Change is Hard

I was a broadcast executive for 34 years, mostly in radio, but I spent a few years running television stations as well. Quick sidebar, I had no interest in running a television station until the CEO of that division, Leslie Sole, called me up out of the blue and asked if I’d be interested in moving back to Vancouver to run the two stations the company had just purchased. At that time I was based in Winnipeg. How long do you think it took me to say yes to that gig? I had no idea how to run a television station but I learned early in my career to just say yes and then figure it out!

I can hear your internal groans shouting…”but what does this have to do with LAWN BOWLING you moron?”  

Right.

Leslie was an eccentric, he was the type of guy that lived life to its fullest. He was a lovable character who was as authentic and genuine as they come. And then he had a serious heart attack. Luckily for all of us that knew him, he survived, by his own admission it was a close call. 

It was a few months after that that I recall going to meet up with him in his office in Toronto. Now, you can imagine what kind of an office an eccentric might have, there was memorabilia all over the place, mismatched chairs and there in the upper right hand corner of his desk? Well that’s where he kept his cigars, and frankly had he taken out a flask of whiskey I would not have been surprised. 

It was hard not to notice that not one thing in Leslie’s lifestyle had changed since his medical scare. Leslie, ever the story teller, went on to tell me that his doctors had ordered him away from booze, smoking and fatty foods. 

“But Geoff, I LOVE all that stuff,” he said to me, “I’m a good example of why change is so hard.” That lesson really stuck with me.

In fact, my former passion - radio -  is in trouble because of its inability to reinvent itself (it is not alone in this regard…I see you newspapers). 

When change is embraced some cool things begin to happen. I’ve been keenly watching what’s happening with lawn bowling in Australia and it is no wonder that the sport is undergoing a bit of a renaissance there. Live streaming opened the sport to a flock of people that had never watched before, sparking an uptick in interest. That’s been swiftly followed by new competitions, a new youth development system (called the Jackaroos) and some radical new ideas like music on the greens and social bowling which have culminated in the sport suddenly becoming more relevant (here’s an example). And with that comes renewed energy and most importantly growth.

As a casual observer, I don’t see any real change to our lawn bowling approach in Canada, maybe save for the guys behind https://www.canadianbowler.ca/ who launched a new live streamed competition last year in Calgary to great success (well done btw!). Change is hard, doubly so in a sport that has a history that dates back hundreds of years. But it is for that exact reason that it’s worth setting aside the old norms and encouraging conversations, or we can simply put another VHS tape into the VHS player and carry on