ï»żHigh Performance in Business Introduction (00:00)
Brad Eather: Hello and welcome to the Creative Business Podcast, the podcast exploring where creativity meets commerce. I'm your host, Brad Eather, a marketing and communication specialist helping businesses bring their strategic message to market. Remember to support us by subscribing wherever you are, or go that step further and find me on LinkedIn.
In business, we often lean on sports metaphors to tell ourselves a story of what success should look like. But when the pressure is turned up, the reality of the arena is less poetic. When we look at high-performance teams in a sport like rugby, the plan is only as good as your ability to hold your nerve while being physically dominated. Similarly, in business, high performance might be perceived as an individual's ability to perform under pressure, but unless the unit as a whole is cohesive, can we really call that high performance?
This is where we often start talking about success as business culture. Yet no matter how good a leader you are, things will always happen that are outside of your control. It's in these moments of extreme pressure that you either need the grit to double down on a strategy, or the humility to learn from what is no longer working and revisit the drawing board. However, the true challenge in these moments is bringing your people with you.
So, what are the real lessons that we can learn from high-performance sporting teams, and how can they be applied to business? My guest today understands the reality of this execution gap. Neil Tunnah is the CEO of Performance Change and a high-performance sporting coach with over 25 years of experience building elite teams in professional sport and business. Today, we're going to unpack what high performance means in the context of business, what makes a group of talented individuals a cohesive team, and what lessons he's learned from sport that can be applied to your business. Please welcome to the show, Neil Tunnah.
Neil Tunnah: Right, brilliant to be here. Thanks for having me. We've been trying to put this together for a while now, so it's exciting to be here.
Brad Eather: Long time, I'm looking forward to the chat.
High Performance Misconceptions (02:39)
Brad Eather: Neil, I've mentioned that you spend a lot of time in the high-performance arena. In the business world, people often romanticize this idea of high performance as locker room speeches that motivate a team. What is the biggest misconception business leaders have about high-performance environments, and where do you see that misconception manifest?
Neil Tunnah: Yeah, that's a great question. I went straight to the Any Given Sunday speech as soon as you said that. Look, it's interesting. I think what I learned was that it's quite individualized. Athletes, particularly, need different things at different times.
I probably learned the hard way when I first went into the professional game. I still thought a big part of it was the motivational side that had served me previously, particularly in the Shute Shield when I came through at second grade at Gordon. They're a wonderful bunch of human beings. The game side was quite easy with them, so I focused probably more on that emotional attachment and getting them up for games, and they responded really well.
But when I went to the professional game, it was completely different. You've got guys who are unbelievably motivatedâyou don't need to say anything to them. Then there are other guys who might be first-time pros whom you're trying to not only teach how to be a pro, but also teach them how to build their own motivation system so they come into a game ready.
My biggest thingâI bang this drum consistently and religiouslyâis about the individual. What does the individual need at that moment in time? If you were to put a camera in a changing room before a game for me, there are no enormous speeches. There are probably more questions than anything, if questions need to be asked, but it's letting them find the answers. It's trusting them that when that whistle goes, they care as much about winning as anyone else.
I think that part is really important: you trust the individuals that they want to be successful. No one goes out on a Saturday afternoon at any level of the game, crosses that white line, and thinks, "Yeah, I want to lose today." Everyone wants to win. So then it gets down to the nitty-gritty: How do you perform under extreme pressure? How do you help them develop the skills, the resilience, the grit, and the ability to make decisions under pressure, and then, when they get it wrong, move on really quickly?
That became my focus more than the motivational side of thingsâhow do I help the individual where they need to be helped right now? Sometimes it's doing nothing; sometimes it's just letting them be.
Individual Contributor vs Team Dynamics (05:23)
Brad Eather: I think the world at the moment has unprecedented access into some of these environments when you think about Netflix and what they're doing. One of the things that I notice, especially watching the Drive to Survive documentary, is how much emphasis is placed on everything around the individual. It's not just the actual discipline of driving the car, but making sure everything around them, like their sense of self, is taken care of. The complexity here is that there's the individual aspect and how leaders can bring the best out in people, but then still considering the team. Tell me about your experience in getting the best out of individuals in those situations.
Neil Tunnah: I think it comes down to character. If I go all the way back to stage one, you will inherit some players, just like in business you will inherit certain people as a leader. It's about how quickly you get to know them, their wants, and their needs, while always assessing who is a team person and who might be an outlier.
Then it becomes a matter of how you thread the individual's wants, needs, drive, motivation, and goals through the performance model for the organization. You have to respect that, but also tie them into the standards and non-negotiables that you flesh out as a team. Whether it's through recruitment or bringing the people who are already there along on the journey, that process is a crucial piece of the front-end work. You've got to get them on that journey by creating clarity around where you're going, the baseline for how you're going to do it, and where you need to work together to enhance that model.
That applies directly in business as well, Brad. We're doing some work with some brilliant businesses here in Adelaide right now, particularly in professional services. It's about asking: How do we simplify it? How do we make this the team model and the organization model, and then thread the individual model into that? There are lots of books and information out there around the sense of belonging, but if you can align an individual's wants and needs with the outcomes you're trying to achieve as a business while still respecting them, that's the key.
A really important part of what I've seen with some coaches when they fail is that they try to create something entirely new rather than enhance what is already there when it comes to individuals. Leadership is recognizing the strengths of someone and creating an opportunity to plug them into the team model.
The Role of Leadership in High Performance (08:09)
Brad Eather: You mentioned the word coaching there, and this is obviously a conversation about leadership, but within a sporting team, the idea of coaching is serving the player and the people on the team. What do you think leadership gets wrong in a business setting when they think their role is purely decision-making, missing that clear chain of command down to a coaching level where the focus is actually on the employees and how to make them better?
Neil Tunnah: I think you have to start with a really clear vision of where you're trying to go. If I'm sitting with an exec team or a board in business, that's the first thing: tell us where you're trying to get to. What's your vision for this? It doesn't have to be 10 years long or extrapolated over a massive period of time; you can actually drill down and define where you want to be at the end of the year. Assess where your business is right now, understand where you're trying to get to, and from there, you can build an operational model for execution. That model should have influence from leadership, middle management, and the individuals themselves.
It needs to be completely clear for the individual. This is something from a development session with Dave Rennie, back when he was the Wallabies coach, that really stuck with me. He talked about how clarity creates confidence. The challenge at the ground level is that clarity means something different to you than it does to me. The way we communicate and receive information is different. Therefore, as the coach, I have to be highly skilled in understanding your position so that the message lands clearly enough for you to connect with it.
Great coaches also help people understand how to improve by simply being themselves. I'm a massive proponent of strength-based modeling from an individual's perspective. I don't know anyone who played rugby for their country because they focused on what they were poor at.
Agile Leadership Development (11:02)
Brad Eather: Yeah, absolutely.
Neil Tunnah: People get to the top of the game because they have a really clear identity of what they are brilliant at. It doesn't mean they don't respect the things they need to work on to support that journey, but they are exceptionally clear on their strengths and find opportunities to utilize them more often. That trickles all the way through business. As leaders, if we can identify what our people are really good at and get them doing more of it while executing their roles, that can be a massive performance multiplier.
Brad Eather: I apologize to anyone out there who isn't a rugby fanatic like Neil and me, but we're going to be throwing around some names here. I read Eddie Jones's book about leadership. At this point in his 40-year career, he talks about how leadership styles have changed over the past few decades. What was effective back in the early 2000s is very different from what is effective now, given the cultural experiences of the youth coming through the program. I'm wondering, in your definition, what makes an effective leader today?
Neil Tunnah: The skillset has absolutely changed. If you look at Eddie coaching in 2000 versus now, it has to be different to have that kind of longevity as society changes. You've got to be highly agile as a leader; you've got to be willing to flex, change, grow, and adapt. Foundationally, it is crucial that you understand who you are and what you stand for, and then the skill lies in how you transfer that to other people.
I remember being coached by some brilliant coaches who simply told me what to do, and I went and did it. They never asked for my opinion, but I performed well in that system, and I've worked in businesses that operate the same way. Today, as Eddie often says, there are different types of leadersâsome are connectors of people, and others are driven by data and evidence. You have to understand where you sit on that spectrum. Once you know where you stand, play to your strengths. Don't try to be something you're not.
This has burned me multiple times in professional environments, particularly going in on day one trying to be what I thought people wanted me to be rather than just being myself. As a leader now, you've got to be clear on who you are, but you also have to be deeply aware of the needs of your people. You've got to meet their needs just as much as you want to be yourself. That's the complex part: I have to be authentic, but I might need to adapt my skillset and delivery for it to truly land with an individual and bring them in.
Self Awareness and Humility in Leadership (13:35)
Brad Eather: There's an element of humility involved when you're a leader. You need to recognize when your approach isn't working. What are some of the common triggers for a leader to recognize that their personal style is actually becoming the bottleneck of the system and that they need to revisit it?
Neil Tunnah: Fundamentally, a core skill for a leader is self-awareness, which means you have to be excellent at self-reflection. One thing I've learned to do at the onboarding stageâwhether in business or sportâis to ask a specific question when I first connect with an individual. For instance, with the last two sports teams and the last four businesses I've worked with, the very first question I asked was: "How would you like us to interact?"
I ask what they want from me from an interaction perspective because it gives me a window into their needs, but it also provides me with a benchmark to reflect upon later. Am I delivering that? When I do deliver it, is their behavior telling me that's what they really want? It becomes a reflection tool straight out of the gates.
You also have to have a level of humility when you walk into a new organization. I'm very comfortable admitting that I don't have all the answers; I never have. Going all the way back to my time at Knox or Gordon, I very rarely walked in and said, "This is what we're doing," without front-ending it with conversations around what they thought we should do. How do you think that will land in a game for you? How do you think the team will respond if we implement this this week? That is all part of the journey of knowing what they need and bringing them in. The humility piece is absolutely crucial.
Managing Team Outliers (16:29)
Brad Eather: Moving from leadership skills to tacticsâI'm sure this challenge is familiar to many: you have an "A-player" or someone who is incredibly good individually, but when it comes to aligning them with the overall objectives of the business, they might stray. What advice would you have for managing that person from a coaching perspective?
Neil Tunnah: My first question is: what is your feedback cadence? I had this exact conversation in a meeting this morning. If your feedback cadence is 90 days, you are going to walk into a session and ask someone about something that happened on day three, and they won't even remember it. If you want an environment underpinned by performance, it has to be defined by continuous development and growth.
When you come across these outliersâsay, someone in a sales team who hits 200% of their target every year but is highly challenging from a character perspectiveâyou have to be seen dealing with it. If you don't interact with it, you start to get isolation in your team because the rest of the group sees selfish behaviors driving that success. Even if that person is hitting a crucial number for the business, you have to be seen coaching them and trying to get some movement in terms of their character and behavior. We aren't trying to completely reprogram them, but the rest of the team needs to see that you are addressing it as a leader. Otherwise, you get a performance divide where the rest of the team's performance dips while that one person stays high.
Your model has to be completely clear from the top down: organization to team, and team to individual. There are complexities because we are dealing with human beings, but you have to have the courage to deal with it. You might be incredibly clunky during that feedback conversation on day one, but you aren't going to get better at it by avoiding it. You have to walk toward it and get the repetitions in to build your confidence.
Sport has taught me that you are going to have to deal with egos sometimes, so you need a model for it. I handled an athlete in the UK who was a really good young talent and played for his country. He just could not get aligned with the way we were trying to play, but his view of himself was that he was the best performer in the league. We ended up moving him on after a season.
I saw him three seasons later, and he actually came up to me and thanked me. I thought he was going to be super abrasive and confrontational, but he had gone through a maturation period. He said, "I understand now why you did what you did as a club and as an individual. I understand why you coached me the way you did. I didn't get on board, and I was selfish, but what I learned from that journey helped me be successful today." That requires a huge amount of humility and an enormous amount of self-awareness on his part. It was incredibly humbling for me, but all the credit goes to him for recognizing that he needed to change to get to where he wanted to be.
Define Individual Contributor (19:02)
Brad Eather: In a sporting environment, it's explicitly all about high performance; that's where you compete. In a business environment, I would say high-performance teams put you in the top 1%. There are plenty of teams out there that, in the situation I just described, would just protect that "A-player" and let them continue doing whatever they want. On the opposite side of the spectrum, rather than coaching someone to improve, they would just work them out of the business. You only know what can be achieved based on your past experience. If a business leader's past experience involves not investing in people and not creating a high-performance culture, what do you think they are missing? Can you walk us through a real example of a business that made that shift, and what that vision looks like for a company that hasn't experienced those results before?
Neil Tunnah: That's a really good question. I want to be careful with the phrase "high performance." Every man and his dog is running around on LinkedIn right now talking about being a high-performance expert, and it's just not that simple; it's complex. High performance in sport is easy to measure because we have clear inputs that give us outputs and results. Business is more complex because your definition of high performance depends entirely on your specific business.
I was at LIV Golf in Adelaide yesterday, and driving home last night with my business partner, Richard, we were having this exact discussion around what high performance actually means. He threw an idea at me that I thought was incredibly important. In business, I look at high performance as an individual's ability to execute their specific role consistently at a high level. That doesn't mean we don't talk about culture and continuous development, but as a starting point, it applies to everyoneâwhether it's a salesperson, an administrative person, or a coder in a tech business.
We tend to only look at high performance as those who are visibly excelling and climbing the corporate ladder. I think we need to look at what I call "individual contributors." We need to look at how they are executing their roles, integrating into the business, and meeting standards, expectations, and behaviors. Are they executing at a high level? When you look at it that way, you can look at someone and say, "You are a high performer in our organization, and this is why."
When you elevate those conversations at the individual contributor level, letting them know they are meeting and exceeding the standard, those become true high-performance conversations. We should be having more of them because this is where neuroscience and physiology come into playâthe way we make people feel directly drives their motivation. A vital part of leadership is recognizing that everyone's performance model is going to be different, but when they are executing what we need them to execute consistently and at a high level, that is high performance.
Closing the Execution Gap (21:51)
Brad Eather: Run me through a typical engagement with the Performance Change. From an outsider's perspective, I imagine you might go in and set up communication frameworks, but what does it actually look like?
Neil Tunnah: It has actually changed for us over the last six months, so the timing for this question is perfect. We've gone through a period of evolution because we want our business to be deeply aligned with organizational strategy and measurable outcomes. Because of that, our front-end stage is now incredibly robust; whatever we do must have a straight line back to the business's bottom line.
When I am sitting with senior C-suite leaders, we have to tie human behavior back to the numbers, even though the perception is that behavior can be intangible. We've built a methodology inside our business with a lot of help from Tyler, who runs our tech side from the US. He brought a completely different way of thinking around data and systems, showing us how we can connect human behavior, habits, and psychology back into the delivery of results.
Our front end now is a very simple, clear diagnostic that allows us to go into a business and look directly at the performance gap. Specifically, we look at friction versus potential, and we focus on closing that gap. Friction ultimately slows people down and creates lag, meaning the business never meets its full potential. We measure a friction score and a potential score, and closing that gap directly impacts the numbers.
The nitty-gritty of what we do is nuanced from business to business, but this early investigation allows us to target our work where it will have the highest impact. It moves the needle quickly because we are highly targeted with our people interventions.
Contextualized Learning and Applied Performance (27:35)
Brad Eather: So after analyzing the gap in the system, you move back to the strategy side: how do we actually execute the strategy? I suggested at the beginning of the podcast that a strategy is only as good as your ability to execute it under pressure. I want to talk about leading people through a strategy, particularly when you hit a plateau where you're not seeing immediate results and you have to hold the line until those results show up.
Neil Tunnah: Strategically, what we've learned over time is that lots of businesses talk about strategy, but it's the activation and the implementation on the operational side that usually falls away. There's a lot of strategic consultants out there who design brilliant plans for a business, and the owners are highly invested in the collaboration process. But then, how does it actually get implemented? Stereotypically, they invest a lot of money into it, and then it goes right into the top drawer because the people in the business have to return to the daily grind of running the company.
When you design a strategy, there has to be an element of courage for change threaded through it. What got you here won't get you there; therefore, there has to be a change in how we behave both organizationally and individually. This is the space we are actively playing in: we don't just support the build of the strategy, we roll up our sleeves and get stuck into the operationalization and implementation of it as well.
Sport teaches us a lot about this, Brad. When I rocked up in the UK, the tactics changed every single week. That might not sound surprising, but when you have a lineout menu with 40 different options that is changing constantly for tactical reasons, it forces a continuous relearning process. You have to look at how you are teaching and learning at speed.
I was at a rugby show recently where Matt Wilke hammered this point home: learning is the taking on of new information, but it is only actual learning if you apply it. I can read a book and say I've learned loads, but the real learning is the contextualization of itâhow am I going to use it? When we think about strategy, if we are changing, we have to learn how to change because we see the value it brings. We have to ensure we are taking the key components of that learning and implementing them at the right time with the right people. That is how you build motivation, movement, and momentum through a change process. But it takes intense work internally, and we've learned that having an external partner drastically increases the speed of that operationalization.
People as Performance Multipliers (28:57)
Neil Tunnah: I've gone down a major rabbit hole with data on this recently. When you look at performance multipliers in business, you can talk about the market, the product, marketing, sales strategy, or global politics. Those are all externals that you have a very low percentage of control over. The one lever you have total influence and power over is your people, because you have the opportunity to recruit, train, develop, and sustain them.
If we are looking for performance multipliers to invest time and money into strategically and operationally, I believe squarely it should be people. You have to compete with X number of businesses in the market, which drives your pricing model if you want to win competitive business. So, how can I get our people to deliver what we do better than anyone else? What is our customer experience? What do we need to invest in our people to ensure that when clients experience us, it's better than the competition? That is the people lever, and investing in it is a true performance multiplier.
Safe Work Culture Strategy (30:49)
Brad Eather: That customer experience piece is integral. Quite often, businesses overlook the internal experience as being a major point of difference. In the sporting realm, the experience of the playing group and the environment built around them is just as instrumental in moving a team forward. The outcome there is winning games, fans are happy, and money comes into the clubâthat's your ROI. In a business setting, creating a great internal experience for your people directly transfers to the experience of your customers, yielding your ROI. From your experiences in rugby, paint me a picture of what a truly positive environment looks like across the whole model.
Neil Tunnah: It's really interesting, and I'll put myself on the line a bit here: I haven't worked in a sporting organization where it has been consistently right across the board. You deal with alpha characters, and then you have players who are great performers but are essentially followers who need a kick up the backside periodically to stay on task.
There is a concept in some sporting environments that I call "toxic accountability." The learning process has to be managed correctly. At the front end of the week, learning can be a bit slower because there is a lot of new information, so the environment needs to support that. But when you get to game time, learning has to happen at breakneck speed; it doesn't just stop. I speak to lots of coaches and business leaders who say, "The learning has to stop now, and you have to start performing." But learning is fundamental to performance; it's just about the speed at which you process and reapply that learning in the moment.
Psychological Safety in the Workplace (33:32)
Neil Tunnah: If you set up an environment where leaders don't understand that they need to create a space where people feel motivated to lean in, it only takes one or two small, negative behaviors from a leader to completely shut people down. For example, it could be as simple as putting a video clip on a screen in front of a player's peers and saying, "Watch that," without prepping the player to respond. It might be done with the best intentions to drive standards, but it puts them on the spot rather than supporting them to be at their best. I don't believe that gets performance out of people; it just shuts them down. I want people to feel like they can contribute at all times.
There is a brilliant clip online of Tommy Turbo at the Manly Sea Eagles during a team meeting. Everyone was completely quiet, and it was just the coach talking. Turbo essentially lost his patience and told the room that these meetings are a waste of time unless everyone starts contributing. That is a massive message, but I'm always curious about what happened before that meeting that made the players not want to contribute in the first place.
When trying to create an environment where people want to plug in and be at their best, psychological safety is essential. Google did a massive project on this. Psychological safety simply means it is safe to contribute because your opinions are valid and matter. It doesn't mean we always have to act on the information given, but people need the ability to express themselves publicly or privately. That is what a great environment looks like: people want to contribute to the collective success. It sounds simple, but it's complex, and as leaders, we are responsible for creating it.
Brad Eather: I went to a networking event recently with about 60 people, and the idea of psychological safety came up. Pretty much the entire room recognized that psychological safety was a massive deal for them. I had never had that kind of visceral experience with it before; it had just been a buzzword to me, but it really hit me. Do you think there is still a stigma around the word "psychological safety" and what it means for an environment?
Neil Tunnah: In a nutshell, I think people think it's soft. If you look at the generations across business right now, you have 65-year-old C-suite executives and 18-year-olds just entering the workforce, and they are so far apart in their understanding of what an environment needs to thrive. The perception is that it's soft, but it is actually a performance multiplier. If someone thinks creating a "safe" environment is soft, I look at them and ask: "So, you want your people to operate in a state of fear?"
Let's bring a neuroscientist into the room to unpack what fear really does to a person. I'm fortunate to be exposed to experts like Wendy in the US, who is an MBA psychologist with the Chicago Bulls, and others from physiology and neuroscience backgrounds. I know enough to know that when the brain operates in a state of fear, your capacity to learn can drop to less than 10%. If we want environments where people are challenged to grow, but we try to drive that through fear, we are giving them a less than 10% chance of success. Think about that logically. It's not soft; operating under fear simply destroys your results. As a leader, if that's how my people are operating under me, I need to find a way to change.
Distraction Management: Practice vs Play (37:32)
Brad Eather: That is a fantastic answer. One last thing before we talk about creativity: in professional sport, there is a very clear delineation between practice and play. As a business professional, how can you help an individual conceptualize when they are hitting the pitch to "play," and bridge that difference between practice and actual performance?
Neil Tunnah: We have distinct moments in business where we feel intense pressure. For example, walking into a meeting this morning with a room full of partners in a professional services business. My preparation model was to ensure I was the first person in the roomâset up, ready, and composed. I gave myself 25 minutes to sit and go over the structure of the meeting. I had a clear structure, but I was acutely aware that with 10 people in the room, it could go off in different directions. That's fine; it's up to me to accept that and bring it back online to ensure we get direction.
You can learn to recognize exactly when you feel pressure, and when you reflect accurately post-moment, you can build a plan for how to address it in the future. For me to be at my best in client meetings, I have a clear performance model that actually has nothing to do with how I execute the corporate role itself. It's about consistency around my training, nutrition, hydration, sleep, and using things like ice baths regularly. I do the things that make me feel good physically and mentally. That realization came off the back of not looking after myself for a period of time in a sports environment, until a coach stepped in and worked with me on what fits my needs.
Having that simple model allows me to walk through the door in the morning knowing I've done the preparation to represent myself and the business well, which builds confidence. Sport teaches us that all athlete preparation models are transferable into business big moments.
Four days out from a major event, my learning can be a bit slower as I figure out what to say and what questions to ask. But when I step into the meeting, my meta-skills have to be locked in, and my listening has to be exceptional. When you listen deeply, you recognize the exact opportunities to ask great questions or share a highly relevant story that helps the group right now. That performance model allows you to predict and navigate what you're walking into, rather than constantly walking out reflecting on poor preparation.
I saw an interesting example at LIV Golf yesterday on the 12th hole. Bryson DeChambeau's group came throughâthree absolute rock stars who each received massive sign-on fees. Two of them missed the green entirely, and Richard turned to me and said, "Jeez, if I'm paying them 200 million and they can't hit the green here, I'm having a performance conversation with them." But these guys are the consummate professionals. Music was blasting, people were throwing beer, there were dancersâdistractions were everywhere. Yet they stepped up to the tee, laser-focused, and hit the ball as if there was total silence around them. Their performance model ensures that everything in the background is managed so that in the moment of execution, they are entirely present. If we build that level of self-awareness in business, we can build those same bulletproof performance models.
Operationalization of Creativity in Leadership (43:42)
Brad Eather: That's wild. It makes me think about trying to hit a golf ball with just two people watching behind me and completely shanking it. I can't imagine that level of distraction.
I'm really interested in your perspective on this next topic because many people view sport and creativity as living on completely opposite sides of the spectrum. I don't think that's true, but from your experience, what is your definition of creativity?
Neil Tunnah: Different brains are wired differently. Some people have a naturally creative flair, while others are entirely driven by numbers and evidence. How you bracket creativity for an individual is highly important. A data-driven person will look at a spreadsheet, notice what information is missing, and come up with a problem-solving solution. That is absolutely a creative response. Other people operate like a butterflyâthey get easily distracted but then fly back into the mix with a brilliant, out-of-the-box idea. That's creativity for them. From a leadership lens, the question is: how do we nurture and encourage that creativity without letting it slow down our momentum toward achieving results?
Personally, because my brain is wired to get distracted easily, I have to be highly intentional about carving out dedicated time to sit down and throw ideas around. If I don't bound it, I end up burning too much time on it.
At the end of last year, I was in Chicago for the All Blacks vs. Ireland game. I caught up for coffee with a sports scientist for the All Blacks who happened to grow up in Kelso, right next to my hometown in Scotland. He gave me some great insight into their environment. They have a massive team of sports scientists, data analysts, and mindset coaches, and they run meetings where they actively encourage creativity by asking people to bring forward unique ideas that might move the needle.
But Nick Gill, who leads their sports science department, always brings it back to a core framework question: "Does it change the scoreboard? Does it make us better? Is it impacting results?" They encourage open, brilliant brains to think differently, but they keep the train on the tracks by demanding proof of how it impacts the final result. If it impacts the scoreboard, they explore it; if it doesn't, it doesn't get used because it's just wasting time. I think that's a beautifully neat framework for balancing open-space creativity with execution.
Strategic Business Innovation (47:08)
Brad Eather: When I think about creativity and innovation in rugby, it's hard to look past South Africa. You mentioned playing to your strengths. One of the most innovative moments was during the World Cup against France when they creatively called for a scrum from a mark inside their own 22. It completely took the other team by surprise because nobody expects that in the final minutes of a game. They are clearly a team designed for innovation.
Neil Tunnah: It's brilliant, and it sparks a massive debate around what's right and wrong in the game. Look at their "Bomb Squad" bench strategyâutilizing six forwards and only one back. You can't deny it: they are challenging the traditional boundaries of the game in a way it hasn't been challenged in a long time. The brilliant thing about Rassie Erasmus and what he's built there is that they established an incredibly strong foundation first, and then innovated off the back of it. They can easily revert to their traditional, brutally physical game to destroy teams at the scrum, but by bringing in someone like Tony Brown and his creative mindset, they've maximized the exceptional athletic profiles they have in South Africa. He has created an environment that is entirely open to change and exploration, which allows them to add highly effective, unpredictable layers to their game.
Brad Eather: Welcome to the Business Rugby Creative Podcast! Neil, thank you so much for joining us today. If people want to get in touch with you, where is the best place to find you?
Neil Tunnah: LinkedIn is the best place right nowâjust jump on there and shoot me a DM. I love catching up with people, chewing the fat, seeing what everyone is up to, and learning from others. Please reach out.
Brad Eather: Awesome. Thanks for joining us, everyone, for this episode of the Creative Business Podcast. If you enjoyed the conversation, help us grow by subscribing wherever you listen. In the meantime, stay creative.
