Dr Cliff Bertrand

Track and field de­vel­op­ment must in­volve grass­roots par­tic­i­pa­tion. There is a need to de­vel­op ac­tive age-group pro­grammes at club lev­el and pro­mote Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion at pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­els. Con­ver­sa­tions with gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials that will ben­e­fit peo­ple for life must be sought. A cadre of IAAF cer­ti­fied of­fi­cials must be put to­geth­er. The cur­rent of­fi­cials are ag­ing. Younger peo­ple must be trained as re­place­ments. Our of­fi­cials are ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers and we must find ways to de­vel­op a farm sys­tem. We must pro­mote com­mon goals and doc­u­ment, achiev­able and vis­i­ble goals in a strate­gic plan. These goals must be in­sti­tu­tion­alised from the pri­ma­ry school lev­el in or­der to de­vel­op de­ter­mined, long term and pos­i­tive at­ti­tudes and the knowl­edge, en­thu­si­asm, and ac­tivism cul­ti­vat­ed by a re­struc­tured as­so­ci­a­tion must be har­nessed. The na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships should be con­duct­ed more ef­fi­cient­ly, ef­fec­tive­ly and hu­mane­ly in a busi­nesslike man­ner. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the NAAA has not demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty to un­der­stand the busi­ness ram­i­fi­ca­tions of its de­ci­sions, in­clud­ing how to com­mu­ni­cate with the pub­lic, spon­sors, and in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. These are im­por­tant busi­ness func­tions that must be de­vel­oped. With­out the ap­pro­pri­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools and plat­forms, or­gan­i­sa­tion will not be suc­cess­ful by in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Track and field has di­verse groups that are not con­vinced that they share a com­mon goal with the NAAA. Con­stituent groups have grown far­ther apart over the years be­cause each sees the mis­sion and ob­jec­tives as sin­gu­lar to its par­tic­u­lar en­ti­ty. The re­sult is a lack of una­nim­i­ty and bad lu­cid­i­ty about what they are try­ing to ac­com­plish. In busi­ness, there are a few ab­solute goals and ob­jec­tives that con­stituent groups are look­ing to ful­fill as best they can. They look to strong, com­mu­nica­tive, and in­tel­li­gent lead­er­ship. With­out this lead­er­ship, groups will not in­te­grate. The process is col­lab­o­ra­tive rather than dic­ta­to­r­i­al lead­er­ship. Find­ing com­mon ground is des­per­ate­ly need­ed. If lead­ers can co­a­lesce, amal­ga­mate and pro­vide a clear path with a com­mon mes­sage to their af­fil­i­ates, there­in would be found op­por­tu­ni­ty for change and suc­cess. Fac­tor­ing and achiev­ing eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty is im­por­tant. The lack of this el­e­ment forces short-term de­ci­sions that are not good for busi­ness. To achieve eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, you must cre­ate a val­ue propo­si­tion and things must be done in a metic­u­lous way be­cause there are spe­cif­ic goals and ob­jec­tives. The NAAA is on record as hav­ing fifty-six (56) reg­is­tered clubs. Eco­nom­i­cal­ly, this mem­ber­ship base isn't go­ing to cut it to sur­vive. How­ev­er, it does ren­der a na­tion­al in­den­ta­tion. It means that the NAAA has a clus­ter of peo­ple say­ing 'I want to be part of this or­gan­i­sa­tion. I'm a con­sumer,' so the NAAA must make this con­sump­tion valu­able to spon­sors.

The NAAA must com­mand an un­fail­ing TV pres­ence. They must have con­sis­tent and de­pend­able "ap­point­ment tele­vi­sion" which means that every Sun­day at, say 11 a.m, fans can watch the NAAA half hour show. The NAAAs' PRO should vig­or­ous­ly pur­sue this av­enue? Cur­rent­ly the NAAA has very lit­tle as­pi­ra­tional val­ue to en­gage spon­sors or the gen­er­al pub­lic. Do club mem­bers know who the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers are? Do lo­cal ath­letes know who the pres­i­dent of the TTOC is? These or­ga­ni­za­tions have not in­vest­ed in the plat­forms, the show­cas­es that give their or­gan­i­sa­tions op­por­tu­ni­ties to talk about what they do. When was the last time the TTOC or the NAAA cre­at­ed a val­ue propo­si­tion that, col­lec­tive­ly, they have been able to take to prospec­tive spon­sors - and tell them they have X num­ber of con­sumers and ac­cess to XY num­ber of event op­por­tu­ni­ties? The bot­tom line for cre­at­ing eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty is not just based on sim­ply vis­it­ing prospec­tive spon­sors. It's cre­at­ing a val­ue propo­si­tion. What is the val­ue of your mem­ber­ship? What is the val­ue of your club groups? What is the val­ue of events?

What is the val­ue of your young ath­letes go­ing out and speak­ing in front of crowds? With­out a strong val­ue propo­si­tion that in­cludes TV, on-site spec­ta­tors, ath­letes' suc­cess, com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, etc., you can nev­er gain eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. You can't count on Gov­ern­ment spon­sor­ship every year to bail out the or­gan­i­sa­tion. So, get the con­stituent groups to­geth­er so they recog­nise that col­lec­tive­ly they have more pow­er and more val­ue than they do in­di­vid­u­al­ly. The beau­ty of track and field is that it has a world-class side, a com­pet­i­tive non-world-class side, a recre­ation­al side, and a life­long health side. But we don't pro­mote this col­lec­tive­ly. As a re­sult, our val­ue propo­si­tion is too bro­ken up and no one sees it in to­tal.

Es­tab­lish a brand for the sport to cre­ate val­ue and at­tract com­mer­cial tar­gets. Cre­at­ing val­ue isn't just about mar­ket­ing and vis­i­bil­i­ty. It's about re­turns on an in­vest­ment. Do an as­sess­ment and come up with cam­paigns that res­onate with au­di­ences.