Rod Macqueen Edit
Wed, 3/9 3:59PM • 32:43
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coaches, business, rugby, people, brumbies, starting, understand, talked, players, team, sport, wallabies, thought, guess, life, important, opposition, kick, years, culture
SPEAKERS
Rod Macqueen, Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett 00:00
Robert Greene Good afternoon your time. Good morning, my time and welcome to the great coaches podcast.
hank you very much looking forward to looking forward to chatting to you as well and that beautiful sunny day where you are maybe you could start by just telling us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far.
Rod Macqueen 00:16
Okay, so living on the northern beaches in Collaroy. In Sydney, New South Wales lived here most of my life involved with surf clubs and rugby, and all the sort of things you'd expect, I guess, Australian, living on the coast and run my businesses nearby most of the time, sometimes in Sydney, but more recently, working from home.
Paul Barnett 00:37
I'm just a little bit jealous as I talked to you on a deep dark call Bucharest morning. I hope you can send some of my sunshine that this way and this during this interview. So Ron, you've caged all over the world, many different countries, you've been the World Cups you've coached in France, all three Europe, I'm sure you've had your chance to see some good coaches up close, and probably some ones that aren't so good. But could I start by asking you what it is you think that the great coaches do differently? That sets them apart?
Rod Macqueen 00:53
Well, firstly, I'd like to define coaches, if I may, because I don't think now coaches be the rugby coaches or other sports coaches, only different to businessman. And I think the same principles apply. [PB1] So a lot of my I guess heroes and people that I really admire a businessman as well as coaches, I would say, Phil Jackson from the sky bulls would be someone I'd bring up as a catcher had a lot of time for we've done some great things. I loved his his motto of way, not me put the team first and certainly used that a lot myself. From an Australian perspective, Jack Gibson, was one that really inspired me, I guess someone that thought a little bit differently about things. And one of his great databases, believe in the KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. And I think those things now are very important to me. And David Clark was a business mentor for me was Macquarie Bank and rugby man. And he has certainly helped me in business, but also a lot of the principles in business and, and as I say, rugby coaching have always been the same to me, as far as other coaches are concerned rugby coaches, Pierre vulpera, John Hart in Macintosh.
They were great people to share ideas with and one of the things, I think that made them specialists weren't afraid to share ideas that weren't insular in their approach. And they realized that the more you shared ideas, the greater opportunities you had yourself, because you're learning thing. But also, you can go ahead further, you need to be thinking further ahead as you go. And I guess the final part of that is the importance of not seeing, changing things or changes or risk, the greatest risk is not changing. So I suppose you're talking about the worst type of cases, the ones that I built over in Silla. And you know, don't give away anything. And I'm not prepared to change that keep doing the same things.[PB2]
Paul Barnett 03:03
Right. You said something interesting there, you said, and you've had a very successful business career as well. But you said coaching and leading a business is similar. What I'd like to ask you is flip it around a bit and ask you, where are they not similar? Where are they mainly different, they may
Rod Macqueen 03:18
be different in sport, doesn't think it's a business and therefore, generally is not nearly as good at things as businesses, that's probably the biggest difference or concern. But I think the sports different, therefore, they should be doing things differently. And I think a lot of times, it too involved in the kudos and things that go with sport, and I realized a sports to business, it's about entertainment, getting the spectators on side, making the people that are there or having making sure they enjoy themselves, your employees, and things go on. So I would probably say the biggest difference is sport being perceived as for sporting coaches and sporting personnel, as pursuing themselves as anything different,
Paul Barnett 03:59
right. There's been many times in your life where you've experienced severe illness, rheumatic fever, the moniak tumors, and of course, cancer, how these experiences shaped your leadership style.
Rod Macqueen 04:13
One particular time that I had a security tool that nearly resulted in death when I was 40 years old, was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. In a nutshell. What it did was make me sit back and realize there's a hell of a lot more to life than just trying to achieve an understanding the importance of having a balance in life and everything you do. But thought about the amount of times that I've been running up hills on the northern beaches of Sydney, maybe piggybacking someone now because I was going to go on a surfboard race or is involved in rugby, and never sort of took the time to sit around. Look at the landscape. The beautiful area I lived in and the things that came with that. And I suppose the sacrifices a lot of my family made Around the selfishness that I had, during those times trying to achieve, and say I remember lying in a hospital bed that looked over, over some of those places I'd run, realizing just how much I'd missed out on. And I've got to say, I was a lot more successful in everything I did after that, putting things in perspective. And I always say, take time out to smell the roses, and have a balance in life. And it was a big lesson for me, but a very important one.[PB3]
Paul Barnett 05:27
It's interesting, because much of your success comes after the cancer. But maybe I'll ask a follow up question before we get into the string of success that you've had in the many teams you've coached. If you were talking to another leader, no matter what age young or old, whatever age, what advice would you give them on finding more balance in their life? What things could they do differently
Rod Macqueen 05:48
, I think, probably listened to the family sport, to start with getting an understanding of what it is it's driving the people, whether they're coaching and women's sport or a men's sport to understand, there's a lot of things that go around that. And particularly with amateur sports, the way it is these days involves our family, because it's a very big part of their life. And sometimes more than 60% of your life is we're talking about as a sport. So to understand more about what's going on around you, and making sure you take that into account in the things that you do would be right up there to be the first thing you start thinking about when you're talking about success and putting teams together. And understanding what it's all about to be into a professional sport. And I guess following that is what happens afterwards. no understanding, no while you're in there during that time of year preparing for afterwards, and where their guides, and all of that sort of comes in, I guess it's part of the culture that we're looking to at the time and you're developing as a guest as a leader.[PB4]
Paul Barnett 06:52
I want to get into culture with you. But perhaps first if we could go on a bit of a journey, and talk through some of the teams and successes you've been a part of because in 1991, sort of where it starts getting a little bit more serious because you are coaching the New South Wales team. And that team goes on this amazing run 10 successive victories twice, defeating traditional rivals Queensland, as well as the national teams and Wales, which was 71 to end and Argentina. What do you remember most about learning about yourself during that very early success you had as a coach.
Rod Macqueen 07:27
So I guess starting off with a business plan was always important. And so having a business plan was probably been unusual indosuez Because it was amateur rugby. So that particular year was the year of the World Cup. So we talked about know the importance of being doing well appeared in Queensland, to get the most amount of players we could into the Australian team. But it also gave me the opportunity to actually have a bit of fun and work with a lot of other business professionals that I knew through the different sports, but rowing and rugby. So got a lot of the businessman in those groups together. And we put together a fairly professional business plan for that year, which included going to Argentina, coming back through New Zealand and then being pretty well prepared. By the time we came in against wasteland. So it was a fairly well thought out plan I suggest for that year. And little things like starting on time at 630. You start whereas I've been to some of the training session before and is everyone at bonder in about start round wondering about 630 and then finish it. And then the last person who come in at seven, and then I'd probably go for another error after training. And little things like saying, well, we'll start training when the last person comes in. And we'll train for exactly in an hour and a half. And then we'll finish off at exactly an hour and a half later. And we for the first time. Amazing thinking back that far, we had training jumpers that was never heard of before. So just bringing that sort of professionalism and way of thinking into it was a matter of a bit of a fun year. And it was pretty different for the players for that reason, because they hadn't been used to that. And I suppose part of that business plan was also that to have a succession plan in place to have a nother coach ready to go. And that was Briggs Smith, who sort of came in during the year during those times, to have him there, seeing what was going on and be ready to take over in the future because it was all the business plans. I did always had a succession plan in place with about two or three years. I always thought it was always good to have something in place to when I got out.
I think that was more to help you as the head coach cope with the intensity of the situation[PB5] , or was it more for the culture and the club to realize that this is a defined period we need to focus on.
I think it'd be better if we had some pretty intelligent people in that team and Nick for Jones and some employment and very dedicated athletes and it was great to be able to put some in our in very good jobs I'm sure at the time So I was good to sort of actually put them in that position where they understood was going to be a lot more professional. And I think they respected that. I guess, in response to it, they performed a lot better on the field as well. And we understood we knew what we wanted to do. We talked about playing a little bit differently, and really understood what we wanted to achieve.
Paul Barnett 10:20
So from New South Wales, you go on and become the inaugural coach of the Brumbies, the Super Rugby brandies in 1996. And that team was undefeated on home soil for two years. And this is really where you started innovating and bringing in a lot of new tactics, new approaches into rugby. But you also at the time, spent a considerable amount of energy learning from other sports in Australia. Can you tell us about that time and that period?
Rod Macqueen 10:47
Yeah, look, it was a very exciting time. I mean, rugby game professional, for the first time and starting off with a new team in Canberra was very special. I had to think about it long and hard because I was involved in my business. And as it turned out, I had a very good partner who came in as Managing Director and I then shifted to be chairman of that business, and worked out of Canberra. And obviously came as a stage in my life where my kids had grown up. And so I was with took my wife, Liz down with me. And that gave me lots of time to think about things.
Once again, we put together a pretty solid business plan as to what it was all about. We talked about, now how we're going to go about things edit succession plan in place. Again, from day one, I think we had a two year plan would have been the first thing I'll put on that the business plan for the brand base. [PB6]
Exciting times coming up with the name, the Brumbies and getting people involved in that was about 50 Different names with the look we had to look at, was nice to be able to come up with a name that was synonymous with the area with the man from Snowy River. And all of those, I think we had sort of some of the names were originally might have been the cocoa barrels or something. But we had some pretty ordinary names listed here. So I was pretty happy in the end, when we came up with the name brown bees, and we didn't end up with the cigars, which by the benefit, add, understand. So some of those times were great, but it was just to start off new and have the base camp for the first time to be able to talk about now what it is we wanted to do.
One of the things, I think it came at the time, I have a bit of a siege mentality, we're going to share them and they're all against us. But we use that a little bit more to our, I guess, to our favor to understand that fine line between arrogance and confidence. And I think confident person, respect his opposition. So I've really talked about now importance of knowing the opposition and respecting them. Over that period of time, even now, we're happy for the, I guess the depressed to say that we had a siege mentality, and so on. But we really did understand the opposition, we did a lot of work. [PB7]
And also understanding the importance of now going professional, what other places we were very lucky that we that AFL, we had probably learning, we had soccer. So very early on, we learned a lot from what they had not what sort of video areas were they taking what with this, that's areas and we're able to get onto those quite early on. And we're using those gradually to our advantage over that period of time. The other thing, we're looking at it looking at the game differently, we had the sort of thing I would say is, over the years a kick off as an example, for rugby, generally times, I guess 80%, you'd kick off the left, because you had a right to the kicker, they'd kick to the forwards of the opposition that were standing there. And I'd have the second hour steadiness generally kicked to the total sky in the opposition, any percent of the time the opposition would win the ball and we'd have our forwards running up and chasing them. And that that was the way it was done. So start to think about those sorts of things and saying, Well, what about if we didn't kick the collar score on the field, and we decided, we had a system in place where we knew where we're going to keep the ball and we decided we'd kick to a weakness and we would then try and exploit that weakness and change those percentages back to 80% chance of us getting the ball back there, the sort of things we know we would talk about, and also going from two days a week to now to seven days of work being able to talk about different ways of doing things. And that's when we'd have a group of four or five players and, and put them online. So let's come back and talk about what we can do in the lineouts. And that's where we created things like the pod systems in the line as well. We have even though allowing people to live so we can actually change who the lifters were where they went in the line out. So all of those things started to sort of eventuate through those sort of programs were putting together in the Brumbies and but we didn't say much about it, which was lucky. But we just gradually sort of went and started those things. Things like the kick off variations, the pots, what we call started this series of moves that were put together, which was just a way of starting a play. We might had five or six different ones or days. But all of those were starting in those first two years. And we were just not saying anything about it. But we were really starting to look at the game differently. And that was quite exciting, I guess, as an inner sanctum to know, the things we were doing, but not really telling everyone what was going on. I guess
Paul Barnett 15:19
we when you are known for innovation, it's something that is written a lot about now when people reference your period coaching, and we'll talk about how you brought innovation into the Wallabies in a minute. But I'd like to just pick up on that theme. And the world's preparing now for the 2023 World Cup in France, I'm sure by then we will be back to some degree of normal. What do you think the coaches who are going to that event that are going to be leading the nations? What do you think they should be thinking about when it comes to innovation and getting an edge,
Rod Macqueen 15:49
but I think not seeing changes risk would be ones we talked about the same things apply? You know, the greatest risk is not changing, and not thinking ahead. I'm a great believer in Sun Tzu said, know yourself, and know your enemy in 1000 battles, you will never be in peril. I think they're the sort of things that are important. And also, high standards are very important that hair, you understand what those high standards are, as a coach, now you can come out for a very big win and say, That's great that they actually played really badly. It's up to the coaches to understand they didn't play well, so that they know that they be judged on on the standards that you have as a player[PB8] . And as a coach. And I guess the other thing is to always question the status quo. If it's done that way, why is it done that way? That would probably be right up there with my thoughts respectable has been number one for me respecting opposition. Therefore, if you know the opposition, you've much better chance of being successful, but certainly always, always questioning the status quo and seeing what you can do to do better. Why do you think
Paul Barnett 16:55
more coaches don't innovate these days?
Or? Let me rephrase it?
Why do you think more leaders don't innovate these days? What stops that?
Rod Macqueen 17:02
I just think it's lots of people can visualize, there's an ad in doing that Edward de Bono was very good at thinking differently. Different people think different ways. There are different ways of achieving those sort of things. An example for me would be if I was going to get someone to come up with an idea and innovate, I wouldn't get any more than five people. Because if I was going to look at a color, for instance, in the businesses I've been in, and I wanted to get a dynamic color. And I had a group of people that consensus, I guess, opinion, they'd always come up with gray as the color gray decision. And so by having small groups doing things, you're more likely to come up with a dynamic decision. And that would probably against the manager as a coach, I'd always make sure that any group that has looked at putting things together would always be probably no more than five.
Paul Barnett 17:59
So right. You leave the Brumbies pretty quickly. You go to take over the Wallabies in 97. They go on this amazing run. Over the next four years, they win the 1999 World Cup, the tri nation series for the first time, the Bledisloe Cup, three years in a row, which is unheard of these days. And it culminates with being the first Australian team to win over the lions. Now, when you reflect back on 97, what were the first things you did, or put in place that helped fuel that result, to get
Rod Macqueen 18:29
to understand the team first because I came in late, so I basically didn't do much at all. Early on, I just wanted to get a bit of a feel for what the team was in the second half of the year. But I guess took a lot of lessons from the brand is what we've been doing with the Brumbies. But it's also important not for it to be an offshoot at the Brumbies and make sure that Queensland and New South Wales always had their same way and also took into account their culture, and so on as we went, but here was, again, you know, a professional team for the first time, what are we going to do, we're so used to doing things we're now used to staying in the best hotels in Australia. And going out there for two days before we played a test match. The other thing was a game that changed even in that couple of years later in the professions, the game was changing dramatically. And yet the coaching manuals that we had were split into forwards and backs. And so we were still back in this is what the forwards to this is what the Baxter and so we had to actually think, on our feet and decided from day one, we'd get a group that would go around and go to all the states and try and fast track the way of thinking. Now again, examples of that is we had to think where the game was going to be in two years in our case two years was going to be the World Cup. How much was the game going to change in those two years? And once we decided where we think that was going to go example Then how much fitter the players were going to have to be the fact that the game was going to be so much faster. The fact that there was going to be so much more put into defense, all of those things we needed to take into account. So we needed to then decide that's where we got to go. But then select the people that we thought would be the right including the pliers, people for positions not positioned for people as best way I could describe them. So that's why we've now had people like John Melton from rugby league, who was a defensive coach for Paramount at the time, because Steven narratives of rugby league, physical structure to the Broncos, he'd already been working with a sort of fitness that day that we would need. And now training seven days a week, we got all the different video equipments, all of the statistics, put all those things together and got the right people that would come and do that. So all of those people came in are all part of it, to give us the opportunity to give us the best possible chance and be as far ahead as we possibly could by that second year. So all of those things have been taken into account, even so much is bringing the families together for the first time and staying in colander is chose Caloundra. So which was apartments and sounds a lot more normal, including the wives and the kids in everything we did. And that stage started off giving the wives the same diaries as the clients got. So they knew what the outline was going to be for the next two years that that had never been done before. And of course, within months, we were now talking going off computers. But even as early days, everyone was looking at cars. So as a massive change. And when you put it into three different areas, which was the beginning, the journey and the destiny. And so we will T shirts, for instance, with the beginning written on it. And then when we got to the stage where we thought we were understanding where we're going, we had the journey. And then when we went into the World Cup, we were in the Destiny phase of what we did. All of those things had been played out. [PB9] In the meantime, we're looking at other things that came from other sides to the football. Again, we're talking under snows that come from rugby league, and we're doing that now all of those things are now sort of just normal things in rugby, talking 20 years later, of course, but things like ensembles, unders nervous, multi-phase plays, all of those things were in our bag, I guess as we went, and we were able to just concentrate on those things and have them so how much we concentrated on our defense, how important that was for us over that period of time how much we really how much time we spent making sure it was right, but didn't say too much about it. And finally, amount of work we did on the opposition. Now we had really good intelligence on the opposition, we would look at it. And we do a SWOT analysis on them early in the week. And we talk about what were the strengths and weaknesses, and how we were going to exploit that what we were going to do with it. All of that was very much part of our now every day to day work, as I guess in our plan to become the best team in the
Paul Barnett 23:04
world. You noted on talking a lot about culture and you touched on some of it in your answer there. It's always been core to your philosophy. I've heard you talk about it in other interviews as well. If you could break it down and think what would be the key elements of a successful team culture that you would look for if you walked into a new organization? Well, I
Rod Macqueen 23:23
think I've already mentioned we're not me, I think that's really important. But it's also important, you can't make a culture, the cost is like a cake, it's got to be made, it's got to come together. And just little things like making sure that we had the classic wallabies come and present the pliers with the jumper. Now we're starting to get a rift between the pliers and then new modern pliers and a lot of those other pliers had that advantage being there and represented Australia hadn't been paid and so on now to learn from their past and to let them see our culture. So actually bring those guys in[PB10] . And now make sure that they talked about some of the things I did in those days. And surprisingly enough, it wasn't that different. And they got on very well it was now a very big part of what we do. I think respecting the little things like making sure that everyone knew that was the anthem. I remember when Patricia Noriega came in. And part of what we talked about with him is, you know, you can you really need to know that was the anthem. And so on the Friday night before the Saturday game, he got up in front of the whole team and sang the anthem word for word, very proud. Players were very much part of the decision making process as to what know we were going to do within the team and therefore, after part of getting that culture together. They believed in it. So they weren't told what to do. They're inclusive in what they did, but that doesn't mean it was always there was times obviously that some of the things that were suggested We're probably I would say not in the best interest of the team. And we had to be very careful how we went about that. But culture is built, as I say, culture is like a cake. And a lot of it has got ingredients that we do already know that are important. But they all come together when everyone is part of, of bringing it together and believes in it.[PB11] And as part of it,
Paul Barnett 25:20
right, one of the things that runs through many of your answers is change, bringing in change, innovation, whatever we want to call it. I imagine, when you bring change, you also get criticism resistance. I wanted to ask you how you've gone about dealing with critics over the years and whether you've got advice for other people that are experiencing criticism, because of the change that they're implementing.
Rod Macqueen 25:45
It's a good point, I think you've always got to accept there are people that don't accept change and don't want change. Or I'm very much on the right side of that. So on the bottom and right brained, and so that's what I've always done, basically, fairly creative backgrounds, commercial art. And I tend to draw things and understand things in my mind rather than actually write things up. And so that's how I think more than anything, but you've also got to accept that there's people that don't see that straightaway. And you've got to go around, working and how that goes. And as I say, I think I've already mentioned it with De Bono, and some of the ways that he was able to get around, making those things happen. And that's probably that's I've taken a leaf out of that book, to try and get players to be part of it and to understand, and therefore the big city excitement of something that they've come up with work. And what it does,
there's very few things in life that remained the same. It's always going to be changing. So always be on that, as I say that the important things like standards and things like that they don't change. And they're very important. And sometimes you can, you can make good at now you can make excuses to do that. And when my alarm on there are people that don't understand sometimes I know that some of those journalists I was involved in particularly being in England, I remember one particular time in England, when a journal came across me and asked if he could have a beer with me, because he'd been talking to a particular player, who told him that I do very little, he wanted to have a chat with me about it. So when we got to go through some sort of tell you this, but he said you do very little, in fact, a lot of the coaches are doing most of the work training, coming up with a lot of the ideas as the pliers and basically, you're almost redundant. And I'm sorry to tell you that that's what he said to me, what have you got to say about that? Now simple, you've actually probably paid me the greatest compliment I could have as a manager, because if I've got a situation where these people are making those decisions are part of it. They're happy to do it. And the good decisions, will that allows me to be able to watch what's going on the other to assess what's happening, but more importantly, look to the future seeing what's going to happen next. And it was interesting, he still didn't understand that it was actually was a great compliment. And if I had that in my business, as much as I would always like to have that in my businesses I possibly can.[PB12]
Paul Barnett 28:15
One of the Great's of all time, was John eels, Lee's John eels, and he was your captain, for a large time you're catching the Wallabies. When it comes to selecting leaders within the team, what do you think are some of the most important things to look for?
Rod Macqueen 28:29
I didn't know John very well, when I first started out. And we had some interesting conversations. And one of the conversations was that he wasn't necessarily going to be captain, just because he was before. And I remember when I was over in, in Argentina, John came up and suggested that we might be better if we stayed at a different motel than the one we're in because the nightlife wasn't as good and the players been speaking about it. We're about to go to Windsor. So I took that on board. And Taryn, we will definitely be staying in Windsor, we won't be going back to London. But we had a good conversation after that the captain's role wasn't to be in players representative captain's role was to do what he thought was in the best interests of the team, but also make that decision in with the rest of the management. And that was probably the only time that we had sort of words, I guess that our period of time, he was an amazing captain. And he really went out of his way to understand that and understand that his role was very much for instance, it was great for me to get his perspective on things. When we'd walk off the field for instance, at halftime. I'd go to him first and get his perspective as what he was seeing and what he thought on the field. Before I actually put to the team. What I was seeing from my point of view off the field, and before every match would go through the what ifs on a Friday night. Now in Talking about now what who would come on who wouldn't come on what would happen? Who would be kicking? So we all we understood each other all the time, and it wasn't telling you what to do. I was just discussing with him from both sides. And so it was an ideal relationship based on trust and respect. And the other thing that we talked about was, again, that consensus decision I talked about, before the players wanted to do, it didn't necessarily mean it was best for the team. Now, that probably came up quite a lot. And understanding what was best for the team was the right decision, not what the players particularly when necessarily all one,
Paul Barnett 30:35
right, if I could take it back and introduce you to that boy, who was at school in Manly rowing surf boats and playing rugby league in the winter League and union in the winter. I mean, what you know, now, what would you say to him? Well, I
Rod Macqueen 30:50
think it's pretty obvious that from the time that I got that, in that illness, when I was 40, it changed my thoughts on things, I think, to see and care more about the important things in life, to have high standards, but spelling, smelling the roses, and having a balance in life. Now is the greatest lesson I learned through all of it. And I would have been much better off I'm sure during those period of time, when I sat focused on achieving everything, it would have been nice to have that balance in life or would have been a lot more enjoyable for me during those times as well.[PB13]
Paul Barnett 31:27
Maybe just one last question to finish with if I could write. And I'd like to start with a quote from one of your players, of course, who's now a journalist in quite a famous author Peter Fitzsimmons. And he said, he is not a barge and bashing coach, but nor does he have a particular rugby philosophy, words springs to mind a bad email organization, discipline, planning, intensity, secrecy and method. But I'd like to actually hear in your words, what you hope the legacy is that you've left as a coach.
Rod Macqueen 31:57
I'd like to think the players and the sports support staff over that period of time, had a special, memorable and enjoyable experience. Ones that they could take back to their families and to their everyday life. And also lessons that they could learn for their business in the future, and for their kids. And I suppose finally, have lifelong friendships that have been made from[PB14]
Paul Barnett 32:27
lessons, memories and friends. Sounds like a pretty good place to finish. So I'd like to thank you for your time say, it's been great listening to the story. It's been fantastic and I've enjoyed the view in the background as well. And I wish you all the best for the future. Thanks, Paul.