Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve Vindig at Sport Law. Leave me a message, I'll get back.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: To you as soon as I can.
Hey Steve, it's Dina. You aren't going to believe what just came across my desk. We need to chat. Give me a call.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Welcome to the latest episode of Sportopia. We're so excited to share our knowledge and have conversations about healthy human sport today. We are so pleased to have Matt Young join us. Matt is the managing partner of SSQ Consulting and an athlete development expert. The team at FSQ are globally recognized experts in the activation of physical literacy and have created num. Numerous tools to deal with the alarming attrition rate in youth sport. Before we get there, Dina, what is happening? What is coming across your desk?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: I always love when you ask this question because I never really know and I have to go back to my calendar and see either what just happened or, or what's coming. And I'm really excited about this. Steve and Matt, I just was asked to do a keynote and I love, I love doing keynotes because invites me to think about things that really matter to me. It allows me to think about the audience, who am I speaking to? And this invitation is, is for women. So they have women coaches, women officials, women leaders. And they've invited me because, well, I'm a woman and I've had 30 plus years in the Canadian sports system and they really, and they want me to talk about hope, a four letter word that actually I really believe in. I feel that hope is one thing that can change everything. So I've been reflecting on hope and one of the ways that I teach hope because when I'm not doing this work, as most people now know, I spend a lot of time helping the dying die with dignity and support, the bereaved and the brokenhearted. So hope is something that moves and shifts and shape and changes over time.
So I'm, I'm playing with this concept of hope and, and in a fragmented world right now that we live in, in a environment that is vuca, that is volatile and uncertain and complex and ambiguous, it's really hard to, to kind of stay grounded in hope. So I'm excited to maybe play with what does hope look like when life is going sideways as it is right now for a lot of leaders. So that's what's coming across, mind us. Steve, what about you?
[00:02:55] Speaker A: I'm the absolute opposite like you. When I, when we prepare for recording a podcast, look at my schedule and look at what's happening and what conversations or work I'll be doing this week. And it is the end of the year. I recognize this, this version of the podcast will come out sometime in the new year, but it is year end which means lots of paperwork and administrative tasks and bank reconciliations and annual filings and preparation of tax returns. So it just kind of.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Thank God you Steve.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah, well, as we like to talk about, we try to put ourselves in positions of strength and you know, so this stuff isn't, it's not very difficult for me to do but it is time consuming and it just reminds me of a reminder to our client base that yes, there are annual filings with your, with your local government, your ministry of incorporation, there's your tax preparation, there's your HST filings. There's lots of things that sometimes we forget about. And in doing a lot of the ONCA stuff here in Ontario, it gave us a chance to look at clients status with the ministry and a lot of them had been outdated. They hadn't done their filings in some of them in decades. So it's just a reminder to everybody to look at what your corporate compliance requirements are, make sure they're being completed.
Matt, welcome. Tell us. I'm going to ask you a two part question one, tell us about you and what, what's keeping you busy this week.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: No, what's coming across the desk is not as cumbersome as what you have to deal with, Steve. And a little bit more Adina of the hope side of it. So we have been recently engaged by quite a few different levels of governance to help them streamline the governance for their organizations that's coming through not only the provincial kind of arm's length bodies like the insert province here name sport and it's also coming through a couple of national sport organizations and provincial sport organizations as well. So that's really exciting. I'm happy to see that. I think it's long overdue. I think we can absolutely create some more efficiencies with a more streamlined governance model. I think the governance model has not kept pace with the evolution of sport and I don't think that's anyone's fault. I just think that's a time for a little bit of a deeper visit into how we can thread the needle through the different stakeholders so that we can get some efficiencies there and save some money and save some time with an energy on a lot of the things that you just mentioned, Steve. So that's the one of the biggest things. And then the international interest in products and services that we've created is really something that gives me hope I'll use that word.
As both of you know, you're never the expert, I think. What. What's the saying? The expert's always the guy or gal from out of town with the f fancy slideshows and accents. So you're never the knowledge, subject matter knowledge, expert in your own backyard. Everyone always wants to look for something different. So I think that's helpful, especially in the Canadian system, where it seems like a lot of innovation from sport leadership has to go outside of the country to then experience success, to then come back into the country. So we're looking forward to that as well.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: I'm particularly thrilled to have you here, Matt, because Steve knows I'm a bit of a crystal ball reader. I'm a futurist. I like to reimagine what the future might look like. It's in my DNA and has been since I started working in sport. So when I've been reading you, and I've been reading you now for a minute, I've always found the way in which you write to be compelling. You are nudging people along. You're ask. Asking all the right questions. So I, I just, I'm grateful, actually, that, you know, when I read someone else who has a vision of sport that is different than the one now, but also inviting people to kind of pick one thing, start, stop waiting and navel gazing, because the kids. Right, the kids are, Are suffering as a result of our paralysis. So. So I appreciate, we appreciate the fact that you've been advocating for what Steve and I have been calling a reimagined sport System or Sport 2.0. And maybe some would argue it's Sport 3.0, but those of us who are students in sport would say this actually feels like a complete reimagined way of organizing. So maybe start with what propelled you, galvanized you to create FSQ Sport.
[00:07:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Thank you for that. We had 20 years in the franchise business, in the health and wellness business, and it was coaching, so it was personal training. We reimagined that industry as professional training coaches, because that's what we were. And through that experience, we were called into a lot of schools to say, you know, can you come in and can you tell us, tell the kids what they need to do to live a happy and active lifestyle? And so we would do that. And one of our good friends in the school system said, you know what? We don't need any more. What and why we need the who, when, where and how. And that was the first, that was probably back in 2009, 2010. It was the first time we really thought about, okay, what is the system providing and what isn't it providing. And you know, I like one of the things that you said, everyone always is saying pump the brakes and patience. But a nine year old is only a nine year old once and they're only going to get that sport experience one time, so you don't get to redo that. So I'm not a big fan of waiting 2, 3, 5 years for change because that's half a generation of people that are going to be introduced to some not fantastic experiences. And you only get one chance to make a first impression. So through the work in school, we got immersed in what the gaps and opportunities were in the physical literacy space. If you don't have the fundamental movement skills, you're not likely to grasp the fundamental sports skills. Starts there. School is the one place where everyone can experience quality sport experiences or quality movement. And it's not just for sport, it's for life, life skills. And then that kind of went from there. And then as I had kids, I have two boys and showed up at their sport experiences, I said, wow, this leaves a lot to be desired. It was all about the celebrity coach with the celebrity parent, the celebrity club and the future hall of famer. And in my estimation we missed the mark on what product and services we were selling, which is development.
And it was all about the standing, the score and the schedule as the benchmark for success. And that has nothing to do with development and really has nothing to do, very little to do with long term success. So that's what those two, two things do, you know, I can say were really the catalyst for getting involved and saying we have some experience in business and all sport is a business, as Steve will attest to. And, and we don't think that we're in business. We think, I think that a lot of times we're not for profit. That does not mean that you're not a business. Wherever you're exchanging products and services for a fee, you are a business. And in order to have a business, you need to run like a business. And I think one of the things we miss is, number one, we may or may not have that requisite skill set to run the business from the volunteer pool. And then number two, we are absolutely not providing the support in terms of any operating system of any kind to really shore up the business. And when I say that I'm generalizing I know that you are actually trying to do that in your group and there are a lot of groups that are trying to do that, but that is the exception and not the norm. From the providing, overseeing bodies, whether it's FIFA, whether it's the Olympic federations, I just don't think there is a responsibility and a focus to provide people at the entry level with the tools and support and knowledge that they need if they're not already bringing it. So that's a long winded way of answering that question.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Matt, I, I have two kids too. They're both in high performance sport. And I want to tap into a couple things you said there. You know, we all work in the system or with the system and sometimes I don't like the system. Meaning to your point, I just came from Ottawa, played a basket. My son played in a basketball tournament over the weekend and he's 13 and, and I personally didn't start playing basketball until I was 13 or 14 and did fairly well in that sport. And, and we're starting to already talk about leaving a sport to go focus on another sport. I mean, are we selling the dream?
There's, you know, specialization, there's rep teams, there's these high performance programs. Like, I just want to know your thoughts on the, the atmosphere, the environment that we've created.
[00:12:06] Speaker C: Yeah, pressure cooker. Are we selling the dream? Absolutely, we're selling the dream because, because that's what generates the revenue in the absence of accountability or quality programming for everybody.
It's, and I'll use this example, Steve, because we had, we're called into a community run organization. It was hockey. Not to pick on hockey, but it's easy to do. So we're called in and, and they said, listen, we are losing people to this academy and we have to, you know, this is ridiculous. And they shouldn't, they shouldn't, they shouldn't. There was no focus on actually what that community organization should be doing. So if you did this, if you, if you understood what your, your purpose and vision and mission were and you were executing that on a daily basis, you wouldn't have to worry about what was going on over there at the academy level. So the academies popped up because they filled the gap in the system that wasn't being filled by the community organizations. And then once they realize that, hey, we can. And again, I'm generalizing. There are some great academies and there are also some, some ungreat academies. Just like there's some great community run organizations and not so great community run organizations. So I'm always generalizing, but in general, the academies said we're going to fill this supply and demand market and we're going to keep charging and, oh, we need to do it all year round because we need to keep the doors open. So now we are in the cycle of, you know, let's continue to bring more in, bring more in, bring more in and sell the dream.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: It's a bit of a hangover from the command and control and we have to compete at all costs. Instead of in a reimagined sports system, we would be looking at a whole child or a whole person way of being. And like you, Matt, I feel that schools are like hubs, right? They're hugs, hubs of learning, hubs of community development.
They're. They're hubs for understanding, you know, diversity and inclus and accessibility. So if we were to reimagine a Canadian sports system, because right now we would argue it's actually not a system, it's kind of spaghetti mess, you know, noodles on a wall at best. So what would, what would that look like? And if we created these hubs where people naturally come together and we would be, as an outcome, we'd want these kids to be physically literate and confident children because we know that when we're, we're confident in our bodies, everything flows from our somatic intelligence. Right. But we don't teach people about that. So let me. So maybe take us, Matt, when we start thinking about a modern sports system and without having to. I love that you said we're not casting stones at the people who at the time imagined a sports system in the 70s in preparation for the 76 Olympics. That was considered state of the art back in the day.
So if we are now less likely to look at all the ways in which that system is no longer supporting us because it wasn't designed to support us, what would be. Where would you start, Matt?
[00:15:14] Speaker C: Oh, well, that's a, that's a big question. And I'll try to go really quickly because I have a tendency to run on. So that's okay.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: You're welcome here.
[00:15:21] Speaker C: I think there's five key things that we need to look at. And number one is, is shifting from me to we as, you know, sports a microcosm of life. And today's culture kind of prioritizes that individualism over that collective good. And that manifests itself in the rise of the celebrity player coach at club and focuses on the personal gain rather than that community impact. So as a result, you see things like declining Volunteerism, diminished care for others and kind of a loss of the core values that make sporting experiences. So sport is a microcosm of life. Shifting from me to we that that's really hurt us. Then you've got. We just talked about neglect of the feeder system. So the foundational pathways for participation are physical education and youth sports. They've been largely abandoned despite this being legislated. Quality daily physical education. QDPE is really underfunded and overlooked. We need to stop with the excuses. No budget, kind of. That's bs. There is budget, we can find it. You know, we use that to mask the lack of participation. But and you know we need to really start walking the, the every single school's mission statement, which is the development of the entire human. Dina, to what you just said because otherwise it's going to continue. This bifurcation of health and wellness and sport affects, you know, sport reflects that system complexity.
So that's Number two is the neglect of the feeder system. Number three is the leadership deficiencies. And these are just the five big buckets that really need to be addressed. Youth sport leadership is plagued by that kind of under qualification and like we talked about that inefficient support. They're tasked with managing the six key stakeholder groups. So think about players, parents, officials, coaches, administrators and volunteers. So those are the six groups, that's people management and then they're also overseeing critical areas like culture, governance, staffing, operations and finance. So that's a whole business thing. So you're asking a volunteer to. Oh, and by the way, you're going to manage all those people and all those business things for free, on your own time and not get paid. So what do we think is going to come of that and what do we think is going to happen so that that perpetuates that consistent deficiency in quality leadership?
Number four is failure at the top. So at the governance level we're, you know, undermined by outdated leadership approaches.
We, we've got the Peter principal, we've got the micromanager, the nepotist, the self interested, the figurehead, the old school, the know it all, the control feet. Those are the different leadership styles, you know, and how many times have we heard those leaders say, you know, we just love what you say but I can't say that from my sport organization. I, I love what you're putting out there, but I can't agree with that because I'm in the sport organization and they're saying that in the same breath as pushing out the DEI so that's always that friction and the conflict and that failure of leadership at the top. Do as I say, not as I do. The servant leadership ethos is frequently espoused but it's rarely practiced. So that creates that disconnect from the. What we should be having in terms of leadership and at the top and, and what's going on. So, you know, we just came through this whole thing. If I look at an organization, national sport organization's mission, vision and values and then I see what's happening in the press, there's. It's a total disconnect. There's not, they're not, we're not even on the same page. That's at the top. So if that's at the top, where is that? How does that eroding the trust in the middle and that the entry level of sport. So failure at the top is number four and then number five is. We've talked about the outdated governance models. So the sophistication and expectations of today's youth sport participants exceed the governance models. What the governance models can deliver. And then as an industry we fail to understand the business we're in, like I said, is development. And, and we don't often answer the number one question. And Steve, I would ask you this, you know, consumers have, which is where am I on my development journey and what do I need to do to improve with a level of quantitative measure? We don't, we don't do that. It's always someone's opinion. So we kind of do the same old shit, outdated tools, the same old summits, the same old people, the same old PDFs, the uninspiring lectures. We call them warm shower summits where people come and listen to the same problems. Really there's no solutions. And it's the same voices. How many times does participaction need to give us a D minus or an F year after year after year for solving the problem that they are actually tasked to solve and they get to tell us we're failing every year and they get to funding. It's just I want that gig, I want to sign up for that and I want to receive funding for telling the government that what we're doing is not working. It's just bizarre. So those are the. Really, I think, which I know is more than the question you asked, but those are really the five areas shifting from me to we. So sport is a microcosm of life neglecting the feeder system, which is schools, leadership deficiencies which are either inherent, you bring them or they're supported failures at the top organizations and then our outdated governance models, that's really what we need to reimagine. And if we focus on those five things meaningfully with new people, new ideas, it doesn't mean we have to exclude the people that have been presiding over the space for decades. We can have them as well. But we need to break out of the siloed approach that we have and welcome some new innovation because were always innovating. So I'll pause there. And you've given you.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: You've triggered a lot of things for me, Matt, that, that I could spend an hour talking about with you. You know, one is putting people into positions of strength, not necessarily positions of need, which of course needs to be filled anyway. That's one. Two is my favorite word, and I've said it numerous times on this podcast, is amalgamation. Let's do less of more of the same. You know what I'm trying to say?
And the third one is, you know, sport is, is largely driven by volunteerism with a decline. We all know it's a declining sector. So with all your five topics that you've alluded to, what are some, what are some recommendations of change that we can, we can let our listeners know? How do they take that? You know, as you've said, keep. You keep giving me a D, but what do I have to do to make it an A? So out of those five things, what can we tell our listeners maybe that they can try to implement to make sport better?
[00:21:59] Speaker C: Well, I think the first thing is to really do their due diligence on what that club is offering. Don't you know, we default to the loudest jackass on the sidelines that's telling us what to do. And you got to sign your kid up for the rep thing now or else we're not going to like, there's no voice that comes from an organization that, that actually says this is what you can expect and does it align with your values. So, you know, if you, if you, it's buyer beware. And I know everyone's busy, but if you put yourself, your kid into a situation that's not a good situation, what do you expect is going to come out of that? So I think number one is do your due diligence on, on what's going on. Number two is have a voice. I don't know why we're, I do know why we're scared because we want inherently the best for our kids that we are willing to pretend what's happening is not happening or Give it a pass even when we all know what bad behavior looks like.
So I'll give a quick example of that Steve. Year after year, the speech, the introductory speech for one of our kids sports was the coach coming out and saying I'm the coach, this is me, this is the manager, this is how many tournaments we're going to, this is how much you're going to pay. If you got any questions, Dean is the manager, you got her and that's it. 24 hour rule. And by the way, my outcome goal for this year is to make your son into a man. And that happened probably I'm going to say out of a, out of a 15 year span, 13 years until finally I put my hand up and I said do you have kids? And the coach said no. And this is in front of everybody. And I said great, then don't bother trying to make my son into a man. That's my job. Instead you can make this experience so fantastic that he wants to keep playing. Which as you can both imagine went over like a lead balloon. So I finally got to the point where you know, and you know, no, we're not going to be here six out of seven days a week because we're playing two different sports. And if you don't like that, just tell us because we'll go to another team. So I think it's understanding I wasn't the parent. Even though I came from a varsity sport background, I wasn't the parent that was living my life vicariously through my kid. I didn't think my kid was going to be the that 1% that was going to play in the NBA or the NHL. I just wanted my kid to have a really good experience with, with where he was. So I think that that perspective, Steve, needs to be something that you really have a conversation with your kid about what, where do you want to go? You understand as a parent what can you do for that? You know, I think I'd love to say get involved because we need, we, it relies on volunteers. We can until such time where we're going to start paying people and then people are going to complain about the price, then we need to volunteer. And I think that, that as an organization that's just part of your, if you're, if you are participating with this organization you're going to have a responsibility because we're a community run organization here. It is non negotiable.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: It's one of the things that I like to advocate for Matt is that I think we as users, end users, as and parents and children participating in sport is when you're affiliated with an NSO or a pso, what does that mean? And, and educating us to ask the right questions. What's your athlete development model? Do you have insurance? Is it the right insurance? How do you, what kind of screening do you do? Like we as parents, we go, oh, the swim club around the corner, it's a two block drive. So that's the best one for us.
And I think we have to, we have to use that as a tool to again enhance what it means to be an nso, PSO related sport.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Totally agree.
[00:25:44] Speaker C: Well said.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: It's, it's almost like there's a hashtag. It's bad, sport is good for business.
And sadly it's true. You know, if people were able to get their act together, if they were able to kind of connect to those five big, we call them the big five in our shop that you spoke to Matt. So it's, it's comforting, nice, deep. To hear Matt speak to those kind of big core issues. I would say. There's a couple of things that I'd like to comment on, Matt. The first is when you spoke to moving from an individualistic kind of mindset ethos to a more communal, collectivistic. That's true in North America. Right. We tend to favor what's good for me and mine and, and being able to come to pause and reflect on. Hold on, I'm not separate from other. It's a, it's a mirage. It's, it's not a, it's not even a consideration. But at first I have to be able to acknowledge that under a capitalistic structure, this pipe dream that is a. And it's not a me or a we. Dan Siegel, who's written a leadership book, he calls it muy m w e. So there's the space for the me inside the we. So I just wanted to share that. A lot of the space I do as a leadership coach, it's helping leaders is be able to understand, you know, what is my perspective, how am I living my values inside the culture and then can we actually come together as a group of individuals to reimagine that preferred future. So I think there's some tension in terms of what you were saying and the grappling of that is uncomfortable. So how comfortable are people with being in this nebulous, uncomfortable, liminal space that we're navigating right now? Turns out not really. Well, people are uncomfortable with instability. So I just wanted to offer that and I would Say, you know, that bad sport is good for business. It breaks our hearts. Often. Steve and I will sit in conversation with people and they're coming to us with the same issues, Matt, that I was speaking about back in the 90s. And I had to leave the system in the late, you know, 2,000 after the birth of my third child, because the system, I could feel it was imploding. And yet. So what do we do? You know, maybe take us to in, in a structure if we know this to be true. The volunteer nature of our industry. First of all, it's privileged, right? Only the privilege have the time and the capacity to actually volunteer this next generation, who I've been doing quite a bit of work with and the research is pointing to this.
Any volunteer structure right now is bleeding out. So as we look to reimagine and if our big dream is to make sport accessible, then my big dream, and I'd love to hear what your big dream is, I think we need to make sport a right, not a privilege. If we really feel that sport should be part of the institutional fabric of a society and an indicator of well being and a driver of community and accessibility and belonging, then making it a right will help us move into inspired action. So I'd love to know from you if it's true that the volunteer nature that requires that 95% of sport communities need volunteers to be able to deliver sport. If we know that the sky's falling on that, then what do we do?
[00:29:08] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. And if I had the answer to that, I'd be piping in from a beach somewhere and it was really warm and hot. But I agree with you in terms of the, the multi pronged approach. So you look at some of the countries that have, you know, the Scandinavian countries that have led with children's rights and I think that is a good start provided in Canada. Let's just talk about Canada. Provided that we're actually going to put in the accountability mechanisms that if we don't see it happening. Because if we're going to enact something and then not follow that up with any mechanism of accountability, we're right back to quality daily physical education, which is legislated in every school, but not overseen and, and not mandated. So yes, I agree that that's one point of view. Obviously you can go into the point of view of raising costs to pay volunteers and specific volunteers for specific tasks and duties within an organization. I'm always under the ilk. Listen, two things, Dina. Number one, if we did A better job of providing the value to the consumer, they would have less of a hiccup of getting on board with that or paying for something. If there's value there, they'll pay for it. We don't do a good job of explaining it number one. And then number two, we also don't do a good job of flatly stating, you know, we need volunteers and here's how it's going to work. And this is your role in terms of if you're coming to this organization, you know, and if you can't fulfill it, then you're going to have to do something else. There are so, so many great volunteer training programs. A lot of times I don't buy and won't buy. There's just no volunteers. It's just because we haven't set it up so that they, they can have value for themselves. So if I volunteer, do I get a, a break on my kids registration fee? If I do this, does this happen? So there, there are lots of creative ways to address it that we just don't do. We're kind of like yes or no, we're going to volunteer, we're not going to volunteer. So that's one. Number two, I actually did a investigation into one of our participation sport, the administration fee. So what I did was I looked at doing a performa, which I know Steve, that you would probably wish a lot more organizations did. I looked at doing a performer for what's the cost of administration in one of our nation's sporting participation and you can get all the information. So I went, you know, in terms of levels of governance, all that and it excluded all the academies, $267 million a year in administration fees. And that includes as Steve would know, the agm, about five grand for an agm, the audited financial statements because everyone has to do that between 8 and 12 grand for these organizations did not include any, any academies because that's not publicly facing knowledge. 27067 million. Just with a reorganization and reshuffling of that governance structure, we found 47, up to $47 million in savings. So like I want to stop right there and say think about where that $47 million could be allocated just in one sport. Think about, think about the problem. So Dina, back to, back to your question. Now there's money in the system. We are just, just spending it and using it a lot of times on the wrong things. So those are, would be my three answers. Number one, provide value to the consumers and they're going to have less of a issue, paying for things. Number two, be very clear on what the expectation is from the organization in terms of your contribution. And again, you can get creative and saying for higher roles you're going to get this discount or whatever. And then number three, let's look at the overall model and see where we're spending needlessly and re. And reallocate those doll or, or those dollars just aren't there for the consumer to have to have to bear on the continually inflated rising costs. So what do you two think of that?
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Well, we've talked about this. It's like you're, it's like you're in our heads, Matt. So everything that you're saying feels.
Well, it's refreshing because it's a different voice than just Steve and I. And I would say the math because we've done the math, we've put the math out there for our clients where we've looked. Okay, one NSO, 13 PTSOs. What if we only had one set of bylaws? What if we only had one set of audits? What if we were instead of every ptso, there were regional directors that fed into the national office that was in service of the franchise holder. How do we flip the script? Right. And I know that you speak to this because you were a franchise holder. It's not rocket science. But in a system that's depleted and kind of broken and tired and exhausted and scared, the leaders, leadership is scared right now. And we would say you kind of sort of should be scared because the system is imploding. So why don't we give it a funeral? And then if we were to ask ourselves, if we were designing a system today to be compliant with today, what would we do? How would we create a values based, ethical, well led organization or structure? What would it look like? That's the conversation I love having.
[00:34:17] Speaker C: Yeah, right on.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Steve's going to have the, the last words here.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: Well, it's the same thing. And Dina said, Matt, like, it's nice to hear your vision is very much in line with ours is simplicity, putting people in position of strength, amalgamating fees, amalgamating resources. You know, we always joke about codes of conducts. I did a, I did a policy review for an NSO once and we figured out there was 600 policies within that organization. And I'm making numbers up, but there would have been about 15 different codes of conduct. Well, isn't being a good person in sport the same at the national level, the provincial level and the local level? And I like to Say the answer is yes. So very, very refreshing to hear your, your thoughts on today and expressing some future visioning of sport. Hopefully to come sooner than later. And just really want to thank you for your time. Any parting words, Matt?
[00:35:11] Speaker C: Well, first of all, thank you both for what you're doing. We're not the only people that are thinking like this. And Dina, you brought it up. You've been in the game, you've both been in the game for a long time. So first of all, thank you for your service and efforts to doing that. Sticks in the bundle are hard to break. We have this weird code in sport that is omerta, like don't say anything. Don't rock the boat again. Despite all our DEI pushing, it's like, it's, it's like accountability. Everyone wants it, but for somebody else, that has to change.
I will. This is coming out in February, so I will give you the tip. You're gonna see it. It's coming. We're in it and working on it. So it's going to be proposed and what's going to be interesting is seeing people's reaction to it. So everything that you just talked about, Steve, in terms of the governance and alignment is being proposed in Canada for one of our national sport organizations right now. And what's going to be really interesting is the timing of it all and to see how we respond to it. And that in that, in a nutshell, is going to tell us everything we need to know about is it possible or is private equity going to come in and do what our governing models just refuse to, which is provide value to the consumer and figure out how to monetize this thing. And it could be really good with private equity or it could be really, really bad. So I agree with both of you in that. And Dina, you called it the inflection point of the transition point or the rebirth reimagination.
As you know, that has had to happen for a long time. It hasn't. Change happens by design, disaster or disruption.
It seldom happens by design because that would require proactive thinking. And so it's usually kind of disruption or disaster. So we need some of that disruption just like we do in every other organization. And Steve, you talked about the amalgamation and we're seeing it in private businesses roll ups all the time. If it's not working, we roll it up, we amalgamate, we buy that business and we go from there. So that's what we need to start doing.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: So inspiring. Well, maybe we'll end with David White. You know, he has a poem that's, that says start close in. And his invitation in the poem is don't worry about the second and the third step. Start with the first step. Close in the step you don't want to take because that's the pain point. It's like, oh, I have to let go of all of this. But that's the invitation and the driver. It's, it's the children. Right? That's, that's where you had me, Matt. I'm, I'm a parent, too. And I think that if we remember the beautiful wisdom of indigenous people, what did the elders teach? Right? Seven generations, so not right now. It's like an imagined future. That's what galvanizes me so. I'm just so delighted and grateful on behalf of Steve and us at Sport Law that people like you are out there promoting and fostering an image of future that is. Now, let's start close in. In the episode notes below, you'll find some Sport Law blogs where you can find more information related to our conversation today. Thank you so much to our listeners. We are so grateful to share our vision of Sportopia with you as we all look to elevate sport.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: As always, to have your say in Sportopia, email us at helloportlaw Ca or on social media portlaw Ca to let us know what you want to hear about next. Stay tuned for our next episode. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Dina.
[00:38:43] Speaker C: Thank you both.
