Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve Vindig at Sport Law. Leave me a message. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: 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.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: Foreign.
[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 joined by team member Jason Robinson, who has been with Sport Law since 2015. Jason is our resident parliamentarian and risk expert, and he's here today to share stories and insights with us about both topics. But before we get there, Dina, what is coming across your desk this week?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Well, something that I'm not used to doing. I'm helping a organization dissolve. And of course, I'm not going to be doing all the legal work, but the board needs some help with the. Not just the administration process, but really mapping out their intention for, like, the assets of the organization, where these assets should go, Maybe also, you know, grieving the loss of an organization that has contributed really, to the Canadian sports scene and being very intentional and mindful about what they, you know, what they want to say to each other, what they want to, you know, narrate as an ending for the work of the organization and really be conscious in their completion process.
It's been, it's been bittersweet. Right. Helping people come to an ending with something can be hard often. And, you know, there, there really is a sense on my end of helping people navigate something that often is, is. Is filled with some. Some sadness. So, so that's one of the things that I'm attending to right now. What about you, Steve?
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Well, similarly, I just got off call from a client who wants to dissolve as well. And of course, they're coming to me for more of the legal compliance issues. And, you know, the actual steps to dissolve aren't super complicated. You pay off your debts, you pay off your liabilities, you sign an affidavit saying you've done so, and then you ask the members to vote, and then you file paperwork with the government to say, we are dissolving. But what. I don't really want to spend a lot of time talking about the legal side of it, but what I did find interesting in the conversation this morning was, you know, asking them, have you paid your debts and liabilities? Yes. Do you still have money left over? And the answer was yes. And it was. It was in the tens of thousands. And I said, well, what are you going to do with that? And depending on what your bylaws or your articles say, will dictate the way in which you distribute your assets. And the default provision normally under legislation is equally amongst the members.
So of course your definition of member is very important. But is that really the true intent is to give money back to potential registrants who are members? And usually the answer is no. So this organization actually had targeted a lunch school program in their community to support as well as their local. A very similar sport organization that will continue offering the services that they, that they were offering. So I thought that was really inspiring to see that they were taking, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to support their community, even though they are going to cease their operations for their particular local sport. So I thought that was really cool. And probably something we don't spend a lot of time thinking about is dissolution and what do we do with our assets in those scenarios. But I thought that was really interesting.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: I think will probably end up doing more of that as we look at the landscape of sport right now. And we know there's north of 34 sport organizations and how many of them are structured for today's complexities? How many of them really are fulfilling their mission? Is there a better way for people to a. Amalgamate.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Amalgamate. Thank you.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think we may end up doing more of this and that you've just inspired. Maybe you and I could collaborate on a blog, Steve, to talk about not just the legal aspects of the dissolution, but also the process and making sure people feel conscious in their completion. Right.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: I'm happy for you to write it, Dina. I'm very happy to look it over.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Story of my life. Jason, so nice to have you here.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for having me back. And I guess we're going to talk about risk management today. And sometimes dissolution is a good thing, but. But other times it's not. And we don't, we don't want to get to dissolution and we do that by effectively managing our risks. Right. But I think the question for me is what's on my desk if, If I, If I follow along with the. Listen.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: If you've listened to a previous EP episode. Jason. Yes. What is coming across your desk?
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Nothing.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Nothing gets by this guy, eh?
[00:05:29] Speaker C: Nothing. Stick to the rules. That's my high blue and red Nova energy. But you know, as the, the meeting expert on the team, so to speak, the parliamentarian, I'm always supporting, facilitating lots of member meetings. And we spoke about that in episode nine on the podcast. But not a shameless plug. There but when I. I get to these meetings, in particular contentious ones, I find it always fascinating to learn what's the topic? It's typically one or two key topics that have the membership hot and bothered. So, as a recent example, I. I was recently at an AGM where the membership was upset because the board had let go their executive director, and they didn't provide a reason.
So people show up to the annual meeting, the members show up, and they're upset. How could you let this. This great person, this beloved staff member who's been there a long time go? And they learn at the meeting that the primary reason was that this person had been mismanaging their finances for the better part of a decade. Steve, you've seen this lots of times, unfortunately. So the initial reason was, you know, how could you let this person go? How could you do this to us? And then you see the shift to, oh, okay, so how then did this financial mismanagement occur for so long? Who knew about it? How bad are our financial practices? How do we fix them? Who's accountable for this?
And we want to see everything financially moving forward.
So quite the shift. And so that's a recent example of what's been coming across my desk. And it sort of ties and weaves into the risk management work that I'm doing. And I'm in the midst of several risk management projects at the moment. I just did a risk management workshop over the weekend, which was fantastic, and I can share more details on that. So that's what's on my desk.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Jason, I want to know more about what you do. I want you to tell the audience more about what you do. When we use the words risk management, it's a beast. It's huge. How do we simplify it? So, you know, your role in kind of being the. The chief risk management expert on our team.
What do you do? How do you make such a large, huge topic manageable?
[00:07:54] Speaker C: Well, first, I think, to sum it up, my role has been to carry the torch and the legacy of what Dean has built. So I think it's important to recognize that first because, you know, Deena created and pioneered this holistic risk management approach in the Canadian sports system, dating back to, I think it's 2007. Right. Dina? It's been. It's been a minute.
So, you know, taking the mantle, or the baton, we'll call it from. From Dina, in roughly 2019, 2020. I've been conducting lots of risk management workshops and various types of risk assessments with sport organizations. So sometimes it's not just the workshop, it's a bespoke or customized sess. Figure out, you know, what are your high level risks? Are we looking at it from an event perspective, from a travel perspective, or from a more holistic enterprise, you know, risk management perspective? That's typically, you know, the way that it works. But for me, I joined sport law, I think you said, back in 2015, it's been, it's been a decade. And I was very involved on the event side of things, where as a, as an event professional, I was certainly more proactive.
But as an executive director, being in that role, I was oftentimes too focused and reactive to all the little fires going on around me. And we see that in the Canadian sports system right now. There's just so much going on and we don't have time to invest or we're not making the time to invest in that enterprise risk management approach. So for me, Steve, it's about my role is to find out where the organization's at and try and deliver typically a workshop or a product that gets them thinking. Holistic enterprise risk management, in a way, like you said, that is very simple and that is manageable for the organization. So how do we implement that through the board, through our senior leadership, trickling down to staff and then always it's the big, I find, million dollar question when I do the workshops these days is how do we operationalize this? This is great. We've shown up, we've done the work, we've populated a registry. How do we take that content and put it into action?
[00:10:17] Speaker B: That's really helpful. And for our listeners in episode 16, we talk about the value of risk management. So we take a bit of a deeper dive there and the importance of taking a pause. Right. So when we, all of us as consultants, we often are brought in to help our clients think differently or get more inspired or grieve a loss or figure out the legal requirements and, or also to think about the values that the organization has and how do we ensure that those values are reflected in the decisions. So this risk management workshop, Jason, is a way for people to come together as decision makers, get a common framework for them to be able to assess risks and opportunities and to be able to kind of map that out in an intentional way. So can you give us a sense, like maybe describe for people who are uninitiated in this realm, what, what are the benefits of the workshop and what has been some of the impact that you might like to share with our listeners?
[00:11:23] Speaker C: The benefits, I would say first and Foremost, we produce a risk registry that is tailored to the organization within its current ecosystem. And that risk registry acts as this repository for your high level risks. So the, the great term I stole from DENA is, you know, we're not here to talk about the little pebbles in our shoes, we're here to talk about what's most pressing, what's stopping us from achieving our strategic objectives as an organization. So that's the high level stuff and that, that's captured within the, that risk registry. It's such a powerful tool, Dina, and, and so it identifies your current risks, those high level risks. We capture current measures and strategies to mitigate those risks and then we uncover through the workshop conversation, and this is the really powerful stuff, those new potential possible treatment solutions to further mitigate these risks, to mitigate the likelihood of it occurring and, or the consequence should it occur. And then in addition to the registry, we've got additional tools and resources to further help mitigate your risk. So using a risk assessment worksheet in a board meeting in, at a committee level through staff, a risk management policy, if you don't have one, and that outlines the corporation's authority and scope and commitment to risk management. And then I've also created in the past couple years a dashboard tool and a few other tools that are really, really helpful. So the, the hope is that sport leaders emerge from the workshop with a clearer understanding of how to effectively manage the risks moving forward and, and sort of train them to become risk management Jedis. And then they would, you know, those participants would effectively become the teachers moving forward with their fellow board members, staff, whatever the case may be. So, yeah, the workshop's pretty structured. I do a mix of, it's like a hybrid version. I do a mix of, we get together virtually for a couple hours, we educate folks on this framework, which comes from the ISO standard. As you know, the International Standards Organization developed a framework for risk management back in the early and mid 2000s and we've codified that to sport and simplified it again, simple, like Steve said for sport leaders. So we share that framework with a small leadership group and then we go through the process of populating and, or creating a risk registry.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: So what's been the impact? Like.
[00:14:00] Speaker C: Oh, I didn't answer that.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Yeah, a couple of testimonials or like, what are you noticing about the, you know, like what would be some of the comments that come at the end when you're closing off the conversation? You know, I, I remember people feeling relieved, feeling a little bit more hopeful. Some are like, oh, I'm, I'm now like I can no longer avert my gaze so I have to kind of get to some of these things that might keeping me up at night. But I still now I feel like I have a map to go through the process. Like, what else are you noticing, Jason?
[00:14:30] Speaker C: The first thing that pops into my head is more effective decision making. So coming out of the workshop with a sense of relief, maybe coming into it going, oh man, we're going to be talking about a lot of heavy stuff, but coming out of it feeling confident and sort of emboldened to better manage those, those heavy things moving forward. So by participating in the workshop, we're enhancing our risk awareness. We're adopting concepts and language that perhaps we haven't used before, but we can use it in a really meaningful way. And I haven't mentioned this yet, but again, near and dear to your heart is that alignment piece with management by values. So linking this risk mitigation to what are our strategic goals and outcomes, what are the values for the organization?
And recognizing that those values are really and, and strategic goals help steer us as we mitigate those risks and identify those risks. So what is a high level risk should be something that's getting in the way of your strategic goals and outcomes. And then in terms of our values, I like to say, you know, when fit hits the shan, we lean on our values, right? So just making sure that we, we have that conversation and coming out with a sense of, oh, we can do this, we can refer to our values, we can be more risk aware and intentional and we're going to do it in a way that is aligned with the values of our organization.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: One of the recommendations, Jay, that I like to use and I'm going to create a very. It's, it's exactly what you just said. And I like to put it in the left side of a board agenda. What are your values? And then the three risk management questions. What can go wrong? What happens if it goes wrong? How can I control it? And it's right there in front of you. So I always recommend to directors, particularly directors and their board meetings, is to have that in the little tab on the left side of their agenda to remind themselves to ask those three simple questions. And if you're struggling, go look at your values. And does that help me create the answer that I'm looking for? Does it align with what we're trying to achieve?
So with that being said, I'm sure you agree with my fabulous suggestion.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: I do.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: How many of these have you done and what do you see as consistent risks within the sports sector?
[00:16:57] Speaker C: Well, between Dina and myself over the past 15ish years, we've done over a hundred different sport organizations and we've done 2.0 or even 3.0 sessions where the group has maybe there's been a lot of transition and we've kind of lost our way a little bit with the registry or we just want a third party person to come in and facilitate the conversation so I, the ED or the president chair can focus on the conversation. So we've done lots in terms of what we see that is common in the Canadian sport ecosystem. I will share a slide of common risks typically and what I'll often. Here's a couple just off the top of my head. Common risks in sport, reliance on government funding, you know, particularly at the NSO and PTSO level. Misalignment or we'll call them maybe fractured relationships within the order of sports. So between a club and a PTSO or, or a PTSO and its nso, that's a, that's a common one. Lack of qualified volunteers to deliver quality programming, a lack of succession planning. That one bugs me a little bit that I still continue to see that one keep propping up because that one is very manageable and governance challenges as, as you know and deal with a lot. Steve. So it could be related to roles and responsibilities, outdated policies or just our overall structural, the, the form doesn't meet the function sort of thing. So those are some common ones and then, and those have been common for a while and that's okay for the most part. It's the nature of sport. The good news is there's best practices to mitigate them that we take from others because it's been around for so long. But then there's some new ones. Safe sport, obviously it's a common risk on a primary high level risk registry. Pandemic related risks for a little bit we're seeing fewer of those and hopefully not for a long time.
Government uncertainty is a risk that's sort of popping up. You know, changing political climates, lack of EDI managing a scandal, whether that be through social media or again SafeSport related. These are some of the common ones that pop up and it's always interesting to see what's on one group's radar versus another. I find that just fascinating. So if it's a smaller group they tend to be more focused on keeping the lights on maintaining core volunteers growth related risks. But then larger organizations tend to be more focused on alignment, culture Communications, diversity. So that's what I'm seeing in the sector.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: It's really interesting, you know, when I look back to 2007 and we were trying to engage Canadians, Canadian sport leaders in a conversation around values based sport, all of them at the time Jason and Steve said, yeah, yeah, sign us up. But we don't have a lot of time to spend to this because we're so busy putting out fires. I would say that that same element is true today. There's exhaustion, fatigue, firefighting, people are burning out left, right and center.
I would say sustainability of people. People are kind of leaving now exhausted. There are people that are staying that are exhausted.
And we know that we can't make really good decisions when we're in a state of exhaustion. I do think it's really interesting to go back in our history to understand that at the time the invitation was for people to be more values based and the rationale provided to not doing that was we're so busy putting out fires. Well, we've continued to be really busy and putting out fires because the actual structure of sport is not really designed to help us navigate the current level of requirements and complexity. Until we change the structure, I think we're going to continue to be at the mercy of poor decision making.
Given the nature of our reliance on volunteers. This is not a shot at the volunteers who are often well intentioned, but too often in over their heads, not really fully understanding their fiduciary responsibility. So I think there's a couple of comments that would be really interesting to hear you speak to Jason. The first is back in 2007 when we were introducing a more systematic way of managing risk. It wasn't a requirement of sport organization to demonstrate their commitment to do so. It was considered a nice to do, not a must do. Now sport organizations are having to show proof that they have a process in place to review their risk, maybe capture it in some documentation, have a risk management policy that they're using to be able to navigate these risks as they arise.
And so I am curious to what extent are you seeing when you're in service of the organization, how many of them are coming to you because they've put in the penalty box because their assessment around their risk is really low, versus how many of them are coming to you because they feel that it would be helpful to have someone who has expertise and experience in this space to guide them through the ongoing commitment to mitigate and manage their risk?
[00:22:33] Speaker C: I would actually say more of the latter, which is enlightening and encouraging. Dina, at the national level, there's that, that penalty box approach, I guess you would say. We have NSO is being scored as to their risk management practices and tools and what they have in place. So it is mandated in terms of core funding at the provincial, territorial and club level, not so much. It's kind of a mixed bag. At that provincial territorial level, I would say it's strongly encouraged but not mandated. And so there's a key difference there. So I would love to be doing more work at the provincial and territorial level. I am seeing more of that sector come our way and proactively say, hey, we need to do a better job of managing our risks. We see what's happening at the national level. They've shared with us their, their framework and their way and we want to do more of that because that's what a good organization does. So that's really encouraging. Like I said, I love doing it at the club level, you know, and because it is a, it's a, it's a totally different kettle of fish and it's fascinating just seeing folks at the boots on the ground level managing their risks more effectively. So, yeah, more of the latter to, to go back, to answer your question there, but we'll see where, where it heads next.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: So that's great, that's really encouraging. And we know social change takes about 20 years, so we're right in that middle there. One of the things that we did as part of the workshop was to encourage them to pay it forward. Right. So if we were doing more of the work at the national level, we were inviting them to share the lessons learned from their risk management workshop and then at their agm, their national conference, to be able to educate and host an educational seminar to bring their PTSOs along. And there was a lot of traction, I would say, about a decade ago in doing that. So are you finding that there's an Appetite by the NSOS to share it forward, to educate their PTSOs, host a little risk management workshop so that there's some alignment around the process of mitigating these risks?
[00:24:58] Speaker C: I would say yes and no. I would say there's a desire to do that. But then we circle back to the putting out the fires, that atmosphere of being overwhelmed. And I would say while everyone is very well intentioned, it's just hard to keep up. So in terms of actual implementation, taking that next step, hosting a forum or a workshop, like you said, with our PTSO friends and allies, I'm not seeing as much of that as I would like to. And so it's really about finding the time to make, to do that, to make it work. And you referenced taking a pause. And I love that because I would argue, Dina, that the risk of not intentionally managing your high level risks, particularly those really, really big ones, it's actually going to cost you more in the long run versus sort of, you know, sitting on your palms and not effectively managing your risk. So be proactive, get out there, do it.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: I called that, Jay, the 9010 rule, and sometimes I should call it the 991 rule. So if you're proactive, it'll take 1% of your time or your resources. If you're reactive, then it'll take 99 of your time. So I totally agree. I like the idea of a pause. And from my, you know, for a lot of work that I do, translate that to policy development. So if you have a bad policy or no policy and it doesn't work, we're going to take 99% of our time and our resources to resolve it. And when we also talk about policy development in today's environment, you're looking at 15 to 30 policies depending on your organization. And to review those, say you pick two every year. Well, if you have 20, that's 10 years.
So being proactive and pausing and looking at the foundational components of your organization, I think is, is really crucial as organizations continue to move, evolve and move forward in, in a very complex environment. We've said this before, Dina, on the podcast, 20 years ago, how many policies did we recommend? Maybe five. And now in 2025, we're recommending 20 to 30 depending on, you know, the scope of the organization. So, you know, we just advocate to our listeners to pause, take a, take a listen, take a breath and look at that foundational piece. Jay, if organizations want to get involved in risk management or risk management project assessment, maybe you can start with the, the little, the little dab toe in the water to the full cold plunge.
[00:27:45] Speaker C: Well, reach out, contact us if you're interested in participating in the workshop specifically. And we've got a little flyer and some details on our website and we'll, we'll certainly share those with the podcast notes. I am also planning Steve and Dina on hosting an upcoming free webinar which will probably hopefully come be announced and happen shortly after this podcast is released. So if you're just listening to the podcast and it just came out, check our website. So what a linkage, Jay. But we'll meet, we'll work and meet with you where you're at and, and and the key is just to have that intentional conversation. Just start the conversation at a staff level, at a board level, start asking those basic questions. Are, you know, what is the risk of doing versus not doing? How do we mitigate them? Like you said on your agenda comment, Steve, a couple just big, big, plain, simple questions. And what are our. How are our values guiding us? That's the starting point. And again, the purpose of, of this whole thing is to keep it as simple as possible, adopting a more holistic approach to how we manage our risks, but doing it in a very, very simple way. So don't be intimidated, give us a call, and we're happy to have the conversation.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: I'm going to ask this question to both you and Dina. You know, all of us do educational sessions, board trainings, policy, public speaking. And sometimes I feel like, you know, in the moment, people are extremely engaged and they have lots of questions and they, they're looking for answers. And then sometimes I feel like, you know, you walk out the door and they're just going to revert back to their old methodology.
What do you both think of? How can we stop that from happening? And for me, it's. It is the little things putting those questions on your agenda, reminding people of a common language. But I'm curious, Dina and Jason, where your thoughts are?
[00:29:48] Speaker B: You want to go, Jay?
[00:29:50] Speaker C: Sure. And then I'll let you finish it off beautifully as you always do. So for me, whenever I get together with a client for a weekend workshop or any sort of project I referenced that term, operationalize, I will intentionally, on my end, spend the last couple, call it 45 minutes to an hour discussing what's next, sharing what's next. Okay, so we invested time money to come and do this for a weekend, and we don't want this to collect dust on the shelf moving forward. So how do we operationalize this risk registry content that we just created so that it isn't lost, so that we can be more efficient and make good decisions that mitigate our risks, align with our values moving forward.
So I'll have that intentional conversation. We'll talk about our operational plans that we have in place. Steve, how do we copy paste future measures that we've just identified, like some really awesome stuff. What's short term, what's long term? So we get really into the weeds a little bit on that, I would say, in terms of how do we make sure that we don't just walk out the door and, you know, Etch A Sketch and nothing happened.
That that for me is. Is a Very important step. So I'm very intentional in that conversation and then saying, hey, as a board, this is what board directors need to do as it pertains to our high level risks moving forward. This is what staff need to do moving forward, train your junior staff in this way, et cetera. So. So for me, it's a very direct and sort of intentional operational approach to things. What about you, Dina?
[00:31:35] Speaker B: I always remember Maya Angelou's beautiful, you know, invitation. People aren't going to remember what you said or did. They'll remember how you made them feel. And so for me, it's how do we use these moments in these workshops to remind people that they can do it? So I love Jason's invitation of just do it. You need to commit to advancing your decision making and upping your game in that process. And risk management is one way that we can do that. The second thing is the pause. So really ensuring that people can remind themselves that the pausing is going to give them a better opportunity to make better decisions. The third thing, it's that lens, Jason, of, well, what's the risk associated with this decision and what's the risk if we don't? The fourth step is how do we look at this decision and then evaluate it in alignment with our values? Because our values is the language of our culture. And ideally we can enhance our decision making or at least make a compelling reason for doing this.
And then the step that most people forget is how do we communicate this to our people? Do we pause and assess who needs to know what by when, how and why? When that is done, I think you're going to see a lot of reduction in people feeling tense. And you opened up the session with that. People were up in arms because the Ed was fired. People didn't understand the why, but when they understood the why, then they're really upset with the board around, well, how did you let this happen? I think it's really important for us to learn how to communicate more effectively. Then this final piece around, let's learn from this decision. Can we evaluate the effectiveness of the decision? Can we make adjustments so that this doesn't happen again or we're better informed the next time something similar happens? And then finally, can we share? Can we share with our people what it is that we learned? To me, that's the learning organization when we do that. I think people are. What I have seen happen, Jason, is that trust inches up. And in an environment like now where trust is really low and you and I know we can only move as fast as the speed of trust. I find organizations that commit to risk management in a way that's integrated with their values. It's a trust leveraging move because we tend to say here are the risks and here's what we're doing. So when we do that, I think we get to do much better work together. We create this learning environment where people are a lot less likely to point fingers and hold that the decision making as a shared accountability, those are some of the things that you know that I believe are really, really helpful on behalf of the team at Sport Law. I think it's so wonderful that we have people like you, Jason, that have grown some experience and expertise and then can share stories with our clients so that they don't feel so isolated. Misery loves company and I think that this kind of work is really helping people build some stronger muscles in their decision making capabilities.
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're so grateful to share our vision of Sportopia with you as we all look to elevate sport. As always to have your say in Sportopia. Email us@helloportlaw CA to let us know what you want to hear about next. Stay tuned for the next episode. Until then, be well.
[00:35:19] Speaker C: It.
