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TX: 6.4.19 – Ep 40. Joanna Adams

HOST: TAMMY PARLOUR

T:          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. 

Today’s interview is with the Chief Executive of England Netball, Joanna Adams.  With more than 20 years of experience with Browns, right holders and the media, Jo is one of the mostly high regarded and innovative Chief Execs in British sport.  We talk about what she’s doing to actively grow their market, the significance of their partnership with Sky and why it’s so important that netball stays on the school curriculum.  It would have been remiss of me not to first ask her though about that Commonwealth gold moment.

 JA:    It was an incredible moment, I think I said, “I’ll never a moment like that in my career again,” I don’t think because even if we do it again it won’t be that first time.  But I also take myself back to the semi-final match and that, for me, was the big game because we desperately wanted to make a final and we were behind in that Jamaica game and I could see that dream slipping away in the Jamaica game.  So that actually, for me, was probably the worst and the best moment when we made that final and then we had no expectation we just wanted to be in that final.  So to win, I can remember I literally couldn’t stand up, I literally could not stand up, my legs had gone, emotionally I was…I was just drained and just so proud because I knew what it would do for that organisation.  That was the thing when you’re a Chief Exec and you watch a sporting moment like that, even if you’re a fan of sport you don’t watch it as a fan you watch it as, ‘Oh my goodness, will we be able to sign new sponsors now with a broadcast deal with the funding,’ all these things go through your mind and when we won there was a bit of a ‘Wow, I think we’ll be okay now for a couple of years,’ so incredible.

TP:    What has happened since then?

 JA:    Well, a lot has happened since.  The Vitality deal, that was actually signed before the Commonwealth game, so some people say, “Why did you do that, why didn’t you wait?” but if we had waited and we hadn’t done something so we were better sign it.

TP:    [Unclear 2:30].

 JA:    Absolutely, and then we’ve signed some other great partners, so Nike have come on board, JAFFA, Red Bull, Oasis, so that’s been just fabulous for the sport.  And I suppose the big thing we were able to open a conversation again with Sport England so we secured our funding for the elite team, really important.  And then participation it’s gone through the roof, this will be our biggest year for participation, so it’s just changed the business even from the point of recruiting new staff people want to work for us now, so a huge huge impact on the business.

TP:    So you’re Chief Exec of England Netball, could you give me a quick elevator pitch for those people who don’t necessarily know what that involves – what is your job, what do you do?

 JA:    Well, I remember when I applied for this and I looked at what a CEO role was, because I just kind of thought, ‘Well I’ve run a directorate, of course I can do this,’ and I think the main thing that a Chief Executive has to do it’s that leadership piece.  So it’s galvanizing a team of directors who are brilliant within their own environment and making sure that they deliver for the business.  So I suppose you’re a motivator, you’re a leader, but it’s really getting those guys to actually deliver what you want them to deliver and that’s what my team has been fantastic at doing.  But there is never a day that’s the same, just literally never a day that’s the same, one day you might be talking to a broadcaster, the next day you might be looking at a governance issue, I might be at finance an audit never one of my most enjoyable [laughs] things – I’ve learnt to like that now, but the variety of things it’s just incredible but, for me, it’s galvanizing a team of people to deliver your vision and it’s all about making sure that you allow people to be the best they can be.

TP:    What should you do more or less of?

 JA:    I think I’d like to do less of the whole piece around probably the governance piece and all of that, which sometimes can be highly time consuming, so that maybe a little less of?  More of getting out and about and shouting about who we are and being probably the front person – we talked about introverts/extrovert, I’m probably the extrovert and so going out there and being the very vocal person in front of an organisation that I’m incredibly proud to lead, so that’s something I’d like to do a little more of.

TP:    And your biggest challenge at the moment you’re facing do you think?

 JA:    I think it’s a two-fold thing, I think whenever we look at challenge we think about what’s the opportunity there as well.  One of the biggest challenges I think is the growth of our super league, so we all see us actually plough a lot more attention into the super league, we’ve not left it alone by any stretch of the imagination but we need that super league to grow and to be strong so that we’ve got athletes in a great environment.  So it’s a challenge around investment into that league, that we really need more external investment into the clubs – not into England Netball running the league but into the clubs, so that’s a big challenge.  And then I think another challenge that’s facing all of sport is making sure that sport stays on the school curriculum and if netball came off the school curriculum in any large way that would be a massive threat to our business, so that’s one of our challenges at the moment.

TP:    [Unclear speech 5:53]?

 JA:    Well the more I found out, I mean school sport you don’t have to sport on the school curriculum any more, which is just breath-taking, yeah.  Its OFSTED don’t judge a school by its sport, so we’re at the moment talking to the Department of Education and actually proving the worth of that.  Now for netball to come off a school curriculum or for it to drop, well, one, I just think it would be devastating for community because of what it brings, but for netball in particular that would be a huge loss because if kids don’t have a go at doing it at school then your option is a club which means either a parent probably played or you’ve seen the sport somewhere else, but it also means a huge part of society probably would never have access to the sport.  So those are the two big challenges for us.

 TP:    In the [unclear 6:43] as a whole sort of elite level is something I’ve heard from many people is the challenge of audiences and understanding audiences and growing audiences, to what extent would you say your audience has been uncovered or created?

 JA:    Yeah, I think our audience has been created.  So, we knew that many many women and girls played the sport recreationally, but everybody knows that women and girls aren’t the biggest audience of live sport, so they loved playing the game but they didn’t particularly watch the game and we’ve done a lot of insight into this – and sorry if this is going to be politically incorrect, but we also went after a female audience, dads and sons, men and boys, they get so much opportunity to watch live sport that we wanted to grow a female audience, which is hard because we’re trying to encourage them to play let alone watch.  So we had to turn recreational players into fans of their sport, and all of the insight we received said that they weren’t, so we had a hard core of probably about 1500 people that watched the sport and we actively grew that market and we did it by making sure that the environment that they went to was much more female friendly that we’ve filled smaller stadium so that people thought, ‘Wow, I can’t get a ticket therefore I want a ticket;’ we created an international calendar with our quad series so we had exciting things for people to go and watch, and this always part really of the overall plan of the business so I think – yeah, when you use those two different words we didn’t uncover them we created them.

TP:    And I’m sure the success of the quad series, the success of the Commonwealth is boosting that?

 JA:    Hugely.  Yeah, hugely.  And you now do actually see you see more men and boys coming, but what’s lovely is that it’s girls saying to boyfriends, “Come with me” or its young daughters asking their dads to take them, so you’ve seen a change in the audience, but we still want lots of women and girls to go and watch sport.  But absolutely, that success people want to come and watch netball at a top level and the super league at a top domestic level, and it showed when we went on sale for the world cup, so we had nervousness about the commerciality of the world cup, within two weeks England and the finals tickets – gone, so we’ve hit all our commercial targets.

   TP:    It was incredible, yeah.

 JA:    It’s and again great for the sport, because these will be new people watching the sport it’s not just hard core netballers, we’ve sold over 70,000 tickets.  Well, we don’t get 70,000 people turning up for an international so we’ve extended that audience of people who hopefully will stay with the sport and continue to watch.

TP:    I want to come back and talk about the World Cup obviously, because that’s happening quite soon.

 JA:    Yeah.

TP:    But before that, I want to talk to you about your relationship with Sky, it’s been quite some partnership of over a decade, how important has that been to the development of the sport do you think?

 JA:    It’s been hugely important and Sky have been absolutely magnificent partnering us, because you’re right that relationship started 13 years ago, and 13 years ago unless it was Wimbledon…well, some athletics, can you think of another female sport that was broadcast?  So they were incredibly brave broadcasting us and have supported us brilliantly well.  I know broadcasters still get criticised for not broadcasting enough female sport, but they’ve been an incredibly partner.  And we actually when we first partnered with them that deal was sort of a tripartite deal between the production company Televidio, ourselves and Sky, and we all put an investment into that, so, in effect, we paid to be on television.  That’s not the deal now, Sky covers all of our production costs and the next move hopefully is we can start discussing a rights fee.  But they have stuck with us when literally a domestic game a thousand people watched it, so this didn’t fit their commercial model at all, but they felt they had a responsibility to women’s sport.

 TP:    Why/how did that come about, how was…?

 JA:    Well it was before my time, I would love to take responsibility for that but it was a couple of years before I joined, so I suppose I continued the relationship and hopefully improved it and moved it to somewhere else.  But from my understanding it was because instead of saying to Sky, “We want a rights feel, you need to pay for everything,” Netball and Televidio went to them and said, “We’ve got this great product help us, we are prepared to invest because we realise that this doesn’t fit your commercial model, you’re not going to get thousands of subscribers by putting netball on, but help us grow the sport,” and I think that’s how legitimately it’s come about.  And obviously now 50 odd thousand people watch netball now on a Monday night, which was more than quite a lot of the football that’s on Sky.  But yeah, it’s taken a long time to grow that audience.

TP:    You’ve been in the Netball for is it nine years now, eight or nine years?

 JA:    2010 I joined, so yeah nine years.  I’ve just had mine ninth anniversary.

TP:    Well, Happy Birthday!

 [Laughter]

JA:    Thank you.

TP:    In that time there must have been some – well, obviously some amazing highs we’ve talked about and also some lows, and I remember reading last year about England Netball faced a funding shortfall that it was fighting for its professional future and so forth, so some incredible challenges that you’ve been through, why do you put yourself through it?

 JA:    Ah, because I am passionate about…not playing sport, I’ve always about passionate about reading about it, I love what it brings to people’s lives – I’m not a sports person I’m no good at sport.  And to run a sport that gives so much back to people I think it’s just a privilege.  I love business, I love sport and I’ve been able to combine the two things that I love.  And then I think I am a bit of a control freak so to suddenly [laughs] to be a CEO it’s like wow, it’s brought everything together I can make decisions and I like the accountability, I like the fact that this was a sport that they’ve allowed me and my team to come in and shake up and make changes and sometimes do things that weren’t very popular, but my Board has allowed me to do that.  You honestly you put yourself through jobs like this, which aren’t easy jobs, they’re really not easy jobs they are 24/7 for moments like that on the Gold Coast, whoever gets a moment like that in their job, that’s incredible.  To go and see young girls playing and see what the sports give them.  One woman said to us, “I feel like I’ve been locked in a box for 57 years and Netball took the lid off,” how often do you get a job that allows you things like that?  So I think that’s why we all put ourselves through it, I’m very lucky that I’m the Chief Execute, there are people in this organisation that put themselves through exactly the same every day within their role, it’s just a passion to see this sport survive.

TP:    Looking forward the Netball World Cup in Liverpool, what would success look like for you?

 JA:    Well, success for us…we bid for that in 2013 and in 2013 success for us would have been the fact that we made sure England Netball did not carry the underwrite that would have been the real success, because financially it was a big risk that the Board took at the time, so that would have been it previously.  We bid for it because we wanted that competitive advantage of being at a home World Cup, we weren’t sure whether we’d win that Commonwealth Games gold.  So success now is winning again and winning consistently, that’s what we want to do from an elite level, so to back up a Commonwealth Games with a gold medal at your home World Cup…that’s success and no-one can take that away from you.  Making the final will be a success for us.

So there are the obvious things like that, but also for us it’s very much about the legacy piece around participation.  When the eyes are focussed on us, which we hope they will be in the summer, we want to make sure that it drives more people to pick up a ball and go to a court, that is what is so important for us because these big competitions to me they’re like advertising campaigns, they’re advertising campaigns and we need an outcome out of the back of it, otherwise we win a medal we all pat ourselves on the back and so what?  There has to be that ‘so what?’  So yes, success for us is commercial success out the back of it and driving participation.

TP:    Have you got the data, have you see that link between success on the court to participation, have you got that?

 JA:    We have, yeah.  So before the Commonwealth Games we always planned to do that piece of research, we are such an insight led business it’s unbelievable.  I say I make decisions, but half the time it’s because the insight team have said, “Yeah it proves your gut feel” or “You’re right, you can make that decision.”  And so, yeah, post the Commonwealth Games we did a YouGov report on that and the numbers were incredible, so 2000% increase in our session finder, that’s people finding places to go play, which tends to happen after a big event like that you’ll see a spike, but 130,000 women in the following three months either took to netball or played more netball. And the thing that’s so pleasing for us is we see that spike but they continue to play, so it’s not, ‘I’m going to have go,’ and then, ‘Oh God, I didn’t really like it,’ it’s, ‘I’m going to have a go’ and the product that we give them to have a go is the right product for them and that’s the difference.  So yeah, we’ve a spike and this year we’ve had the numbers in, we think we’ll do about 27,000 new to netball just this year, which will be our biggest ever year.  Our membership has grown more than its every grown, so across all aspects of participation we’ve done that research and proven that the impact was huge, but we are sustaining the impact which is the most important thing for us.

TP:    It’s amazing.  This podcast is about success, it’s about different people’s views on success and what performance means to them.  Thinking about you, personally, rather than you as a Chief Exec, what is success for you?

 JA:    Tammy, I find this really…I’m great at talking about the business.

[Laughter]

TP:    [Over speech]

[Laughter]

JA:    I’m rubbish talking about myself.  Success for me, personally…I think if I could have one thing that would be a personal success for me is that I’ve opened doors for other women to be successful in business, that’s probably still not a success for me, but I think that’s one of the most important things for me.  Personal success when you lead an organisation I can’t not look at myself and think I haven’t been successful, that is success.  Would I like to go on and run an even bigger sport?  Who knows, there aren’t that many left really and it’s probably a very male domain and they wouldn’t open a door to a woman, but that potentially could be success for me.  But, more than anything, it’s about making sure…I’ve worked in football – well, from 1998 – it’s making sure that young women coming through this industry don’t potentially have to face some of the battles that I had to face to get to the top, I think that would be the thing that I would be pleased about.  But my career is probably not quite finished so [laughs] I don’t know what ultimate success looks like for me, personally, because I think you always relate it back, don’t you, to the environment that you’re in?  So success for me would be to see my Exec team go on and take really senior roles in other sports, but again, that’s not probably personal success. I’m probably happier more than anything and most proud about my kids I suppose and how great my kids have turned out, so that’s a personal success.

TP:    Yes.  Are you as Chief Exec of England Netball is this where you expected to be?

 JA:    I always wanted to be even as being young the first thing I did was when I left college was set up by own business; I’ve always wanted to run a business.

TP:    Of netball or just [over speech]?

 JA:    No, clothing actually, I was made about clothes so I set up a clothes business.  I always just wanted to run a business that’s what my dream…

TP:    What appealed?

 JA:    I think being responsible, I love that sort of responsibility, that accountability, I love being able to make decisions and change things.  People who have tried to manage me have said I’m unmanageable, maybe it’s that, maybe it’s not the appeal [laughs] its maybe people can’t manage me.

TP:    [Laughs] Except the insight team.

 [Laughter]

JA:    Except the insight team, yeah that’s right.  I think it’s just that I’ve just always wanted to run a business, manage people and run a business.  So this allowed me to combine something that I loved, so would I have loved running a business that made chairs?  I probably would have given it my all, but you wouldn’t get the fulfilment like you get out of this.  But yeah, I’ve always wanted to run a business.

TP:    Well, you seem to do it very well.

 JA:    Oh, thank you [laughs].

TP:    I’m going to do some quick fire questions.

 JA:    Okay.

TP:    What did you eat for breakfast?

 JA:    I didn’t eat breakfast, I bought a tub of nuts with me because I’m meant to be nutritionally being very good at the moment and I didn’t eat breakfast.

TP:    [Laughs] A very good piece of kit – it doesn’t have to a sports kit anyway you want to define that as?

 JA:    My kitchen aide.

TP:    Your kitchen aide?  Are you a big cook?

 JA:    Yeah, I’m a big cook. And it even has a name it’s called Kevin that is my favourite bit of kit.

[Laughter]

TP:    Sporting hero?

 JA:    So, I have a couple of sporting heroes, and you’re going to think this a bit of strange but everybody that knows me knows who these are and I don’t even support the teams, but Brian Moore and Peter Read were two of my biggest sporting heroes.

TP:    You’ve got to tell us why?

 JA:    Because of the passion that they played their sport with and probably were sometimes a little over excited on the pitch.

[Laughter]

So those are my two.  If everybody that knows me knows that those are the two that I always talk about.  Current sporting heroes, I think – and I don’t want this to sound a bit, ‘Oh well that’s typical,’ but she obviously doesn’t play currently but is still very vocal – Billy Jean King and what she’s done, she has to be up there, so.

TP:    Yes.

 JA:    I’ve probably gone back quite a while rather than state a current one, but yeah those would be mine.

TP:    Most useless piece of advice you have been given or given to somebody else?

 JA:    Most useless piece of advice I’ve been given – wow, I don’t very often listen to advice.

[Laughter]

TP:    I love that!  [Laughs].

 JA:    I can’t remember what I’ve been told.  Oh, the most useless piece of advice I’ve been given?

TP:    Maybe to listen to somebody’s advice.  [Laughs].

 JA:    Maybe to listen to somebody’s advice, yeah.  What was the other question, while I think about that one?

TP:    Well the next question or?

 JA:    The other one about advice?

TP:    Most useless piece of advice you’ve been given or given to somebody else?

 JA:    Or I’ve given to somebody else?

TP:    Yes.

 JA:    Am I an egomaniac, Tammy?

[Laughter]

Now I’m thinking all the advice I give is really rather good.

TP:    [Over speech].

 JA:    There must be something.

[Laughter]

TP:    Okay…

 JA:    That’s terrible.

TP:    …most gracious passion outside of sport?

 JA:    My children.

TP:    Your children.  And how old are they?

 JA:    26 and 23 – but yeah, my children, absolutely, 100%.

TP:    Do they play sport?

 JA:    They did, they both played sports at quite a high level, and they’ve both semi-dropped out, which is bad.  My daughter is now a keen runner and my son is quite into golf at the minute, but…yeah, they need to do more.  You need to do more children.

TP:    [Laughs] And the last question, best performance enhancer?

 JA:    Self-belief, I think having self-belief is the one thing that will make you better.  And I think so many women suffer from not having self-belief.  And, actually, I think I was one of those people that maybe didn’t believe in myself, had terrible imposter syndrome, terrible imposter syndrome, and could blag it so no-one knew until we won that gold medal…

TP:    really?

 JA:    …and it went, it completely went, because I thought, ‘Wow, actually no-one can ever take that away’ and it’s been in a public way that actually it went, but self-belief I think is the one.

TP:    Well it’s been fantastic talking with you today, thank you very much.

 JA:    That’s really good Tammy, thank you.

[Music]

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