By the thinkBIG Team
As Australians debate the merits of introducing National Sorry Day into the education curriculum, former plumber Kevin Sheedy can sit back in the knowledge that he was a pioneer in bringing indigenous talent to the fore of Australian culture. And it all had a little to do with ‘Brand Sheedy'.
When it comes to changing landscapes and social perception, Kevin Sheedy is a man who thinks in global terms. He is an ambassador for the indigenous people and brand champion for the incumbent Australian Football League (AFL) team GWS.
In late 2009, Sheedy gave a stirring speech for Image Group International and the Australian Institute of Management about branding and leadership, having just returned from a two-week tour across Australia as AFL ambassador with indigenous Australians.
"You go up there because that's what leadership is," Sheedy says. "Every kid in Australia deserves an opportunity."
Sheedy is talking about the effort the AFL puts in to integrate young Aboriginal children into the football culture and offer them chances in life they may not otherwise receive.
Aboriginal players have been an integral part of the Australian football landscape for many years, but it is Sheedy's proactive approach that has had the most positive impact in creating interest and recognition and ultimately increasing representation among indigenous communities.
The super coach is also responsible for one of the great highlights of the AFL season, Dreamtime at the G, which celebrates indigenous heritage in football. The game came about after another great Sheedy initiative, the ANZAC Day blockbuster.
Thinking it would be a great way to fill the stadium, give brand recognition to his former club Essendon and bring meaning and recognition to such an important day, Sheedy presented the idea to the AFL.
"Once upon a time no club owned ANZAC Day. So I thought who could I ring: Carlton, Collingwood or Richmond? I'm not going to ring Richmond because I love them (Sheedy was a Premiership player with the club)."
He agonised between Essendon's two most detested rivals. "As soon as I thought I'll ring Collingwood, I picked up the phone to Carlton. Then when I thought about ringing Carlton, I rang Collingwood straight away. I took the worst."
Besides the finals, ANZAC Day is now the biggest day on the AFL calendar. Sheedy puts this down to looking for the "business you can't see." It is how Dreamtime at the G came about. It was about finding what people wanted. Sheedy says good leadership is about creating the opportunities that weren't thought about or that people were negative towards.
"We got ANZAC Day up and Richmond was upset. They asked what about us, what about the money? I told them it wasn't about money it's the thought. They wanted the money I wanted the idea. So we had to find something for Richmond."
The answer was sitting right in front of Sheedy. The colours that brand Essendon and Richmond—black, yellow and red—are the same colours that define the Aboriginal nation.
"So we came up with Dreamtime. The match was sold out for the next two years and the social upshot is that Richmond, in collaboration with the State government, is building a $21 million indigenous college in Punt Rd, so kids from the outback can now go to school in Melbourne."
The indigenous brand is now one of the most important in the AFL and this is mostly due to Sheedy's leadership. He believes that branding and leadership is about creating a belief system and adding value.
Since his days as a plumber, Sheedy has been looking at ways in which he can add value to the organisations he has worked for and it stems from the days he was digging ditches and laying pipes.
He tells the story of the site manager who came up to the young apprentices and encouraged them by paying recognition to the jobs these apprentices were doing. Sheedy says the encouragement goes a long way to building talent.
"As leaders we don't miss the effort in the organisation and that takes a specific type of CEO who encompasses the brand of an organisation. Make sure that recognition is an important tool in your organisation and be sincere because if you're not, they'll see through it straight away. Recognition is an excellent branding tool."
Brand Sheedy has been in development for a long time. "I'm 61 and still trying to get better and that's what leadership is, it's chasing knowledge and sharing. Don't go away and lock the information in your own vault. That's not what it's about. Really, you should be saying there's the knowledge now let's go and get some more."
In 1974 when Richmond won the Premiership, Sheedy spent six to eight weeks in the US and went to the University of Hawaii just to look and learn. It was the start of his selfimprovement journey.
Later when he took the coaching position at Essendon, he began to apply what his plumbing mentors had taught him and what he'd learnt on his travels.
"No one had ever taken a full time coaching role and when I came on board I found the organisation was, to put it nicely, asleep."
So Sheedy, understanding that geographical location could be a key to growth, hatched a plan. "I'm an ex tradie. When tradies go onto a building site they have plans of the area." Knowing the geographic location means the job can be completed with fewer problems.
Around Windy Hill (Essendon's home ground), there is Moonee Valley, Flemington and the Zoo. Also, close to Essendon is the Tullamarine Freeway. What was lacking around Essendon were kids to play football.
"The job told me no kids live near the Tullamarine Freeway, or Essendon airport. The nearest player zone was Sunbury, which at the time belonged toMelbourne Football Club. So what we did was take the brand out of Essendon. It was important because we changed Essendon and the way people thought about Essendon. Essendon became an Australian club. If we had stayed and locked ourselves up, the organisation would be gone today."
As mentioned before, good leadership and branding is about turning negatives into positives. Sheedy did this via the Tullamarine Freeway, one of only a handful of roads out of Melbourne via the airport.
"The Tullamarine became a positive not a negative because the nearest airport to any club was to us. We flew out every year for practice matches and never played in Victoria. One of the first places we played was a small West Australian mining town called Collie. The treasurer of the club at the time said we didn't have much money to fly out and he questioned the action. I told him if he sanctioned the trip I'd know he was serious about changing the organisation."
The trip paid dividends and the club made money via a large attendance of VFL starved fans. Since that time, Essendon has recruited seven players from the region.
The story prompts Sheedy to reiterate his point. "We put a big red sash across Australia and that's how we sold Essendon: as a great Australian club. So again, don't only look at what you're doing, look at the business you can't see. That's what leadership is."
Within four years of Sheedy taking on the coach's role, Essendon won the Premiership and made the finals for the next five years. "Not only that, we improved our membership by 300% because what we did was make sure we became an Australian club. What we did was get out of Essendon."
For Sheedy it is all about seeing the bigger picture and continuing to grow. The next phase of his own personal development was to have an impact not only on a football club and football society, but society in general.
Having championed the indigenous footballer as a coach and having launched events such as Dreamtime at the G, the next step as development manager for the AFL was to recruit more indigenous players and give teenagers coming out of school, including Aboriginal kids, jobs. So Sheedy hatched another plan.
The plan required that the AFL map out all the places Aboriginal footballers had been recruited.
"What happens is you find out where you're not recruiting from and you find out why. That's how I added value to the AFL. There's lot s of ways to add value in a job, you just have to look for the right angle, no matter what organisation you work for. Adding ideas is your brand."
After Sheedy's initiative was put into place the indigenous player population rose from 2% to 11%; this is of particular significance when you consider the indigenous population makes up only 2% of the population of Australia.
The work continues unabated. In conjunction with the Federal Government, the AFL launched a jobs plan fro teenagers brokered by Sheedy.
"Today, 6,000 kids have had a job because we put one dollar of each finals ticket to go to the training course. The government matched the AFL dollar for dollar, now that's branding."
Every year 600 get a job and 100 of those are indigenous.
Sheedy's contribution to the indigenous population is outstanding, his contribution to the AFL even more so and it all comes down to brand Sheedy; to seek knowledge, to know how to add value, to treat others with respect and to see opportunity where others are restricted.
