to things, and our Chair, Phillip, I was probably his right-hand girl to speak, whenever there were big issues we’d sit down and talk about them, and I always felt really confident about being able to give him a judgement/a feeling on what I thought we should do. And my fear about becoming a CEO is that because the buck was going to stop me with that I would lose that balanced judgement that I would put so pressure on myself to make the right decision that I would not be able to have the kind of balanced considered approach to making decisions that I’d had when I was the number two. And I really enjoyed that part of my job, so ultimately I was worried that I would come into the role and not enjoy it because I would lose the part of it that I really enjoy which is part of the sort of decision making.

TP: Did that come true?

SM: Well, interestingly, no – unsurprisingly because I’d always thought…I never set out on a journey to be the CEO of England Hockey and I’m not somebody that particularly craves the limelight; I’m an outgoing personality I like to be at the centre of things, but it doesn’t need to be about me and I’ve never felt a need to be the number one if you like. And I genuinely was nervous that I wouldn’t like it, but what I actually found was that I did really like it, and that my judgement I was just applying it in a different way because I was the one asking other people for their views about things. And the reality is in our world in national government body land is that, and I guess it applies to any business when you’re a CEO, but particularly in our industry as national governing bodies you are the custodian of the sport in the fact that you want to grow it so you’re encouraging people to come with you on a journey of growing, but you’re also the regulator of the sport and so you have to implement the rules – you have to act as a policeman in essence.

And so what comes with that territory is the fact that you are inevitably going to be unpopular at times, and quite often you’re going to be unpopular because you’re going to make decisions that people in the sport don’t like or don’t agree with. And I think that because I was very comfortable with that role anyway before I became the CEO I accepted I would be unpopular at times, I actually then think that was probably my saving grace around the decision making stuff. I realised when I got into the job – in the early days, I was probably looking for a problem that wasn’t there, and so after year or two I’ll just stop thinking about it and just thought this is actually no different – yeah, the buck stops with you but it’s actually no different from what you were doing before, you’re assimilating information, you’re getting facts and then you’re making a decision. And sometimes you’re asking for help to make that decision and sometimes you’re asking others to make the decision with you, but I’d become quite comfortable in the space I think.

TP: Let’s talk for a moment about Rio, GB Hockey women winning gold, what’s it like on the inside?

SM: I have probably two lenses on the Rio games, I have my CEO lens and I have a very personal lens and they’re different for different reasons, and I’ll come back to the personal lens. From a CEO perspective, we went into the Games with the men’s and the women’s squad believing that both groups were capable of getting medals. And so the Rio experience was actually was quite difficult because the women were just winning – they won every game they placed, and the men from the first game had a pretty torturous tournament and finished far below where they or we wanted or expected them to, didn’t they qualify for the quarter finals. So, as a CEO, being on the ground, you’re not in the Village with them but you’re seeing them all the time when they come onto the pitch and so you have two very different experiences, and there are a few staff that sit in that category of working across both squads and so you’re thinking really carefully about your body language and the words that you choose to say the different squads. We had a couple of days where the men and the women played on the same day and the women played first you’d come off this high of yeah the women had won they’re a stop closer, and then the men would arrive having lost perhaps the night before and so not on the high and you’re thinking everything about how you manage yourself in that situation, so it was an interesting tournament.

The other thing from an inside perspective was some of the stuff that we tried to do behind the scenes to give us the best advantage. So, for example, in the lead up to the Games the schedule is punishing in Hockey you have to play eight matches in 13 days to get a gold medal, and the players are running a lot of miles at a very fast pace in every game. And so when the scheduling first came out there was quite a lot of influencing and we tried to do behind the scenes to get the best possible schedule that we could get. And then similarly in the Games itself, once we’d qualified for the quarter finals you have quarter finals that are in the middle of the day, in the heat of the day in Brazil and you have quarter finals that are at the end of the day, and so we did quite a lot of work during the Games behind the scenes to try and influence some of that decision making, which worked well for us.

So, for me, it was always thinking about what role can I play in helping the teams with any small thing. Now for the most part, by the time you get to an Olympic Games there’s nothing you can do, there’s not a lot probably the coaches can do so they tactics, but the work is done weeks/months/years before you get, but then there are things during the Games there are small things that potentially a CEO if they’ve got the right relationships can influence that can affect some small things that can make a small difference. And it’s making sure, I think, that you are…I tried to make sure that I was trying to influence the things that would help without being in their face, just quietly trying to do things behind the scenes that might help. But it was the men finishing and not getting to the quarter finals kind of almost shut that part of the story off, and then we obviously had the three games with the women: quarter final, semi-final and final. And the quarter final was a big deal, we’ve not had a quarter finals at the Olympics before, so it was a huge big deal, a one-off game can get you into the medal matches or not. And we played Spain who, from a world ranking point of view, we should always beat, but they are one of our probably bogey sides that they’ve got technically some gifted players and sometimes we can make quite hard of work of it, but I thought we played again really well.

So after the quarter final, I felt relief, but actually after the quarter final it was at that point I thought we could win this, once we’d got into the top four I really believed we could win. And then, of course, the blood bath of the game against New Zealand in the semi-final, which was brutal, but Danny the coach who I have a very close relationship with, the phraseology he uses is about finding a way to win, and you watch that final against the Netherlands, and if you’re really objective and you stand back and look at it with an objective lens, they probably should have beaten us in normal time but we found a way to win.

TP: There is a fine line between success and failure sometimes.

SM: Oh yeah.

TP: What tipped over?

SM: I think a combination of things, I think that we had group of women who absolutely had a common goal and were prepared to do whatever it took to achieve it. And there are a number of that group of players with a really steely determination, but because they’d had a horrific experience two years earlier at the World Cup where they went in as medal hopes and basically hopes and basically ended up playing for the wooden spoon it really was awful. And I remember being interviewed by the BBC about three weeks after that and they were asking me about the review and was the coach going to get sacked – da da da – and what does the future hold for the women’s group. And I remember saying to the Sarah Orchard who was interviewing me, “I wouldn’t want to play us in the next couple of years because we haven’t suddenly become a bad group of players overnight, we’ve had a bad experience and we need to unpack what that bad experience was and why we got there, but I think we will be like wounded tigers.”

And, in essence, I think the last two years that’s what the women were like, they were so determined to right the wrong and not to be in that position again – they win the Europeans in 2015 against the Netherlands in a penalty shootout, and I think that was another contributing factor at the Olympics that because just 12 months before they’d done the same thing they’d come from two-nil down against the World and Olympic champions, taken the game to a draw, taken into penalties and beaten them on penalties, they knew that they could it and there was there real belief. And I think that’s something that the women’s team have grown over time, they’ve grown this belief that they can find a way to win in. It may not always be pretty and they may not always look like the best team on the pitch but it doesn’t matter, because what the record books will show is that they’re the Olympic champions.

The one other thing that I would add is that without question is we have a world class coach. Danny is an exceptional…he’s an exceptional coach but he’s quite an exceptional human being. He’d coached the team for a long time before he had two years away as Performance Director, and I remember after Beijing where we came much higher than our world ranking, we didn’t get a medal but we were higher than our world ranking and it was considered real progress, and then in the review, Danny got lambasted a lot by the players but also he got really heavily criticised. And he had a decision to make after that, because we were willing to stick by him, but he could have said, ‘Well, I thought we’d done really and this is what you think of me I’m off,’ and off he goes, or he could stay and just say, ‘Well, you may think all that but I’m carrying on regardless,’ or he could hear everything and say, ‘You know, these people have a point, perhaps I might need to do things differently.’ And he has continued to reinvent himself over the course from 2008 to 2016, he has this unbelievable thirst for becoming better; he’s very very reflective – sometimes a little too reflective maybe, but he’s an exceptional character.

And there are a couple of examples at the Games actually which really stood out for me with Danny, so before the semi-final when we played New Zealand the camera goes down and shows the huddles when the players are all huddled immediately before the start of the game with the coach, and you saw the New Zealand coach with the players, ‘Rah, rah, rah,’ really building them up, real sort of what people see as inspirational stuff, and what you saw Danny doing was very quietly talking to the group saying, “This is nothing different from what we practice, just implement what you do, do your jobs do them well,” very calm, and the players just went out and delivered their jobs. And very similarly when it got to the penalties in the final, again you saw their coach before she went off and sat on her own rah-ing the girls up who were taking the penalties, Danny speaking to the entire group and he’s just saying to them, “Just imagine we’re back at Bisham, we’re just training; we’ve practiced this over and over again you know what you’re doing,” and it was just very calm, and those sorts of things having the presence of mind as a coach to take yourself out of the emotion of the fact that you could be about to become Olympic champions and be able to deliver that sort of calmness I think is a massive to credit to him, and I’m particularly chuffed that we’ve kept him for the Tokyo cycle because there are lot of countries that were trying to steal him from us. [Laughs].

TP: Hockey was the only team to get gold. Is it the ingredients that you’ve described that – or I suppose, do you have an opinion on why that is at all?

SM: The Rugby Sevens weren’t far away, but I think…I think with team sport it’s – and I would say this wouldn’t I – but it’s not simplistic, that it’s not just about technically being better and being stronger and fitter and faster, there are so many things that contribute to a team performance. And inevitably you probably won’t pick the 16 best individual players, you’ll pick the 16 that you think collectively can deliver one common thing together. And I actually think that we’ve now – rugby got medals – I think now we’ve had a couple of team sports getting medals at the Olympics I think we’ll probably start to see it more consistently. But yeah, it’s winning gold in a team sport is not linear, it’s not technically just be better, do it faster and do it stronger, there’s so much more to it than that.

TP: What are you current goals for England Hockey?

SM: So our big ambition is that we want to become a nation where hockey matters. And what do we mean by that? That’s about we want more people than the people that play it regularly and care and love it and are passionate about it like I am to actually engage much more with the sport. We want people in coffee shops to be talking about it, on the tube, on the bus, at the school playground to be interested and to care whether who our captain is etc. And what’s interesting is for sort of two and a half/three weeks after the 19th August last year, we were a nation where hockey matters. Everywhere I went…I remember getting on the train to go in to the London and I was listening to people talking about hockey – it was everywhere overhearing conversation, so we had a taste of what it really feels like to be a nation where hockey matters.

And we believe that we can do that through three main things: we totally know that international success if the driver to getting us more profile; and so if we can get international success we can then use that profile to increase our visibility; and if we can increase our visibility if we get the interventions right, we can then get people from showing an interest to then watching, playing and participating in some way; and if we get more participants that’s more people feeding into the talent pathway – hopefully more international success, so we kind of see it as a bit of a virtuous circle.

And everything that we do here is built here around those three ambitions and two other sort of supporting ambitions/objectives if you like, one of which is around the infrastructure of the sport making sure we’ve got the right facilities, the right coaches, right officials, right volunteers and right clubs; and the other is about our role as the governing body I guess, and we describe it as being strong and respected custodians of the sport and we take that role very seriously. At some point, I’m going to move on and my Board members are going to move on and I want to make sure that we hand the baton on in the best way possible with more people than ever playing, more medals than we’ve ever won and the sport consistently on TV and a sport that this nation actually really cares about.

TP: This podcast is about performance and success and people’s different opinions as far as what that means to them. You’ve spoken quite a bit about the success that you’re looking for in England Hockey, what’s success for you personally, what does it mean to you? Or how would you define it?

SM: If I was to take it just in its most broadest sense, for me success in my life is about being happy – contentment and being happy, waking up each morning feeling happy and everything…the majority of my time feeling I’m in a happy space.

TP: Yes.

SM: And so then if I apply that to the work context, what makes me happy [laughs] at work is what…I’ve always craved responsibility, I don’t think I thought when I was younger that I thought that responsibility needed to be being the Chief Exec of England Hockey, but I always looking for like, even when I was quite junior, I wanted ownership of things that I could influence and make a difference to. So I kind of get a lot of that drug just by being the CEO [laughs] if you like, but the personal satisfaction I get is by achieving the things that we set out to do. So what I said earlier about having that plan, you have plan or you have a goal at the end of the plan and you achieving it, so I look back over however many years, what makes me happy? It makes me happy that we’ve had an 80% increase in young people playing in our clubs from 35,000 to almost 70,000 since the London Games, that makes me happy. The fact that we’ve our first Olympic medals in 20 years and the women won gold for the first time makes me happy; the fact that in 2010, we signed the biggest women’s team sports sponsorship that had ever been done in this country with Investec makes me happy; the fact that we’ve got on the horizon some massive opportunities for the sport for us to really become a nation where hockey matters, and there’s a whole load of things going on that will contribute to that over the next four to five years, those things make me happy because ultimately in the workspace I’m driven by the fact that I really believe that we can become a nation that cares about hockey. And it sounds trite, and sometimes when I speak to people and talk about a nation where hockey matters, but I sometimes get these quizzical looks people say, “Well, you don’t want to be football though do you?” And I’m like, “No, I don’t want to be football,” and we have no desire or intent and we know never will be football, and there are loads of reasons why we don’t want to be football, but the example is 15 years ago who was talking about cycling in this country? Nobody. Most adults if you talk to them about cycling will talk about the cycling proficiency test they had to do at school probably, but now we’re a nation of cycling lovers. Whether it’s that we love the Trotts and the Kenny’s or the Boardman’s or whether it’s we go out and get on a bike and might have a great desire to go on a mountain bike at the weekend or get on a road bike, we’re a nation that suddenly cares about cycling, and I really believe we can become a nation that cares about hockey it has so many unique things about it. Our country loves a team sport, we love a team we love that collective sense of achievement through a group of people doing something together, winning and failing together.

Our nation, our character as a nation we like team sports, and I think because hockey is quite easy to understand because it’s so similar to football – 11 players on the pitch and put the ball in the back of the net, we just do it with sticks and a smaller ball – it’s not actually complex for people to follow, but also some of its unique attributes about it truly is dual gender, it’s hugely appealing to people from very different walks of life. Everybody from the age of sort three up to 90 can play it. We’ve got an international over 75’s team it’s amazing. And I think one of our biggest things as a sport is just how welcoming, friendly and family orientated we are, and we’ve got examples of clubs of where you’ve got three generations of family playing in the same team. And I think of all those ingredients and I think I’m not trying to sell a product that’s a duff product it’s a good product, and so in that regard if you apply a pure business lens to it actually becoming a nation where hockey matters – yes it’s a big ask, but I do believe it’s possible and that, in essence, is kind of I guess what drives me feeling successful.

TP: Brilliant. I’ve just got a few quick fire questions for you.

SM: Yeah.

TP: Which I’m asking everybody. What did you eat for breakfast?

SM: I’m rubbish. I don’t generally eat breakfast, so this morning I had a cup of lemon tea.

TP: Favourite piece of sports kit?

SM: Hockey stick.

TP: Sporting hero?

SM: Gosh I should just know that shouldn’t I, but…

TP: I don’t know whether I would be able to respond just off the cuff either [laughs].

SM: Do you know what, I’ve got so many sporting heroes and probably one of them is Martine Wright the sitting volleyball player who got injured in the London bombings. Why her? Because in life you’re faced with choices all the time aren’t you, and she had a choice when she lost her legs after being in the wrong place at the wrong time for the London bombings, to go and hide herself away and to, ‘Poor me and my life is over,’ whereas she took it as an opportunity and she decided to use sport to give her life some really amazing meaning and I just admire…I admire anybody that can take something really truly dreadful and turn it to being something positive. And she is somebody that stands out for me as one of those people.

TP: Most useless piece of advice you have given or received?

SM: The most useless piece I was ever given was that I should always expect sexism and I think it was a truly awful piece of advice, because I think if you expect things then quite often you end up in a self-fulfilling prophecy of creating them and it was the worst bit of advice I’ve ever been given.

TP: Greatest passion outside of sport?

SM: Cooking.

TP: And last one, best performance enhancer?

SM: Sharing an experience with other people.

TP: Fantastic. Thank you so much for talking to me today, Sally, I appreciate it.

SM: You’re very welcome.

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TP: Thanks for listening. You can follow the conversation on Twitter, Facebook and also don’t forget to subscribe online to aquestionofperformance.com.

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