The All Blacks Way with Darren Shand

We have the All Black play. You've got to win or you go home. Hit it hard to start with because we have to. Pressure can be your friend. People can make selfish decisions that aren't in the best interest of the team. I've learned that sometimes I care too much. The world has become really difficult. Where do I sit in this new world? How should I be? People see through you really quickly if you're not authentic. I'm so overwhelmed. Boys, be quiet. They can easily borrow. Out of control. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. You have the responsibility to demonstrate the culture that you want.

Look here sometimes and for someone.

We can all agree that one of the greatest teams on the planet of all time is the All Blacks. Look, we've had two episodes where we've sat down with Darren Shand, a manager at the All Blacks for two decades. This is the third and final episode, and I know many of you have been waiting for this. We're going to look at team culture. We're going to look at the All Blacks way. You're in for a real treat. Please sit back and enjoy the show.

Well, Darren, a huge welcome back. It's a third of three sessions. It's been amazing last few sessions. I'm so excited today, but thanks again for making all this time available.

No problem.

It's amazing you're getting ready to head over to France and Europe for the World Cup. Yeah, it's going to be a special one. It's your last one in the camp. What does it mean to you, this last one?

Well, in a lot of ways, it's just got to be business as usual. You know, World Cups are a little bit different, so I just hope the fact I've been through four gives me a bit of IP that'll be valuable to the group, you know, because you can anticipate a lot of what's going to happen. Having been through a lot, I know in France, it will have all its own challenges, and so I'll be at the forefront of managing a lot of those because they can easily spiral out of control in a place like that. But again, that's just something to look forward to, you know, like, it just. It seems like a long time when you look at it on a piece of paper, but it's actually so rapid. You get into it and it's like week, week, week, week. It's keeping your people healthy, you know, not physically, but mentally healthy because it's a. It's a little bit of a marathon in some ways. And, you know, we enter it and we've got a massive game to start with against the French, and then we've got some other matches that we'd be expected to win, and kind of got this period of waiting until you go to the period where it's. You've got to win or you go home. So it's quite a different. You got to take a different mindset, I guess, into something like that and build slowly, hit it hard to start with because we have to. But then recharge again, reconnect, you know, almost compartmentalize it so that they become pieces. And you, I guess you always. When you're rehabbing an athlete or something, you don't want to get too far ahead. It's like, what's the immediate goal? You know, what's. What's this week look like? Let's just nail that then. You know, break it down, make it shorter. Don't set the horizons too far. You know, it's very easy to get.

Ahead of yourself because you get overwhelmed and anxious.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's very much about now. Winning moment. Coaches talk a lot about winning moments, and you got to do that everywhere, on and off the field, you know.

So rather than winning a whole campaign, it's like, we've got a moment that's right here. Let's win that.

You got to be the best every day in the tournament. You know, it doesn't. Nothing else matters. Doesn't prior form, reputation. People turn up at World Cups and do extraordinary things at times, like, because they're fueled by the magnitude of the world stage. So you have to be. You have to be ready for that. We've been caught out with that at times. The French have done that to us in 99, and in 2007, Australia did it to us in 03. So things happen. Yeah. Japan beat South Africa.

You know, that was like, nobody expected that.

Right. So that's what happens in World Cups. So every. Yeah, it all matters. And, yeah, we get on and, yeah, you enjoy the different lifestyle that you're going to live, and you make the most of that because that's a. That's a rich experience in itself, so. And we'll be in places that we're not normally too, so getting new experiences and new things to try and, well, set up to succeed.

I love it. It's exciting. In our last episode, we were talking about two key things that really shape people, teams, organizations, and those two things were leadership and culture. Arguably, anywhere I travel in the world and any company I Talk to any leader. The All Blacks come up in the conversation. Often if I'm delivering a keynote, I would struggle to go through a keynote without mentioning All Blacks culture because it's inspiring. But the one thing that's really different about it is it's being so consistent over a long term. To me, that's high performance. You're doing something above the standard norms over the long term. Okay, so let's chat about culture. What's happened to the culture over the last 20 years and what shapes culture from your point of view?

Oh, it's a. Yeah, it's a never ending question. I like cultures. They're like a culture's an everyday thing, not a sometimes thing. You know, it's everyday matters and it can, it can rise and fall pretty quickly.

What's one of those, right, Andrew?

Ah, it's one of those intangibles, like behaviors can shift it. You know, principles that aren't adhered to and people walking past things that they would normally not allow you to walk past. You know, suddenly Mr. Complacency is on the shoulder rather than Mr. You know, I've got to get better this week.

Independent over dependent. Things like that change, you know, as a staff, you know, we've got a big stuff. We can make the players too dependent on us by our actions, you know, and so that shifts the culture. Conversely, people can make selfish decisions that aren't in the best interest of the team, that compromise team and that shifts culture.

Could be the wrong person in the wrong seat on the bus that can shape culture might be the most talented, but.

Deflects from the culture won't abide by the culture. So we've had a way, I guess we have the all Blacks way. There's a way of doing it. We say you join us, we don't join you. And I guess that's at the essence of it. When you come in, we do it a certain way.

And it's not ruled per se.

No, it's not rules. It's a way. It's a way. Yeah, it's behaviors, its actions, its attitudes.

And that. It's hard to write it down because you feel it.

Because it's an intangible and you see it.

It is intangible by example. Let's say one of the big things we just talked about rules is that we try not to run a catch up culture. We run a catch up culture. So I was exposed to a book called Without Locks and Bars a long time ago which talked about a prison in the States where They took away the locks and the bars and the reform rate improved out of sight, you know, because they weren't trying to catch people out. They were trying to make them better people. So I think that's a. That's always been a. You know, I guess that's been at the core of it.

Probably the most talked about part about the orbit is the we over me. Yes, we talked about it in one of those earlier episodes, isn't it? But the notion that we help each other get better, irrespective of who's got the jersey for the week, that's we as me, you know, there's no I in team. How does that happen?

Because ego's huge. We've all got a level of ego. And in professional sport and in business, for whoever's listening on that side, ego's a huge thing. How do you get three people who are in the same position who are vying for that one opportunity to play on Saturday? How do you get to the point where you can say, hey, guys, we're going to, like, tone down the personal ego, maybe even remove it, and you're going to be doing everything to make sure the best player gets selected, even if it's not you.

Yeah. I think your leaders have to shape and drive that. Like, they've got to demonstrate that they can do that. So if you're one of the three and you're the leader, well, that's your responsibility. That's the all black way.

You know, it's interesting. We've talked a little bit about one of our players, Sam Whitelock, and.

When things were about to finish and I was told probably not going to be needed going forward.

We talked about what should that look like? And he immediately said to me, you've got to do it the all black way. You know, you've got to be elegant. And I was like, okay, that's it. You know, it's like, you know, you don't join us, we join you. And that becomes, I don't know, it becomes imprinted on you. That's the way it has to be done. You know, similarly, if you. If you have a way, you've got to hold people to account, you know, like, Steve Hanson was great with that saying, you know, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. And so as a drop ball, good enough at training, and should no one say anything about it? Of course they should, because that's a performance question, you know, and we need better. You can't train like, you know, train like Jane and play like Tarzan because people won't trust you because they won't know what you're going to get. You know, then you don't want to be a person that trains like Tarzan and plays like Jane either, because then you're not probably mentally ready. So that's. Those have become important features. Some other things I've loved around is intention. So having a culture where intention is about really taking yourself to a high level. So, you know, like high performance. If you look at the highest end, you've got people like surgeons, pilots or military people where there's decisions that are crucial. So where do we sit on that continuum? Well, probably a good business would maybe a seven out of ten, you know.

A high performing business, maybe an eight, a world class nine. All right, so the context is 100, which is certain. You know, like if you asked a surgeon to perform, you want him at 100% every day, you know, because he's making his. He's got skin in the game. But so how do you intentionally take yourself to that place even though you're never going to get there? But how do you set up your culture to be at that level? You know, so if you talk about intention there. Is it turning up? No, that's very low intention, isn't it? You know, is it just turning up to train or. That's not high either. Is it. Is it turning up to compete? No, that's not good enough either. Is it training to win? Yes. Is it training to lead? Yes. Is it training to dominate? Like that's intention. That's very high. And so we know in the culture we've got to have a lot of people in that box. You know, we've got to drive people up to that, that level of expertise. We also know in the culture that we've got to work a lot on the individual, get all the aspects of them as an athlete. Right. But for the team's benefit, not so much for their benefit. Yes, there'll be some benefit for them. Of course there will be. But in essence it's about how do we shape them to be the best they can be so that the team succeeds. So if I'm looking at a player individually, we might look at and this is where language becomes important.

They'Ve got certain aspects to the game that they're probably really good at. And we as Kiwis, we tend to take the. I'm not good at that, so I'm going to work really hard at that. And what we've found over the years is that often if people do that they do it at the expense of things they're really good at.

Yes.

And.

So I remember example back in the late 2000s where the game changed and suddenly there was a new skill set for our backfield players where they had to catch highball and had to jump high and catch it. That was never in the game in the past, like Australian rules. Really, it was a whole new skill. So we are. So those players, typically, their strengths would be they're fast, they invasive, they can beat people one on one, and they usually score all the tries. Well, that season they scored no tries and got slow because they spent the whole time just practicing catching highball. And that's all they did at skills training. You know, it was a really classy example. We've got a balance. We've got to get the balance right here. You know, like, if you're supposed to run fast and you've got to. You've got to. You can. You can grow that, you know.

As well as. Let's just pick one thing that you can work on and let's see if we can shift that from a strength to something that you're better at. You know, I'll take it from a. I don't like to use the word weakness, but how can we address that and push it a little higher up the curve? So that's been a really important part of the culture. Just really nailing. Again, we've talked critical few, but nailing a critical few for each individual that has the team at heart in terms of their role.

Another. Another piece of work that had a big influence was a work by a German scientist called Ringelmann. And he. He did a tug of war experiment back in the early 1900s where he looked at people pulling on a rope and measuring the force. And as he added more people to the rope, people made less effort.

Interesting.

And so he came up with this. He coined this saying, social loafing. So in teams you get social loafers, people who, because they're part of team, they don't feel they have to work as hard.

So, Darren, hey, you've got this. I'll just sit in the back and chill. Yeah, you've got the. You've got more strength than me and I won't be.

So I could see it in like a leadership meeting, for example, if, you know, Richie McCaw was so well respected, if he spoke early, a lot of the other players would be the goat. Spoken like, you know, and yet I knew some of the others had great ideas, but just out of respect, they wouldn't say it. So we had discussed, we had to change our structure, you know, because we knew there was, we needed more, you know, because we had social living going on and so completely restructured meetings so that people could talk in small groups first and then share their ideas. So we heard from everyone, you know, and suddenly we went from that to that.

And that gives you the extra 1% edge on.

Yeah, just were just getting, you're getting the whole spectrum, you know, as much as, you know, Richie, most of the times is 99.9%. Right. It was just good. Just, you know, I think culturally to open yourself up to the fact that, you know, that happens in teams, you know, and you need, you know, you need all 15 to be seeing themselves at the same level. So those are probably some of the big factors I've seen sort of over the years that we've really driven and we use the language about that, you know, to keep the culture where it needs to be. It's something you've got to constantly test to and audit and check on. You know, we use a lot of what the military do, a lot is what they call hot debriefing, where they, they just capture things frequently and just keep, keep turning that, that cycle of, you know, discuss, agree, execute, review, discuss and just that just keep rolling it, rolling it, rolling it. So because culture can shift so quickly without you knowing if you don't, you know, keep a check on it. So it's one of those things that just constantly probe it. We use a lovely little saying, what are we singing at? What are we humming at? What are we clunking at as a little audit, you know, from time to time you've got your classics, you know, your keep, top start and those types of things. But yeah, just little audits like that are really helpful in terms of just keeping it front of mind. And sometimes it's a thing you feel.

And you've got to keep being quite observational about it and looking and making sure that it's on track.

Do you think as a team or an organization grows and they're growing at speed and you know, let's take it from a business standpoint. Do you think there's challenges with culture when a team exponentially grows and multiplies in numbers?

Oh yeah, 100%. Because it's in the end, as we found out, we're a small group and we get buy in and we. And we head on in, don't we? But ultimately it's still. It all falls back on leadership because.

You have the responsibility to demonstrate the culture that you want first and foremost, that's it. Because you can't hide from the fact that people look to you and you've been given a position sometimes and that comes with it. For me, that's first you're given that. So that's that accountability. You've got to, one, you've got to believe in it, two, you've got to show it. And three, you've got to hold people to it. So that becomes the essence of good culture.

And for someone who's maybe starting out as a team or organization and they're going, okay, we don't really haven't talked about culture, but we've got a passive culture that's kind of starting to create itself. If they were to start going, okay, how do we establish guiding principles for culture, what suggestions might you have for them?

Well, I think in the end you've got to find that one thing that.

Really defines what you're about.

And I think every organization needs it. And it has to be something big. Not necessarily big, but it's got to be something that pulls you, doesn't push you, it pulls you towards it. And that's always been for us because as I said, we talk about legacy and performance. They become the things that, that drive that. So the decisions then become, if I talked about, if I said to summarise the all black culture, it's self reliance, decision making under pressure. We need a culture where that's front and center. So as a starting point, it's going, what do we need and how do we want it to look and what will that mean for this business? And what is this business really about at its essence? If you peel everything back, what does this business do? And that's the starting point. And then you just got to build your layers and decide what it is, keep it simple and find ways to connect to that purpose. I think there's always got to be something greater than you that pulls you.

I like that thought of being almost magnetized, pulled towards it rather than forcing yourself to have to move towards it.

We had recently.

We had this notion of the goat, you know, the greatest of all time. And it was a vision that we would never say about ourselves, but we wanted others to. And then that kind of had its day and new coach, different views. And we had this other concept and.

We put it there, but we just couldn't really get the pull to it. And it's been interesting in the last couple of years. We've sort of kept it there, but we found these Other threads that led towards it. And now it's become incredibly the. Without actually saying that what we've created is actually gonna deliver that, you know, because we've. Because we've kept paying attention to it. You know, we haven't let it. It's like, okay, well, they haven't really bought this overall concept, but we still feel that's the right. That's how people used to see us, you know, and maybe we've lost a little bit, but how do we recreate that? So just. It's one of those things, like you're on that road and you're not quite sure if it's the right road to be on, but you just got to keep. And high performance. You have to. You have to keep finding, you know, other ways to connect to it. Because we believed in it.

Yeah.

First and foremost, we believed that was the right way. Maybe it wasn't presented well enough or. But now that we've found some other side roads that actually lead to that, it's like, wow, now it's starting to rumble. It's like the flywheel. It's actually. Now the water's starting to really drive the wheel and it's all heading to that. And I think if we're successful this year, people will say that about us. Even though we haven't not even using that word now, because it hasn't. We've had to capture it in a different way.

It's incredible. And you've been there with the all blacks for 20 years. When you look back on that, what have you learned about yourself over that time period?

Oh, what have I learned about me?

I care. Yeah. I care a lot for this team. You know, like.

I have massive belief in them. Like, there's not a day where I haven't sat on the bench, which I have the privilege of doing for every game, and not thought we were going to be successful, you know, very rarely. I think maybe in 250 test matches, maybe one or two times, I wasn't sure, but I just had belief. Yeah. I just always had belief that we'd get there. Yeah. So I'm really disappointed. We don't. Wow. Put him in there.

So I've learned that.

Sometimes I care too much. Yeah.

What do you mean by that?

Probably just go too hard at something and lose sight of the why, you know.

And put too much pressure on myself to deliver something that actually doesn't matter, you know, and so I think, you know, I feel like it's almost like I've started in the trees and Now I'm above the trees a lot more than I was before. Like, I still can go into the trees and roll my sleeves up and do the mahi. But more I find my perspective being above and reflective and looking and future focused and consequence based.

Much more of that and, and much more with others trying to take them from where I was to where I am. So seeing the mistakes I made and seeing those in people and say, well, actually if I can shortcut that and get them move a quicker through a different path, then that's. That's going to be better for them, you know, because I've. They'll benefit from the errors that I've.

Made, you know, 100%.

So that's, that's been a big lesson. Had to learn to be courageous as a leader, to stand up for what I believe in.

And, and yeah, the world has become really difficult. You know, with the MeToo revolution.

New Zealand rugby was put through the ringer around behavior of people and things like that, the dealing with all the preconceived biases people have around inclusion and diversity and all of those sorts of things. It's become a really, you know, you get a little bit lost with all of that because it's all. We're dealing with it in a gray phase where it's not normal and we're sort of stuck in between. So you constantly battling that. Where do I sit in this new world? You know, how should I be? Yeah, and I guess because my role is more broad than just the team and I'm dealing with, I've got all those issues that float around, around the game that can impact on us. So what's my perspective on that? How do I see that?

How do you get that perspective challenged? Because we talked in a previous episode about blind spots. We've all got things we don't see in ourselves. How do you make sure that you have other people out here challenging that and shaping that perspective?

I think in the first instance, the key leadership group that I sit in, that has to be the forum where I take those conversations.

And that can be robust.

And it can be challenging.

And sometimes you have to use others to help you. It might be that I have to use players to who get it, that maybe someone else doesn't and say, well, actually, come on, we've got a. This conversation's got to go wider here. You know, we've got to look at this through a different lens. Yeah, I look at the. Let's be straight up. We'll look at the women's Rugby and the men's rugby thing and how where we sit relative to the Black Ferns and all that, that's been hard to deal with, you know, because it feels like we've kind of been not put down, but like they've been elevated and we're not used to that. So how do we. How does that all work now? We love their success, you know, and we want to. We both can help each other, but just dealing with some of the past, like, we all have these biases and it's. Sometimes it's hard to shift, you know, they've had nothing for so long, I'm like, well, unless we give them something for quite a while, it won't change, you know, and it'll just be the same. So we have to do that. But yeah, it's fascinating battles, internal battles, but like, I love it. And then what you get the greatest from is seeing. Seeing some of those things through. You know, this past year we had an idea presented to us around Manaakitanga. So the act of giving and raising other people. And I just had a feeling that this was a beautiful concept that links so closely with who we were. And so just taking that into our environment, which was seen as a marketing concept for the mothership versus actually something that was about us, you know, like. And the person who came up with the creative idea wasn't Mori. So we then got to deal with that whole notion as well.

But then now seeing the benches going into 26 communities, seeing the impact it has.

Seeing players say to me, I want to go to that community because that meant something to me. I'm like, wow, like, this is about us, you know.

So, yeah, that. There's always that. Yeah, I guess there's always, you know, the ocean's not flat and glassy with the sun beaming on it every day, you know, and you've got to ride the rough days with the bad days. And again, yeah, I go back to that four agreements. For me, really help me and my leadership of just. You got to roll with the punches. You gotta. There's going to be tough conversations, but don't take it personally. Just think about. Keep thinking about the point of this or the outcome of this and what it means for the team and not for you. Actually, you be more we than me, you know, in terms of how you take it mindset wise.

What I also learned that, you know, pressure can be your friend. You know, pressure is not something to be scared of. Like, walk towards it. Like, I become way more decisive, I think, you know, used to procrastinate and get anxious and actually just making decisions. But coming from a good place of experience, of having done it, of perhaps bringing others with you in that decision, all those things have really, really helped.

Yeah. And I realize in performance, high performance particularly, there's uncomfortable times, but it actually needs that because the margins are so little. That has to be a little bit of. Recently, we've been trying to define edge. You know, what is edge? And because when you have it, you're in the house, you know, when you're done.

Edge is not comfortable, right?

No, it's not discomfort with it, no. But it's actually about you, what you bring, what your mindset is that you're the only one that can bring edge. It's not. Doesn't float. You can't buy it, you know, so it's created. It is, yeah. And you create it yourself by what you do and how you do things every day. So. Yeah. So many lessons. I'm a different person from when I started, you know, like, I just saw my role in a certain way, very functionally, probably, whereas I was kind of.