Club Mgmt. Board of Directors as led by President Dave Barham

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bacon buster said:
Wtf. Why are they now only wanting to pair Scott and Mahoney with an experienced CEO?

What was the remit last week?
Click to expand...
Upset as many people on the political and moral spectrum as humanly possible in the fewest moves.
 

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bacon buster said:
Putting the religious views aside, he’s not an experienced football person. I’m a bit lost tbh

Need a big board changes
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He had his fingerprints over all three processes the club has been running in the last six weeks, I’d say being intimately involved with the club and knowing all of its leaders as well as where the bodies are buried is probably why they thought he’d do a good job of implementing whatever restructuring and personnel changes end up being recommended, and therefore asked him to apply.

For his own part he apparently interviewed a couple of other candidates before being interviewed himself so whatever a footy person might know or have said about it were things he could add to his own pitch, even if he knew it from being told instead of his own experience.

I’d say that’s also why EY didn’t google him, as they already knew who he was as he’d been working with them for weeks (and probably knew each other before that too because connexions).


With a line drawn under that whole fiasco they now go back to the drawing board and look at candidates who don’t have intimate familiarity with the context as a trump card.
 
Lore said:
CEO SEARCH:

“The Bombers want to pair new coach Brad Scott and football boss Josh Mahoney with an experienced AFL figure as CEO to help lead the club up the ladder.”

Some more CEO candidates:
  • Stuart Fox: MCC CEO & Former CEO of Hawthorn (not named in racism review)
  • Greg Swann: Brisbane CEO


REVIEW:
  • Findings to be announced and implemented once the board has approved it
  • Timeline to hand it up to the board is next week
  • Barham to oversee delivery of the external review. (I’m not sure if this is a generic statement as President or if they mean he’s taken leadership of it from Thorburn. The actual interviewing and writing stuff is probably done, they should be dotting Is and crossing Ts on the current timeline anyway. So mostly just liaising with EY and tabling it to the board?)
  • Expected to result in:
    • Staffing restructure
    • Further personnel changes
    • Stop the disruptive club politics (how??)


Click to expand...


Recommends a move away from divisive club politics.

Jeez, I wonder how much we paid for this.
 
bacon buster said:
Wtf. Why are they now only wanting to pair Scott and Mahoney with an experienced CEO?

What was the remit last week?
Click to expand...
it makes you wonder what they were thinking.
It was an odd choice for a football club in the first place. Odder still for one in the situation we're in. And further strange that we seemed to rush it through. It's off-season. The CEO can probably wait whilst the new coach and our footy boss focus on the trade and draft period.
Even just a little leak on Thorburn to see what popped up before we dove straight in.

On the bright side, the last brain fart the Barham admin chased was Clarkson, which backfired and led to a proper process to find a coach
Now we've gone the CEO, which backfired and led to a proper process to find a CEO
When we bid on Davey with pick 4 and the AFL correct us, we're bound to recruit a gun!
 
citizen-erased said:
The CEO can probably wait whilst the new coach and our footy boss focus on the trade and draft period.
Even just a little leak on Thorburn to see what popped up before we dove straight in.
Click to expand...
Huh? It didn’t come out of the blue though?

We were talking about Thorburn in this thread way back at the start, on August 27. The only thing people cared about was the banking royal commission (which should’ve been enough tbf).

I also looked at his NFP experience at the time and found the church link as well as a fatherhood charity — but not the sermon, which didn’t come up in google. Maybe if I’d specifically searched their sermons for a lightning rod I’d have found it.

He was then linked to the CEO role a day or two before the grand final as I recall, and Mitch Cleary ran with it as a high likelihood prediction mid last week. That would’ve been a leak, Cleary is good at getting info but he can’t get it unless someone gives him access. Still no one cared about his church stuff.

Then he’s officially announced as CEO and
atomic bomb explosion GIF
 
citizen-erased said:
On the bright side, the last brain fart the Barham admin chased was Clarkson, which backfired and led to a proper process to find a coach
Now we've gone the CEO, which backfired and led to a proper process to find a CEO
When we bid on Davey with pick 4 and the AFL correct us, we're bound to recruit a gun!
Click to expand...
A very good point
 
Lore said:
Huh? It didn’t come out of the blue though?

We were talking about Thorburn in this thread way back at the start, on August 27. The only thing people cared about was the banking royal commission (which should’ve been enough tbf).

I also looked at his NFP experience at the time and found the church link as well as a fatherhood charity — but not the sermon, which didn’t come up in google. Maybe if I’d specifically searched their sermons for a lightning rod I’d have found it.

He was then linked to the CEO role a day or two before the grand final as I recall, and Mitch Cleary ran with it as a high likelihood prediction mid last week. That would’ve been a leak, Cleary is good at getting info but he can’t get it unless someone gives him access. Still no one cared about his church stuff.

Then he’s officially announced as CEO and
atomic bomb explosion GIF
Click to expand...
I missed that Cleary leak.
I guess whoever had the tweet ready to go was waiting for the appointment to happen. If nothing, they probably sleep on it til next time.
Perhaps next time a homework assignment for the social media kids. spend a day digging around this person before we appoint them to anything.

I had early misgivings, but it stemmed from a level of paranoia of the timings
Coterie dinner thurs. Thorburn on the review Friday. Writing was on the wall.
Essendon people have not helped this club much in 2 decades. It may upset the immortal, but the more externals we bring in the better.

From all reports McKinnis was super impressive in the coach hunt.
the effect of fresh, external views for us should be priority.
 
citizen-erased said:
I missed that Cleary leak.
I guess whoever had the tweet ready to go was waiting for the appointment to happen. If nothing, they probably sleep on it til next time.
Perhaps next time a homework assignment for the social media kids. spend a day digging around this person before we appoint them to anything.

I had early misgivings, but it stemmed from a level of paranoia of the timings
Coterie dinner thurs. Thorburn on the review Friday. Writing was on the wall.
Essendon people have not helped this club much in 2 decades. It may upset the immortal, but the more externals we bring in the better.

From all reports McKinnis was super impressive in the coach hunt.
the effect of fresh, external views for us should be priority.
Click to expand...
Was Friday afternoon, probably caught up in Brad Scott’s many interviews:


Would be interesting if McKinnis was appointed to the board… She’s quite anonymous for such a successful person
 

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Doss said:
He stood on a bloke's toes at the pisser once. Not CEO material.
Click to expand...
Yes but he does not discriminate. He is happy to stand on anyone's toes.
 
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This ****ing club.



It was barely 24 hours ago that we were wondering how Andrew Thorburn’s appointment as Essendon CEO made it past Dorothy Hisgrove, a club director and over-qualified hall monitor in realms of diversity and inclusion.

Hisgrove, a national managing partner at KPMG, received a special mention from club president David Barham during her appointment to Essendon’s CEO selection panel, with Barham hailing her business leadership and expertise in people and culture.

We’ve already noted how fruitless these skills turned out to be in preventing the furore engulfing the club, and we may have discovered the reason why.

Margin Call has established that Hisgrove was actually out of the country for a significant portion of September when the panel deliberations were taking place on the matter of a replacement CEO.


We know this because Hisgrove’s Facebook profile is adorned with snapshots of slender palms, glasses of vino and a shimmering Iberian Peninsula, all of which were uploaded while the mess of the club’s implosion was trying to be contained out of Melbourne.

Hisgrove appears to have left Australia within days of the Essendon CEO position becoming vacant on August 23, when former boss Xavier Campbell tendered his resignation amid a whirlwind of sackings and departures.

And yes, we can accept that holidays are necessary, booked well in advance, and often timed around the orbiting schedules of other people. What’s curious is that a celebrated and supposedly committed board member saw fit to decamp for sunnier climes in the midst of a disaster that can now be measured with a Geiger counter.

Especially, we might add, when that board member had been thrust forth by the club’s president as an impeccable leadership savant whose input was to be so necessary for the selection of Essendon’s successor CEO.

As Barham told his membership, Hisgrove was put on the panel to provide “the latest testing protocols to ensure the panel has a clear picture of the personality and leadership capabilities of each candidate”. We can conclude this was hardly a raging success, given the fallout from Thorburn’s appointment.

We are not without sympathy here. The task of vetting candidates is not easy, and it is hardly made easier when one is navigating the cobblestone alleyways of the Portuguese capital, or slaking the heat of the Spanish south with large, fragrant glasses of Rioja. While we’re querying levels of commitment, it’s worth noting as well that Hisgrove is hardly a lifetime Essendon supporter.

From what we can gather she’s actually a Collingwood fan from years back, or so we’re led to believe from the incriminating photographs that we’ve discovered online (fair warning to ye all).

Hisgrove may have joined the Essendon board last August but until she took a seat at the table she publicly and proudly identified as a Pies fan, flaunting a black and white scarf on one occasion and even changing her Facebook profile to include the Collingwood logo during their 2018 grand final campaign.

We need not point out that it’s not a capital offence to switch allegiances in the AFL but, on the other hand, it is a very novel way to increase boardroom diversity. Not sure how that will wash with the club faithful, however. Hisgrove did not respond to questions.
 
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The Prosecutor said:
This ******* club.

Click to expand...

I can't open that but from what we heard at the time she was away in the period when no one was interviewed during the prelim finals week, and I thought it was because someone had died or something and she had to go?
 
Must be a bit slow for business journos if they're recycling back page news three times in the same week.

Either that or I wonder if some of these new board spill agitators are trying to feed the outrage machine to suit their own ends.
 
The Prosecutor said:
Depends what a 'significant portion of September' is.
Click to expand...
The first four reported coach interviews were on Wednesday 7th of September, then nothing else until the week before the grand final when Yze had a second interview on the Wednesday 21st. Then on the 22nd (National Day of Mourning Public Holiday) Gia had apparently been interviewed. In between we heard of other people being asked to join the process and choosing not to, or not yet. Mostly those were experienced coaches that would skip the first round anyway so their interviews would've presumably happened directly before and after the grand final, if they'd gone ahead.

Mahoney was chairing the coach process and calling everyone inviting them to apply, while I think Hisgrove was involved in the personality profiling stuff (her background is people and culture, and aren't personality profiles all the rage in HR these days?) Presumably the others all had their own bits to research and then further questions to ask during the interviews for each one. Jordan Lewis seemed to be focusing on the Essendon context and goodness of fit for modern footy.


I mean I'll also point out that we're post-covid and you don't have to be in the same country to do business anymore. Plenty of things are either online or in a hybrid format and that doesn't seem to be an issue until the front page needs filling.
 

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Club Mgmt. Board of Directors as led by President Dave Barham

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