Phil Glasgow on building high-performance systems in rugby. The Irish team creates intentional moments to step back from daily work, focuses on collective identity and ownership, and treats continuous reflection as core to improvement.
What are some of the greatest challenges and obstacles with such a massive system?
I think the biggest challenge is always going. Two big challenges immediately spring to mind. But for me, the biggest challenge is, is not people's intent or.
Recognizing saying, yeah, this is important. We got to do it, because everyone will listen to that. We talk with, yeah, let's do that. That's. That's great. The challenge is always the. The busyness of performance and when we get caught up in the doing of stuff day in, day out. And so inevitably, when the pressure comes on. And this applies outside of sport too, clearly, business life, generally, when you've got a game next weekend and you're busy, it's head down and do the thing that's in front of you. And the ability then to lift your head up and get out of the weeds and see what we need to do and think, is there a better way of doing this? Can I connect with other people more effectively? Because most people will revert to their area or their domain or their lane and do it really well. And so actually getting people to stop, lift their heads up, connect with the wider group and say, can we do something collectively? Becomes a challenge. Not because they don't think that's important, but because of the sheer, just pressure and busyness of life. So my role is often about being really intentional about creating those opportunities to ensure we get alignment and coordination. I think for me, that's the first thing. And then the second thing then that comes in, it's just people, isn't it? People with different views, different opinions, different priorities. And then working with people to say that, to get collective ownership and purpose around, this is what's important and this is why we want to do it. For me, those are the two things. Helping people lift their head up and see the wood for the trees and recognize that we're better when we work collectively. And then in the. The second thing is just the interpersonal component of getting everyone on the same page and getting consensus and getting alignment, creating a safe space for people to really give their opinion and contribution.
Amazing. Seriously amazing. And I think about this performance system and I guess one thing that springs to mind is for you, what does success actually look like if that system of high performance was to just be in high gear, what would success look like?
Yeah, that's a great question, James. And I think it's a great question to often ask yourself at times, isn't it? You know, what success look like for me right now? Or what does success look like for, say, us as a system? Or for any of us. For me.
This is what it looks like for me. And again, hopefully not too long winded an answer. There are three big things that I think I would see if this is working well. I always think when we're answering questions, what would you see? What would people be doing? What would it feel like? So, which is very different to will win a World Cup. Yeah, yeah. Or we'll do that. Because if it's a reductionist thing to that you lose. The essence of what is the winning the matches is the outcome, not what, what the program is is there to help develop and increase your chances of winning major tournaments. So as a bit of a preface to that, but what I would say, I would see people who are well connected, they're connected with each other. They look and say they realize that they can't be good on their own.
Yeah.
Number one, for me, it's impossible to be great on your own. Absolutely believe that. And so it's about the collective. So people start looking at things in the sense they talk more about we than I. They say what can we do? Rather what can I do? So we start to see this sense of identity of the collective. Number one, I think then what it is, it's that it's very action and performance oriented. So it's, it's not that we're here having a great time together as a bunch of buddies and that's all good and we stop there, but it's actually now what can we do? And then we're clear on what good looks like. We're clear on what it takes to win and how do we do that together. So our activity is driven by performance rather than my preference or the things that I enjoy doing. Yeah. And then what we do, I think the third piece that fits really nicely with that then is then how do we continue to get better and improve together. So let's reflect, learn, adapt, review. And how can I then push things forward and learn from each other so we get the good quality of conversations which is about constantly making ourselves better. So for me, those three things is what you see. If it's working well, we're connected. We think about ourselves as a way rather than I, a collective. We're then doing that and using our collective energy to achieve great things together and deliver stuff on our activity is driven by performance, on our collective goals rather than an individual one. And then we have a mutual working together to review, reflect, to get better. I think that's what it looks like.
When it's good, that's fantastic. And a couple of things as you shared that really resonated with me and the whole idea of focusing on the root, not the fruit. And you talked about, hey, you know, it's not about winning the World Cup. It's, you know, that's the fruit, that's the fruit there, that's the World Cup. But the root is focusing on process, focusing on culture, focusing on people, focusing on behavior, skill sets, mindsets. And that came across really strong in.
What you just shared.
