Bri­an Lewis

How do we en­cour­age op­er­a­tional dis­ci­pline with­in the na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er sport stake­hold­ers giv­en that sport in Trinidad and To­ba­go is and will re­main vol­un­teer based and am­a­teur?

It's one thing to say you want to do some­thing; it's an­oth­er thing to get it done. The fact of the mat­ter is set­ting goals and hav­ing plans are just one as­pect. Af­ter the goal set­ting and plan­ning phase, you have to put struc­ture in place to make it hap­pen. That means hav­ing the re­sources, or­gan­i­sa­tion, and process­es you need to ex­e­cute your strat­e­gy.

What are we do­ing to en­cour­age op­er­a­tional dis­ci­pline? The ques­tion is asked against the back­ground that be­ing a vol­un­teer or an am­a­teur is not an ex­cuse for shod­dy or in­ept work.

How do we put the right team in place, one with the skills, knowl­edge, and ca­pa­bil­i­ties to ac­com­plish the goals or ob­jec­tives that are set?

Have we crit­i­cal­ly analysed our strengths and weak­ness­es? What are our blind spots? There are a num­ber of things be they at­ti­tudes, mind-sets, habits, and norms that in­form how we think and be­have. Some of these are part of our cul­ture but if we are to be hon­est, they may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be in our best in­ter­est. How do we at­tract the very best peo­ple and ex­pect great­ness from them?

How we de­vel­op and re­tain peo­ple is fun­da­men­tal to sus­tain­able suc­cess in sport. When you get your team right, you're go­ing to get re­sults.

What's work­ing? What's not? Is our ap­proach the right one?

Are we build­ing a firm plat­form?

There is no room for com­pla­cen­cy.

If we want to cre­ate a cul­ture of sus­tain­able suc­cess we first have to ap­pre­ci­ate that a great cul­ture doesn't just hap­pen. It must be built de­lib­er­ate­ly and it's the job of every sin­gle per­son with­in T&T sport to cre­ate a cul­ture that says ex­cel­lence.

What do we re­al­ly stand for?

When peo­ple in T&T look at their sport lead­ers what do they see? Do our ac­tions match our stat­ed in­ten­tions?

Things change. Pri­or­i­ties change. The econ­o­my changes. The busi­ness and so­cial cli­mate changes. It's im­por­tant to let an or­gan­i­sa­tion's cul­ture change too so that it doesn't start to feel sta­t­ic and ir­rel­e­vant to peo­ple.

It's not easy but when some­thing is not right we have to grap­ple and come to terms with it. There are changes tak­ing place and to re­main rel­e­vant na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions must em­brace the changes and be proac­tive and in­te­gra­tive in their think­ing.

It will take a col­lec­tive ap­proach even though some of us would wish that things re­main the way they were when our so­ci­ety was sim­ple in the way it was struc­tured.

The hard harsh re­al­i­ty is that we must adapt the time­less val­ues and prin­ci­ples of sport and Olymp­ism and make it rel­e­vant to mod­ern so­ci­ety if sport is to have a bright fu­ture.

It's not a ques­tion of sell­ing out or adopt­ing an ap­proach that sug­gests that the end jus­ti­fies the means or by all or any means nec­es­sary.

It's about get­ting the right peo­ple in the right place work­ing as a team.

It's not on­ly about win­ning medals but about help­ing peo­ple live bet­ter.

Sports peo­ple have the en­er­gy, ideas, cre­ativ­i­ty and above all the dreams. What we of­fer to T&T is an ex­pe­ri­ence to be lived. We want to in­spire peo­ple to im­prove their lifestyle and to strive for ex­cel­lence in all ar­eas of their lives. But for some rea­son the mes­sage is get­ting lost or not get­ting through to peo­ple.

It isn't enough to throw up our hands in frus­tra­tion and say that's the way it is. There are no easy an­swers but we must cer­tain­ly have the will and de­ter­mi­na­tion to keep search­ing.

I wish to ex­tend sin­cere con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, friends and as­so­ciates of Bertrand Doyle for his un­wa­ver­ing ser­vice, ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to na­tion­al life in the spheres of in­sur­ance, re­li­gion, ed­u­ca­tion and sport. He made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence and con­tributed to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T. RIP Mr Doyle.

Bri­an Lewis is the Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC). The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the TTOC. To con­tact the TTOC: e-mail con­tact@ttoc.org. Phone 625-1285 or twit­ter @olympictt