I was surprised by the story I heard that day, I did not appreciate the full extent of the dire situation Panthers faced before a major overhaul of the Leagues club and football operations.
Three years ago the club was teetering on the brink financially, saddled with $95m of debt, minimal profit, creditors stretching out to 180 days and was bogged down operationally by a massively complex corporate structure including many unprofitable subsidiary clubs in other locations.
The board recognised it had to act swiftly to be save the club. This was the point in May 2011 of the much publicised return of Phil Gould, former Penrith player and coach and well known media commentator.
On the surface the move may have looked like a strictly football based appointment but it was far from that. Gould sought a far-reaching role seeing the need for a massive transformation of the whole organisation, not just the football team.
I was fortunate to sit next to Gould at the event where he kindly gave some additional insight into the nature of the challenge that the club faced.
In his speech Gould said the first thing he saw was the need for a professional manager, someone with the high level business acumen to turnaround the operations of the club.
At this point Gould sought out an old friend and former executive of TAB and Sky Channel, Warren Wilson who ended up being appointed by the board as CEO and Gould’s boss going forward.
The partnership created by Wilson and Gould has been a masterstroke, Wilson refinanced the debt, simplified the corporate structure, revived the culture of the business introducing a “measure, benchmark and improve everything” approach and let Gould get on with turning around the football side of the club.
What is clear, however, is this pairing of Wilson and Gould brought not just a turnaround for the club’s business operations and football team, it also contributed to a true transformation of the organisation, based on a vision to build Australia’s leading sporting and leisure precinct based right here in Western Sydney.
This $850m precinct vision is well on the way to being realized with a master plan design developed and several of its elements underway or in the development application stage.
The plan is impressive; housing a state of the art sports science centre, multi-purpose training and leisure facilities, along with a hotel and various upgrades to the Panthers club.
The point I beg to differ on with Phil Gould was a statement in his speech about: “business not necessarily being his thing”.
What I saw in Gould’s speech was a demonstration of many of the skills we try to instil in business students at university today.
Success is not just driven through technical knowledge in a particular discipline like marketing or finance.
While these are important, it’s the skills of strategic and critical thinking, communication, leadership, teamwork, understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and often a dose of humility that can matter most.
I saw in the pairing of Wilson and Gould a real life embodiment of these success factors for business.
Gould demonstrated great leadership in recognising where he needed professional input and helped the board find it.
He and Wilson have then delivered strong leadership and built a great sense of “team”, not just around football but through the whole organisation based on everybody working to achieve the vision they have created.
Congratulations to the management team at Western Sydney Business Connection for putting on this great event.
The Panthers transformation story is an excellent example of success in Western Sydney that needs to be promoted widely across the region to inspire others businesses facing their own difficulties and challenges.
Don Wright is Program Manager of UWS Small Business Support and a board member of the Western Sydney Business Connection.
