Introducing Game Plan

by Aaron Delaporte on November 25, 2021

Earlier this year Sport Australia released a new online tool designed specifically for helping sporting clubs examine how they operate and supporting them to build and improve capability called Sport Game Plan

SO WHAT IS GAME PLAN?

Sport Australia’s Game Plan is a digital platform designed to provide sporting clubs of all sizes with insights into their current capability and connect them with specific tools and resources to build and support ongoing development. It will replace the existing Club Health Check.

Game Plan is designed to:

Assess a club’s capability and performance at a time relevant to them.
Identify areas for improvement.
Provide access to relevant resources to support club development.
Inform the direction and priority of activities and investment to build capability.

Game Plan has been developed to enable a club to improve the quality of skills of its people, the volunteers and management, to adapt quickly and maximize the resources a club has. When key committee workforce is churned or lost, the club will have access to a trusted record, allowing organizational continuity over time.

Game Plan has 6 easy to use steps:

To build a club profile
Identify the priorities
Create an assessment
Develop a plan
Allocate some resources
Monitor the results

THE BENEFITS

IT’S FREE

All clubs complete a health check and receive an action plan with all opportunities identified.

Sport Aus provides support with a number of tools and resources. Improvements can be made at local, State and National levels.

TESTIMONIAL

A small number of clubs have registered and are already receiving the benefits.

One club to do so was Mt Lawley, President Terry Conley had this to say about his club’s experience.

The Mount Lawley Bowling Club was made aware of Sports Australia’s Game Plan web based toolkit for assisting sports clubs in their ongoing development by Clive Adams, Bowls Australia’s Northern Regional Bowls Manager for WA.
The Club had recently developed a Strategic Plan and were in the process of establishing Action Plans to underpin the new Strategic Plan and to supersede existing action plans the club put in place some years earlier.
The Game Plan toolkit provides a step-by-step approach for sports clubs to assesses their existing strategic and operational capabilities as well as perceived strengths and weaknesses. The toolkit includes a catalogue of pro-forma resources which can be customised to individual club needs.
When using Game Plan for the first time the administrator or “Super User” inputs information to establish a Club’s profile then the current priorities of the club from a list of 9 areas which includes participation, marketing, infrastructure, stakeholder engagement, values and technology.
The next step is to undertake a self-assessment of the club’s capability across the 13 modules that make up Game plan. These cover Game Plan’s foundation modules of Finance, Governance, Workforce and Strategy as well as the 9 priority areas referenced above.
Once the self-assessment is complete Game Plan ranks the club’s maturity for each of the 13 areas as being not in place, developing, developed or excelling.
The next step is to plan the actions required to move the club along the maturity scale for each of the 13 modules from the current assessed position to excelling in the order the club determines is of highest priority or benefit to the club.
As Mount Lawley Bowling Club Committee had completed a SWOT (Strength Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats) analysis and priorities identification in order to develop our Strategic Plan it was not an onerous task to complete the club profile, priority ranking and maturity assessment for the 13 areas covered by the Game Plan modules.
The club has 6 pillars in our Strategic Plan and the Game Plan modules have been prioritised to line up against these pillars.
The Committee has just commenced the Plan stage of Game Plan by identifying those areas where there is a low maturity rating or where the club sees great benefit in moving to the excelling rating as quickly as possible. Each of the modules has a specific action plan template which can be easily adapted to meet the needs of the club.
All of the action plan templates have a similar structure covering the following areas:
• Overview and Background
• Goals and Objectives
• Stakeholders
• Resources in place already
• Additional Resources required
• Risks
• Success Metrics
• Action items including responsibility and planned completion dates
• Timelines
• Budget
• Reporting
Game Plan has a very good catalogue of resources that can be easily customised to meet a club’s requirements and include club branding and references. Suggested Game Plan resources can be added or removed to meet an individual club’s needs.
Once each template has been customised and action item list and timelines established it can be moved to the Monitor component of Game Plan so that progress can be tracked against the plan.
Game plan is easy to use with repeatable steps and activities across all the modules so there should be a common look and feel to completed Action Plans undertaken by different club members.