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1776191020[/url]']
Lastly, I'm watching players leaving Stanford for the portal (and for a few, new homes) from a distance.  I know no details.  But what I do know is, your athletic department has done all the wrong things with respect to an obvious crisis in the WBB program.  I spent much of my career observing and (later) helping small and large organizations of all types successfully manage change.  For some, high turnover; for others, a leadership issue; for others, a systemic or even a cultural problem.  But in all these cases, I noticed 4 critical things needed to happen: 1) a sense of urgency; 2) transparency; 3) a feeling of potency- that we could manage this change effectively.  And lastly- a consensus of reward at the end; that if we make this change now, we will come out of it successful and reap the benefits of change.

It seems to me that Stanford leadership has failed to do any of these four.  It's a textbook example of how not to run a program.

I hope for the best!

Surely you understand that the first step here is to be able to articulate a clear vision of the future state that you are trying to change to.  Otherwise, your recipe is basically the Politician’s syllogism (“we must do something; this is something; therefore we must do this”).  Stanford is a university and not a traditional business, and the President of the University is more like a cat herder than he is a CEO.

I legitimately don’t think the University knows what it wants from its athletics department (and again, different power centers within the University have different priorities).  As I keep reminding people, the University had to lay off almost 400 people in order to cut its budget by $140 million last year.  Stanford athletics had a $21 million deficit even before the move to the ACC, partial TV revenue, increased budget for travel, never mind the forthcoming outlays under the House settlement (~$20 million).  So far, we haven’t seen any major movements to change the AD because there are two ways this can go:

Option 1: Go whole hog into doing “whatever it takes” to support athletics.  Mount a major campaign for donors to shore up the endowment with funds earmarked for the AD and ongoing support for NIL to play with the “big boys”.  My estimate is that all told, it will probably take about $50 million a year or a cool billion dollar endowment that can pay that out in perpetuity.  That would enable Stanford to keep its 36 varsity teams, pay out the full $20 million House settlement amount and funnel enough money through NIL to be competitive in the “major” sports (football, M&W basketball) and attract/retain title winning talent in the non-revenue sports (ie, match offers for athletes like Nijaree Canady, and the wrestlers who are grad transferring this year).  Great if you can line up the money, but despite a large number of very wealthy alums out there the Venn diagram of “can afford to write 8 figure checks” and “cares more about Stanford athletics than other things, including having names on buildings at Stanford” may be a null set.  It also probably requires more academic compromises than I think the academic senate would be comfortable with (though I’ve been surprised with what they’ve acceded to so far)

Option 2 (the option that I think we will eventually head towards): A major retrenchment from athletics for Stanford.  We can’t afford to support 36 sports so we start cutting them (our much maligned former AD might have been ahead of his time).  we can’t afford to buy ourselves a world class football team, and at the next conference realignment we find ourselves without a chair when the ACC falls apart because we have over a decade of futility in revenue sports and dwindling attendance.  Maybe we even get ahead of the curve and decide to move to a minor conference before the next realignment.  But this ends with Stanford having anywhere between 1/2 to 2/3 as many sports as we do now, competing in a WCC or back in the PAC-12 or even *gasp* a move away from D1.  Athletics may just mean less at Stanford in the future than it does now.

And then there is option 3, muddle through and hope that the pendulum swings back to a situation that is more favorable to Stanford athletics (I don’t think the genie can be put back in, but who knows).  Or maybe things are changing so quickly that even if we adapt to the new reality, things will change in a different direction, so rushing to adapt to the current state runs the risk of running afoul of Gretzky’s maxim ("Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been").  Of course, if you have no idea where the puck is going, it might actually make sense to stop and try and figure that out first.

BC

I have worked with organizations that articulated great vision and mission statements, but they were failing because (in many cases) something in their structure, or culture, leadership - resulting in poor performance, was not aligned to their vision/mission.  I work in the real world and I know a thing or two about vision statements.  I just helped a global non-profit rewrite their vision because their vision was too out of reach compared to their work and impact.  Yes, visions are the head of the "spear", but developing one now, is not what Stanford Athletics should be engaged in at this point.  Kate Paye had a mission statement at the beginning her tenure: "Compete for national championships" (what a great aspiration), and we saw where that went.  This is all about responding to major problems within the program- horrible performance and players leaving. That must be addressed now.

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1776191020[/url]']
Lastly, I'm watching players leaving Stanford for the portal (and for a few, new homes) from a distance.  I know no details.  But what I do know is, your athletic department has done all the wrong things with respect to an obvious crisis in the WBB program.  I spent much of my career observing and (later) helping small and large organizations of all types successfully manage change.  For some, high turnover; for others, a leadership issue; for others, a systemic or even a cultural problem.  But in all these cases, I noticed 4 critical things needed to happen: 1) a sense of urgency; 2) transparency; 3) a feeling of potency- that we could manage this change effectively.  And lastly- a consensus of reward at the end; that if we make this change now, we will come out of it successful and reap the benefits of change.

It seems to me that Stanford leadership has failed to do any of these four.  It's a textbook example of how not to run a program.

I hope for the best!

Surely you understand that the first step here is to be able to articulate a clear vision of the future state that you are trying to change to.  Otherwise, your recipe is basically the Politician’s syllogism (“we must do something; this is something; therefore we must do this”).  Stanford is a university and not a traditional business, and the President of the University is more like a cat herder than he is a CEO.

I legitimately don’t think the University knows what it wants from its athletics department (and again, different power centers within the University have different priorities).  As I keep reminding people, the University had to lay off almost 400 people in order to cut its budget by $140 million last year.  Stanford athletics had a $21 million deficit even before the move to the ACC, partial TV revenue, increased budget for travel, never mind the forthcoming outlays under the House settlement (~$20 million).  So far, we haven’t seen any major movements to change the AD because there are two ways this can go:

Option 1: Go whole hog into doing “whatever it takes” to support athletics.  Mount a major campaign for donors to shore up the endowment with funds earmarked for the AD and ongoing support for NIL to play with the “big boys”.  My estimate is that all told, it will probably take about $50 million a year or a cool billion dollar endowment that can pay that out in perpetuity.  That would enable Stanford to keep its 36 varsity teams, pay out the full $20 million House settlement amount and funnel enough money through NIL to be competitive in the “major” sports (football, M&W basketball) and attract/retain title winning talent in the non-revenue sports (ie, match offers for athletes like Nijaree Canady, and the wrestlers who are grad transferring this year).  Great if you can line up the money, but despite a large number of very wealthy alums out there the Venn diagram of “can afford to write 8 figure checks” and “cares more about Stanford athletics than other things, including having names on buildings at Stanford” may be a null set.  It also probably requires more academic compromises than I think the academic senate would be comfortable with (though I’ve been surprised with what they’ve acceded to so far)

Option 2 (the option that I think we will eventually head towards): A major retrenchment from athletics for Stanford.  We can’t afford to support 36 sports so we start cutting them (our much maligned former AD might have been ahead of his time).  we can’t afford to buy ourselves a world class football team, and at the next conference realignment we find ourselves without a chair when the ACC falls apart because we have over a decade of futility in revenue sports and dwindling attendance.  Maybe we even get ahead of the curve and decide to move to a minor conference before the next realignment.  But this ends with Stanford having anywhere between 1/2 to 2/3 as many sports as we do now, competing in a WCC or back in the PAC-12 or even *gasp* a move away from D1.  Athletics may just mean less at Stanford in the future than it does now.

And then there is option 3, muddle through and hope that the pendulum swings back to a situation that is more favorable to Stanford athletics (I don’t think the genie can be put back in, but who knows).  Or maybe things are changing so quickly that even if we adapt to the new reality, things will change in a different direction, so rushing to adapt to the current state runs the risk of running afoul of Gretzky’s maxim ("Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been").  Of course, if you have no idea where the puck is going, it might actually make sense to stop and try and figure that out first.

BC

I have worked with organizations that articulated great vision and mission statements, but they were failing because (in many cases) something in their structure, or culture, leadership - resulting in poor performance, was not aligned to their vision/mission.  I work in the real world and I know a thing or two about vision statements.  I just helped a global non-profit rewrite their vision because their vision was too out of reach compared to their work and impact.  Yes, visions are the head of the "spear", but developing one now, is not what Stanford Athletics should be engaged in at this point.  Kate Paye had a mission statement at the beginning her tenure: "Compete for national championships" (what a great aspiration), and we saw where that went.  This is all about responding to major problems within the program- horrible performance and players leaving. That must be addressed now.