One of the positives of the Olympic Committee’s (TTOC) education and affiliate member capacity building strategy is the increasing awareness within the local movement that much more can be done in respect of improving the management, governance and administration of sport. Within recent years the demand to attend the sport administration courses has increased exponentially.
Last year, the TTOC held its first advance sport management course. This year the course has been oversubscribed. The TTOC also offers mediation and arbitration support if and when requested. A consequence of the increased demand for the TTOC courses is growing requests for the TTOC to conduct sport specific sport management, governance and advisory services.
The TTOC over the years has always been seen as a major stakeholder in the local sport system. It is therefore not farfetched for the TTOC to be seen as an invaluable resource that can be called on to address problems and issues. Given its access to both local and foreign expertise in a number of functional areas it may very well be time for the TTOC to prioritise the use of its global network to support the increased demands for TTOC assistance.
The need for information, insight and analysis for the local sport sector is an urgent priority. The real world isn’t waiting. Change is occurring daily. For national sport organisations and governing bodies to keep up, a quantum leap forward is required—not forward into the future—but forward into today’s world.
We have an absolutely wonderful story to tell the world through sport. But because so many of us are being held back by outdated methods and thinking the true reality of the enormous potential and opportunities can’t be realised. It’s not and never was a guessing game. In the past we may have been able to get away but now given the ready access to information its hard if not near impossible to fool some of the people some of the time far less all the people all of the time.
There are significant opportunities waiting to be explored. This is not the time for hesitancy. We have to go for it. We have to seek out the information, knowledge and the intelligence, make informed choices, ask the right questions and create the right answers. It’s in this context that the TTOC must leverage its access to international resources and institutions to bring a positive contribution to the management, marketing and governance in T&T.
The issues and topics that are high on the global sports agenda must be addressed not after the fact but in advance. We shouldn’t wait until situations become far advanced to address them. In setting new standards we must champion and be in the vanguard of change. The goal should be to transform local sport through innovation and excellence in every area, be it sports marketing, digital media, brand development, event management and sponsorship.
It’s high time we stop playing at sport and get serious about the opportunities within sport. Implementing strategic shifts will require identifying those who will lose the most from the strategic shift as those individuals or groupings will make every effort to derail openly or silently any effort at making a strategic shift and progress.
It is never easy to execute a strategic shift, and doing it with limited resources is even more difficult. A critical strategic success factor is addressing the obstacles and hurdles.