The type of innovation that changes a marketplace, how people think, and how things are done requires us to start with why, after all, a movement is only as good as the reasons for starting it. So here it is. Public healthcare provision in the UK is on the defensive.
Currently, 60% of our healthcare spend is on cure and rehabilitation, our NHS is overwhelmed and under committed. Other centrally funded agencies deliver predictable programs in the hope of predictable results. In the private sector, the health and fitness marketplace is in a race for the bottom, and innovation is borne out of the need to survive. In this article, we will take a look at how we got here, what the future may hold and why putting purpose before profit is in all our interests.
We all know at our own costs that when we are busy and chaotic we fail to look at innovative long-term solutions, instead, we look towards the surety of the tried and the trusted, a short-term fix. Talk is of control, deliverables, KPI’s and broad brush stroke policies in lieu of creativity. Embracing the possibility of innovation requires the type of trust and commitment that doesn’t come with a pension plan, 25 days holiday, and a company car.
There is, however, a rapidly growing group that we have not yet mentioned, that if given the support and direction required can challenge how we shape the future of healthcare provision in the UK. Helping us move from defensive to the offensive in our thinking, a group of people with very little to lose and everything to gain.
Sports-based entrepreneurs. Coaches who are attracted to creating a lifestyle business with the intent of inspiring change in others only to find themselves making short-term decisions, focused on the quick fix and attention-grabbing headlines. Who better to begin a conversation about putting long-term offensive thinking into practice than the people who would be learning the lesson themselves? Building businesses that put purpose before profit, design of life before the rigors of life, and the values of their community before the value of their services
If we are to place our trust in a group of people with nothing to lose and everything to gain. We should at least do some background checks. Let’s begin by looking at the environment in which they currently operate. A marketplace is said to be in a race for the bottom, when heightened competition between parties, results in a sacrifice of product quality in order to gain a competitive advantage. Busy and noisy marketplaces can be good news for the consumer if we are talking about making transport or water supplies more affordable, but when it comes to people’s health, then it is a problem for the Government, society, and sport-based entrepreneurial coaches.
Who wins when a consumer wants to change and a coach needs long-term thinking? The conflict a coach faces is between trying to deliver near-term results, profit while paving the way for long-term thinking and investment, purpose. The same defensive thinking that sees us spend 60% of our healthcare budget on patching up the preventable diseases of our time. Quick fixes and client appeasement are the harsh realities of the current marketplace. Society is getting what it wants, not what it needs.
To break the cycle of short-term thinking of value before values, somebody needs to go first. The agile and the quick, sports-based entrepreneurs, or the slow and the old, the Government and its agencies? In the next section of this article, I will outline how a growing group of disenfranchised coaches can be mobilised to challenge our thinking, contribute to new standards of treatment in preventable diseases and change how we do things.
Perhaps then a more accurate term to describe sports-based entrepreneurs who choose to enroll in the idea of purpose before profit would be “social entrepreneurs”, no overwhelming desire to create or own fixed assets, but a strong desire to make a positive contribution in their community. Enrolled in their purpose, sports-based social entrepreneurs would require the trust of central agencies to own their methods without impediment.
Trust until now has been in short supply and to decentralise control would require a shift in thinking from the Government and central agencies. Projects are driven by their measures, not their purpose. The same is true of most businesses and research. Research is plentiful in the world of measures that are accessible and easily understood, the link between physical activity and the benefits to the participants is one such example. What is less well understood is the link between the economy, society, and our well-being, where measures are more difficult to come by.
If we are to develop links between the economy, society, and our well-being it is hard to imagine that a project designed and driven by measures will in the long term outperform a project reverse-engineered from its purpose. Unburdened by defensive thinking, flexible in their design, a social entrepreneur sees value in the process, lessons in the failures, and measures as tools that inform the project.
Valued for the generosity of their thinking, acting as catalysts for increasing social capital within their communities, sports-based social entrepreneurs can facilitate personal leadership through a simple Be. Do. Say, model. Professor Richard Dawkins, famously coined the term “memes” associating the word with learned behaviours that are imitated and passed on. Sports-based social entrepreneurs know that their success begins with enrollment and is built on engagement. In search of an R number >1, a tipping point at which the narrative changes, ideas spread, and how things are done brings quantifiable change for the community.
When R < 1 and the idea is rough and its assets intangible will you lean into the idea and support it? Few will, and that is ok. For it is only a few that are needed, more will come, when the idea becomes polished and the signs of success are difficult to ignore. The alternative is to go big and watch people lose their nerve at the slightest sign of a wobble. Physical literacy was a heavily backed concept that was like a bad run at the theatre, people quickly did not want to be associated with a flop. The idea failed to gather enough momentum to see it through the difficult phase of multiple iterations that are required to turn a good idea into a great concept.
Why then ask for the strength of leadership from the many, when you can focus on the few? Why ask for big budgets when the stakes are high and the environment in which you operate is chaotic and unstable? Instead, utilise the unstable nature of a marketplace and turn it to your advantage. Create stability where there is none. Sports-based social entrepreneurs strive for the stability and financial freedom that would allow them to do the work that initially attracted them to the marketplace. A strong desire to make a positive contribution to their community.
Stability and creativity on purpose are at the heart of this change. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we do our best thinking when we are stable and secure in the knowledge that our needs are being met. So meet their needs, train them, support them and allow them to become a value-based social entrepreneurial coach. A catalyst of change. Who better to lead an empathetic conversation about change than the person learning to innovate in order to thrive?
To facilitate the change in thinking outlined in this article would require the Government and its centrally funded agencies to incentivise sports-based social entrepreneurs. Reallocation of a small proportion of the healthcare spend towards a reorganisation of the health and fitness marketplace would see social capital thrive where once it was crowded out.
Sport-based social entrepreneurship for the benefit of others is not something you believe in, it is something you do. Purposeful practice is the difference-maker. Measured by their contributions to our communities, the change they bring, and the impact they have on others. Sports-based social entrepreneurs can and will build their practices with purpose in mind. It is now up to society to provide that purpose.