Top sailors' exits `fact of team life'

By SELWYN PARKER

The exodus from Team New Zealand of its top brass is reasonably normal, probably inevitable, and ultimately healthy.

That is the view of an authority on team dynamics, Winston Pond of Auckland-based Leadership Solutions.

"I see it time and time again," he said. "People coming and going is a fact of team life. Teams are not steady-state organisations."

The trick, said Mr Pond, was to recognise and plan for the essentially fluid nature of hot-shot organisations like Team New Zealand whose personnel were in demand outside New Zealand, just like former All Blacks.

For example, it was essential to install systems to manage unexpected arrivals and departures. Also, the leadership expert said, we would do ourselves a favour by adopting a less outraged tone.

"Murray Deaker missed the point badly," Mr Pond said, referring to the broadcaster's column in the Herald on Saturday.

In that, Deaker wrote passionately about being "conned" by Brad Butterworth, Russell Coutts and others in Team New Zealand, and said: "Don't ask me to believe any more bull****."

In fact, said Mr Pond, Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth left because the situation had changed. In a global market, they were made an offer they could not refuse. This happened all the time in teams, too.

The thing, however, was the team - and that was not leaving.

"Deaker fails to recognise that a team has a life outside the individuals who form it," said Mr Pond.

A team's glue did not necessarily come unstuck just because several individuals left, however important they were. The organisation was still bound together by the culture that shaped it in the first place.

Mr Pond's argument found support from Dr David Brock, senior lecturer in the University of Auckland's faculty of business and an authority on international organisations and strategies.

"A team is a dynamic organism,"

said Dr Brock.

"It's normal to have a recycling of its members. It's also typical of what happens in all professional sports. Top talent tends to gravitate to where the top money is."

To Dr Brock, this was a much wider issue than a few high-profile yachties being poached by a Swiss billionaire. It was the brain drain. "This is a wake-up call. These guys are blatantly underpaid by world standards," he said.

"It's a problem that applies in every profession. Doctors and M. Coms are leaving in droves. It's a huge threat to New Zealand."

But can Team New Zealand recover?

After all, within a couple of months it has lost its father figure, Sir Peter Blake, top helmsman Coutts ("the absolute focal point of the sailing team," Team New Zealand 2000 executive director Alan Sefton once said), top tactician Butterworth ("the Zen master"), and probably the core of the after guard, not to mention various other mooted departures.

"It's abnormal but it's not the end of the world," said Dr Brock.

"If the America's Cup was next month, we would lose it. But three years [to the defence] is an acceptable period for the team to rebuild."

For Dr Brock, a rugby enthusiast, the All Blacks provided a valid parallel.

After the departure of significant members like Sean Fitzpatrick and Zinzan Brooke, the team struggled.

But the present All Blacks were sustained by numerous other forces such as their unique culture and work ethic, their management and training systems, and by public support.

"It's still a good team if all the other non-individual factors are good," said Dr Brock.

The last word probably belongs to Russell Coutts.

"Team is a big word," he told the authors of Peak Performance, the management book that analysed the secrets of top-performing sports organisations.

"Team New Zealand is not led, as it may be perceived, with strong leaders directing all the operations. It is actually very much consensus-led. Key decisions are made quite slowly, and discussed thoroughly. There is a high degree of individual responsibility."

The worry for what is left of Team New Zealand, though, is that Coutts, Butterworth et al will almost certainly take the same consensus-led, team-based structure to Switzerland, not to mention all that intellectual property.

Although Team New Zealand will regroup, the Auld Mug is much less secure in its glass box.

* Selwyn Parker is available at wordz@xtra.co.nz