Sarah Walsh on creating the conditions for high performance at the Matildas

Sarah Walsh

We played the World Cup in China and I see that being the moment for laundry and wifi and we were scrubbing our sports bras. I mean it's pretty legitimate tool you need to do your job. And I just said, girls, there's got to be a better way. And for anyone in the room, wifi, you used to have to pay for it in hotels. So it was very expensive early on. But we come home after that World Cup and I said, I'm going to go into that federation and I'm going to go in and ask for laundry and wifi. So we sit down with a head of high performance, he's a good friend of mine now. And I said, look, we need laundry and wifi. It's really expensive. It's actually costing us to play at the moment. It's 2007. And he goes, okay. I was like, oh look, what else do we need?

Damon Klotz

Welcome back to another episode of the Culture First Podcast, I’m your host Damon Klotz and this episode is going to be a record breaker on several fronts.

Selection of news anchors: 2023… the year that completely changed the game for women in sport, the Matildas in the FIFA World Cup brought in record eyeballs, record crowds, absolutely united the nation, seeing young boys asking how they can become Matilda’s, the incredible skills of our Matildas on home soil in this World Cup campaign, across Australia, more young girls than ever before are taking up the sport, green and gold fever is red hot across Australia, Courtney Vine to take Sam Kerr and the Matildas to where they’ve never been before. No Australian team has ever reached a World Cup semi final, the Matildas are preparing for the biggest match in Australia's World Cup history, they just seem to be getting stronger, more confident and more relaxed, The Matildas have produced one of Australia's all time greatest World Cup wins, They’re the biggest stars in Australian sport, The Matilda’s are about to become our best paid female athletes, The Matilda’s will now earn a minimum $120,000 a year, Matildas has been picked as Australia’s word of the year for 2023, Matilda’s mania shows no signs of slowing down. They’ll play in front of a packed house for all 3 olympic qualifiers in Perth, making it 11 sold out games in a row since July.

Damon Klotz

The Matildas captured the hearts of Australia and the world during the 2023 Women’s World Cup. But before millions of people were glued to their screens to see the Matildas secure Australia’s highest-ever finish at a World Cup, (alt: what wasn’t seen was the years and years of work leading up to this moment in time) a lot of work went on years before that to create the conditions for high performance.

One of the key people responsible for getting women’s football to where it is today is Sarah Walsh. Sarah is Head of Women’s Football at Football Australia, a former national team player where she won 70 caps for The Matildas, as well as a club career that saw her play in the NWSL in the United States and in the A-League Women in Australia.

Sarah was at the inaugural SXSW Sydney with me and we got to record this conversation in front of a standing room only audience, where we even had to turn away a couple of hundred people who wanted to listen in live.

In this conversation you’ll learn what the conditions needed for high performance are, the importance of the culture of the organisation on and off the pitch as well as the critical role that equity and equality plays when it comes to long-term success.

You’ll get a behind the scenes look at the policies and strategies required to broker the historic 2019 collective bargaining agreement, how Sarah has been advocating since her playing days for better off-field conditions to help with on-field performance and her message for young women who want to change the world.

This is the first time I’ve ever recorded a podcast in front of a live audience, so the audio from this episode will sound a little different than what you might be used to hearing on the Culture First Podcast!

SXSW Sydney was a blast but for those who weren’t able to be there in the room, I’m so glad we were able to record this moment to share with you now.

Let's head over to my conversation with the trailblazing Sarah Walsh - live from SXSW in Sydney.

Damon Klotz

Okay. All right. Welcome everyone. Thank you to everyone who has been lining up and has managed to get a seat in this room. The podcast Sage has been a very small and hotly contested room over the last few days, so appreciate everyone who lined up early in order to get in for this special recording. To begin this podcast, I would like to start with an acknowledgement of country. We are recording this podcast today in tumble long, the land of the Gadigal Clan of the Euro Nation in the spirit of reconciliation, and as a demonstration of respect to the traditional laws, customs, cultures, and country of the first nations of this land. I'd like to warmly acknowledge the traditional custodians of Gadigal country and show respect to elders past, present, and emerging. What a special experience it is to be here at South by Southwest to record a live episode of The Culture First podcast.

So for people listening in the future, there is a room full of people listening to this. This is the first time ever that we're doing a live taping of the Culture First podcast. So thank you all for being part of this experiment. You might see when we do edits or when we stuff up or something, and you see it first, and then you're not going to hear it in November when it actually comes out. So that is all good. Today on the show, I'm joined by Sarah Walsh. Sarah is the head of Women's Football Australia and a former Tilda. So Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today on the Culture First podcast.

Sarah Walsh

Thanks for having me. It's fantastic. Thank you.

Damon Klotz

So yeah, the line is definitely not because there is tens of millions of fans of the Culture First podcast, but if anyone has listened, thank you. It's definitely the Matildas Effect. But for those who haven't heard of the Culture First podcast, culture First is a show brought to you by the team at CultureAmp, and my name is Damon Klotz, and I've been with CultureAmp as one of the founding employees, and it's my role to have conversations that try to create a better world of work. We also hope that through that we can also create a better world by focusing on work as the lever. And I'm confident that this conversation today will be both inspiring and make that promise a reality. So I usually start my episodes by saying, all right, let's get started. It became an accidental catchphrase, but I thought with you here today, maybe we should do a, here we go, here we go, here we go. Now, are you allowed to still say that as an administrator and not a Matilda?

Sarah Walsh

What is that Chand? I'm not sure what the, that's at the

Damon Klotz

End of the Matilda song on the bus.

Sarah Walsh

Oh, yes it is. Hey, it's a long time ago. I was part of the team that actually created that, and Lydia Williams was in it as a kid who has to do the oy, oy, and she's still doing it. It's like she's been there for 15 years doing that. So yeah,

Damon Klotz

There we go. That felt more fitting than maybe an, alright, let's get started. So the other thing that I wanted to say is that, so I had the chance to represent Culture Amp and the Victorian government at South by Southwest in Austin this year. And I was just like you out there trying to line up getting into a session. And there was one thing that I noticed more than anything else, that the people on stage cared deeply about what sneakers they were wearing. It was like such a thing. And I was convinced that a lot of the people were wearing box fresh sneakers, which is a huge blister like waiting to happen. So as a former Nike athlete, Sarah and I decided last night that we're both going to rock some Nike kicks. So we just want some acknowledgement of how hard we've tried to really bring that to life.

Sarah Walsh

Comfy shoes.

Damon Klotz

Comfy shoes are key. Yes, it was quite a walk to get here. So over the last few years of hosting this podcast, I've had the chance to interview people from all walks of life. Some episodes are with thought leaders like Esther Perel and Simon Sinek. My episode last week was with one of the executive producers and writers from the TV show succession, and we talk about all the different ways about workplace culture and how to book culture. First, I have a tradition that I sort of start with when I open up a podcast episode and the question that I ask is about moving past someone's job title so we can understand a little bit more about someone. So the question that I've asked to all these guests is how do you describe your work to a curious 10 year old now. We've had some funny answers over the years, including someone saying, why is this curious 10 year old following me around the hills of England and can they leave me alone? That was Oliver Burkeman talking about mortality. But for you, I thought this is a bit of a special episode. I wanted to do something different rather than just a stranger who's come up to you and gone, excuse me, what do you do for work? If you could have a conversation with 10 year old Sarah Walsh, how would you describe what you do for work today?

Sarah Walsh

Oh, okay. That thing that you love more than anything in the world turns out that you being the only girl at the club and in your team is actually not how it's meant to be. You should be able to play with young girls and should be able to play on the good pictures. Your parents, you might not know it yet, but are hearing lots of slurs on the sidelines and they probably shielded you from this, but this is really not how sports should have been designed. So I spend my time and not just for women, but for minority groups and communities in trying to make sport better for everybody so everybody could enjoy and participate in it.

Damon Klotz

I feel like 10 year old Sarah was probably a little bit overwhelmed, but also very proud.

Sarah Walsh

That's a tough question. That one.

Damon Klotz:

Yeah. Well, it's a live podcast taping, so I'm like, why not? We just turn up the heat a little bit more.

Sarah Walsh

I actually tested on my 10 year old nephew, and apparently they know a lot more than we think. He said, you mean equality? I was like, yep, you got it. But obviously his mother's my sister. So yeah,

Damon Klotz

The kids are certainly growing up in a way that I think is going to show us all what the future can look like, which is inspiring. So probably the understatement of the year will be that this has been a massive year for football Australia, for the Matildas for Women's Sport, and it's also been a massive year. For you personally. I'd love to maybe level set with the audience, and this is a question that I encourage a lot of people to ask their team as a check-in question, which is, if I really knew you today, what would I know? Because it gives us a little bit more context about the humanity of what's happening inside of someone as well as within a workplace. And on any given day, you might get a different answer from someone depending on what's happened that day. So they might've had a stressful commute, maybe their child didn't sleep that well. It's a way to bring that humanity into a workplace conversation. So Sarah, if I really knew you today, I know we've been on a whirlwind of getting to know each other, the past sort of 24 to 48 hours in the past few weeks, but if I really knew you today, what would I know?

Sarah Walsh

I think generally speaking, I'm someone with, it's very determined, high levels of ownership commitment, someone that asks a lot of questions, naturally curious, but I think you would know that it's been a long three years and I'm very much looking forward to the holiday in January that I have planned to really just sit back and kind of process what happened really. So yeah.

Damon Klotz

Yeah, it has been a whirlwind. A few things that you didn't mention that I thought might be some fun facts, and we've already talked about how much random research I do for every guest, but you used to beat Janna Pitman in the hurdles growing up.

Sarah Walsh

I did, yeah. Who told you? I used to beat her. There's one photo where I'm on the number one dice and she's on the number two. She doesn't look very happy, by the way. Also high levels of commitment, determination. And I actually met her more recently. She didn't remember me.

Sarah Walsh

Because she only saw the back of your head, right? Because you were always in front. It was actually 60 metre hurdles. So it's at the point of where you're 12/13 and my parents are driving me everywhere at this stage. It's athletics this weekend, it's football this weekend. What people dunno is I absolutely hated athletics. I was just good at it and I was very quick, but I was very, not much has changed. I'm slow and short now, but I was very quick and short. And so the 60 metre hurdles were kind of manageable and Yana was just gliding over 'em. Cause she was always tall and I never really got to know her, but we would always be at state meets playing each other or running against each other. And I think I come second to her in my last meet, but my mom and dad were like, look, what do you want to do? We can't keep doing both. It's taking up a lot of the time. And I was like, oh, football, a hundred percent. But yeah, shame, she didn't rank. She's gone to do amazing things. Ana, she's a doctor. She's got six children I think. Yeah, she's a pretty amazing woman. But yeah. Interesting.

Damon Klotz

The other one that maybe people don't know or maybe they know that you had the nickname Stinger, but it wasn't because you were this venomous striker in the box score and goals. It was because one day you were at the surf and someone said, there's heaps of stingers in the water. And you were like, oh yeah, and you swam anyway, and then you came out with a huge stinger on your leg.

Sarah Walsh

Actually, my friend said, we've been in here for hours and no one's been stung. And I was like, okay. So I'm not someone that usually takes big risks but calculated. So that seemed like a good one. But yes, stingers stuck in some circles.

Damon Klotz

So the success on and off the pitch this year was a journey that started a long time ago. Many people in the media that have said that the Matilda success of 2023 was a 40 year success story in the making, and you've played a critical role throughout that journey. I'd love to maybe take the audience back to a few key moments that have allowed you to sort of sit in this seat today. You've said that after watching your brother play football, you wanted to give it a go at age five, but your mom, whom I've had a chance to do a little bit of background research with said that she wanted you to try gymnastics and dancing.

Sarah Walsh

You called my mom?

Damon Klotz

I'm just saying.

Sarah Walsh

And that's something she'd do. Pick up the phone too. Great.

Damon Klotz

So you were insistent on playing football just like your brother. Can you share what it was like growing up as the only female on the team?

Sarah Walsh

Yeah, look, I am glad you've spoken to mom because it turns out I don't have a great memory. And honestly when she tells me stories, it's like I wasn't there because in a lot of ways we joke about, I made that joke earlier about what was said on the sidelines. My mom and dad had to listen to a lot of stuff back in 1987 where your young daughter is not only the only girl on the team, she's the best girl on the pitch, she's the best girl at a club. I'd constantly win player of the Match Club of the match, and it really rubbed parents up the wrong way in my role. Now, not much has changed about parents actually in a lot of circles, but yeah, I really don't remember any of that because my parents shielded me. But now when I look back, I never got changed at the club ground because it was a boys change room didn't bother me. I just got changed at home and didn't really know that they were getting changed and socialising. So I'd always played on the good pitches because I think I was an exception. Not the rule that all stopped when I couldn't play with boys anymore until age 13. But I enjoyed the Beckham Doco the other day because I actually wanted to be Eric Canner

Young girls today. That surprised me. Now young girls today want to be Steph Catley's. Ellie Carpenters like how beautiful. I absolutely wanted to be Beckham and Cantina. I had every single Man United shirt, I thought I was going to play for Man United - parents never told me, best parents ever! Let me dream! I also want to be a Socceroo. So that old spew shirt was my favourite kind of chequered socceroo shirt. So it has come a long way, but I only really remember the great memories of always carrying a ball everywhere and having that facilitated by my family. But yeah, so much has changed now for the better.

Damon Klotz

So fast forward from being that five-year-old playing with all the boys, you then were called up for the Matildas at age 15, but by age 18 you'd already had three knee reconstructions and then you weren't able to make your debut for the Matildas until age 21 when the doctors had already told you that you should probably give this up. What was it like to prove them all wrong when you scored your first goal on debut for the Matildas?

Sarah Walsh

Yeah, they were tough years, but I think they've, when I think about some of the challenging times was making the national team pretty early. Actually there's only a couple of players that made it that young, which is Caitlyn Ford's one of them, Sam Kerrs, one of them. And it was heartbreaking to make the squad. And then throughout my second one, I missed the Sydney 2000 Olympics. So got a pretty cool story about, I remember I decided I wasn't going to watch anything. I was about 16 at the time, not going to watch one bit of the Olympics. It's literally in my city. So obviously that's quite hard to do. We didn't have social media, thank God, and I thought I'll watch one thing. And it was Kathy Freeman and so turned on Kathy Freeman. And that's the thing I needed to get me up to push through that second one.

Unfortunately I had one more after that, which was the thing that I said I needed a break and we were talking off camera. You have these pivotal moments in your career. And I remember sitting after the surgeon had given me my X-ray and he had really poor bedside manner. I mean, to be fair, he'd just done my third knee reconstruction and he was like, what are you doing to yourself? And he threw the X-ray on the bed and he left. And I looked at mom and dad and I said I was broken and said, should I stop? And they said, that's up to you. And I think that kind of allowed me to the space to make my own decision. And three years later, which is quite late to debut at 21, I debuted and played for the national team for a good eight, nine years.

And the beauty of going through all of that, I mean I do wonder who I would be without having all that adversity because I was a 15 year old that just made the national team nothing could stop me and teaches you pretty severe humility and gratitude. So it's not even a phrase that I use just to be cute, but every single time I put on my jersey I treated it. It was my last and it probably said more in the trust I had in my knee. But I did that over 70 times with goals and I got to really enjoy that. I soaked it up. So when I retired it felt like I'd had eight bonus years. So that's how I viewed it.

Damon Klotz

And to go to your very last match as a Matilda where you also scored, so you scored in your first annual last match. At that time you were also studying a business degree and you said that maybe you'll have a sort of career post-football working for Coke or working for Nike.

Sarah Walsh

Did I say That

Damon Klotz

You Did

Sarah Walsh

Nothing wrong with those brands? I'm just saying where was I going with that?

Damon Klotz

I feel like this is This Is Your Life where I have your book and you have no memory of it and I'm trying to bring these back for you.

Sarah Walsh

Did mom tell you that?

Damon Klotz

No, She's listening right now. I've got her on speaker. So could you imagine the career that you would end up having to now sort of be in the role that you are when you literally put the boots down for that last time?

Sarah Walsh

Yeah, look, I'd like to say that it was all very deliberate, but I'm not surprised that I ended up in the federation. When I look back and I do these talk tracks and take people up to the moment where we reached equality in 2019, man, there's some funny stories before we got there in 2007, I see that we played the World Cup in China and I see that being the moment for laundry on wifi. I said that I like asking questions, but we had this one trip in China and we were scrubbing our sports bras. I mean it's a pretty legitimate tool. You need to do your job. And I just said, girls, there's got to be a better way. And for anyone in the room, wifi used to have to pay for it in hotels. So it was very expensive early on. But we came home after that World Cup and I said, I'm going to go into that federation and I'm going to go in and ask for laundry and wifi and the PFA, our players union said, don't go in by yourself, let us come with you. I said, I've got it. I kind of regret this moment. So we go up the lift. I was with one of my teammates and we sit down with a head of high performance, he's a good friend of mine now. And I said, look, we need laundry and wifi. It's really expensive. It's actually costing us to play at the moment. It's 2007. And he goes, okay. I was like, oh look, what else do we need?

Walked out girls. We got laundry and wifi. And so I was always asking questions throughout my time as a player and just always wondering about the inner workings of the federation and how decisions were made. And so it was a 2010 moment, which was four years later where this is probably where the moment that really hit for me, we won the Asian Cup and it's only been done once since even with the golden generation we have, they weren't able to do it a couple of years ago, but the men did it on home soil, very hard to do. And we did it and we thought that would translate into more investment. And we got home and there was kind of, I dunno why we thought it would just translate into this magical audience that we were going to come home to. And there was one camera there and nothing changed around paying conditions. And I just thought, oh wow. I dunno why I thought results was going to be the thing. So I'd made that decision then that I was going to do something about it, retired two years later and transitioned into the federation.

Damon Klotz

We're going to touch more on I guess your role and the changing nature of what is needed and continues to change within football. But one of the main topics that we wanted to speak about today was the conditions for high performance. There's obviously been a lot of articles written about the Matildas post things saying here's all the things that made 'em successful. But now we're actually going to hear from you in terms of what were the conditions required for high performance? And I think from a corporate sort of perspective, performance hasn't always had a very good reputation or been the sexiest subject to talk about at work. But when organisations have a really thorough strategy and communicate it effectively, performance can end up being a really core part of how you create an equitable workplace experience and create an environment where people can actually do great work and be recognised for it. So when I think about performance, I think a lot about things like fairness, transparency, accuracy, goal alignment, tracking, development, coaching, feedback, accountability and recognition. All of these things are really key to having a very human experience in the workplace where you get recognised for your work. I'd love to learn maybe how you think about performance considering you've spent your entire career so focused on high performance in order to achieve at the highest level.

Sarah Walsh

Yeah, I think it's a really good question. And if you don't mind, I'll just go back a little bit because I think from my time as a player and then looking at what we just did in 2023, I think there's some fundamentals that need to take place within the organisation itself to be able to deliver what we delivered. And I'll get to your question, but in 2018, we actually had constitutional change through FIFA governance intervention, which actually meant that we would now have 50 50 on our board, 40, 40, 20 instituted. And I believe that then started a culture change within the business. We now had more often than not 50 50 on our board. So we had the right voices and right people in the room. And then 2019 we brokered the first equal pay deal, really important because what we witnessed in 2023 is actually the goal beyond equality.

I actually see equality as being the baseline now for sports that are just struggling to reach it or even build a pathway. You just simply can't deliver what we just delivered. So I think that's crucial because not only did it, people see it as the pay deal as well, it was about support and conditions. So they spend large majority of their time. They're one of the most highest travelled national teams in Australia. They live in UK, everywhere, Europe, we bring 'em back home, try to balance where they play the national team games to build the brand here, but also for high performance, not have them travel too much, so host games in Europe. But for us they absolutely need a business class as part of recovery. They need standards around accommodation, standards around SNC. I mean we are only just starting to scratch a surface on women's bodies and biology, high performance for such a long time we've been treated like little men, but actually we're learning so much.

And so that was the start of us actually ensuring that they could perform to a level. And then just one last thing is obviously we won the rights to host in 2020 and I think a lot of people believe that the success was actually because it was a mega event, but I can pretty much assure you if the Matildas are out in the group stage, I'm not sitting here on this couch talking to you today. So all of these things need to be in place. And where Covid was a really bad time for our business, it actually gave us the opportunity to rebuild the business. With the Matildas at the centre, it's likely that you'll never get that moment again. And I'll give you an example. So we'd brokered the equal pay deal in 2019 and Covid hits and we stood down like everyone, every business, particularly sport on its knees, we stood down 70% of our workforce and I was one of I guess the lucky ones that were in a very small room of executives deciding how we were going to keep the lights on.

That's where we're at. And we made a decision to pay our Matildas, their full salary, every single one of them. And that was controversial. When there's a culture change within the business, we'd already talked about equality. This is kind of moving into an equity space. We weren't paying the Socceroos their match payments, but we knew that if we were actually true to the strategy and we were committed, we need to do it with conviction. And actually in some circles it was really unpopular. We weren't paying some of our own staff, they are our staff. And at that same time, we won the rights to host. So that allowed us to build for three years. And when you talk about high performance, it's about, it's allowing the players in a sporting context to have everything they need. I think there's some fundamentals in my view from being a player, but now also as an executive, I really believe that every single person, whether it's in your team or your business, has to absolutely believe in the endpoint, the vision they do.

They can be motivated differently. They can have different levels of buy-in if they absolutely don't believe in the endpoint or they might have different versions as to how you get there, but for me, if they're not on the bus, it's going to be very difficult. The second piece is I think individuals within that really need to understand their role as an individual, but also their role as how that inputs into a broader collective. I think that's in a team environment, it is so absolutely crucial. Building on that, they need to understand their value. So role and value I think are two different things. And I think, I'll give you an example, Courtney Vine, we never thought she would've been called upon to deliver a 10th penalty shootout in one of the biggest games of the Matildas. But you prepare for it. And I don't want to suggest she's the 23rd player, but how your 23rd player feels about themself, their value and what their role is in a team is 10 times more important than how Sam Kerr, the captain of the team feels, and that is the role of the coach. I think we're going to talk about Tony, but that's just not some fun tagline. At some point you have to call on that player and actually the chances are that you might not actually, that they won't even touch the grass, but they're the ones at dinner, breakfast, lunch and tea around the ones that do. And they need to really bring the energy and maintain that level of culture you're talking about. And then I think we touched on making sure that they have all the tangibles that they need to perform. And I think once, if you get those things right and constantly check in on are we still aligned on where we're going? And I've got to say there were some really hairy moments over the three year period because the on-field strategy we put in front of them was brutal.

Damon Klotz

And the players had famously backed themself in 2015 going on strike asking for greater conditions. And then in 2019 Kerr said, we're not asking for millions of dollars, we're just asking for everything that's possible from an environmental perspective to bring trophies to this country. So then you back them in that moment, which I think when you talk a lot about trust within an organisation, trust gets built over a very long period of time. But if you break it in one of those moments, it can be really hard to get it back. So I think the other thing that's really interesting is you've got this tagline of 23 for 23, it's really easy to have taglines inside of your organisation saying this matters. But until that 23rd person is actually called upon and has to demonstrate that value, that tagline means nothing unless that's actually true when it comes to the behaviour that you need in that moment.

Sarah Walsh

Yeah, you're right. I'll never forget, Tony Gustavsson's his first interview and it was 7:00 AM in the morning, I think he was in Sweden, six in the morning. It was during Covid. So we'd won the rights to host the World Cup. I mean we had all these brilliant opportunities to start from scratch. It kind of rarely happens, but Covid had given us this opportunity, so we didn't have a coach at the time either. So we kind of got this blank canvas and I remember how I felt after his interview. I was just like, I actually just wanted to go out and play. I looked around at my colleagues and went, wow. So we'd already kind of thought about the on pitch strategy. I think we're going to talk about that. But Tony, he come in, I mean his equal parts leadership coach, equal parts teacher, equal parts coach, fantastic coaches out there tactical that was there for everyone to see.

He was an assistant coac,h he won a medal at with the US in 2019, but that actually wasn't what really stood out for us. He was completely in line with how we viewed success. And I think that's the first time as a business also, and I think it's quite rare in sport here in Australia and globally, that success is much more than making a semifinal because how you socialise success and objectives and measures really drives behaviours not just within that high performance unit but the business. And I think how we got there, it was actually more important than the end result. We wanted Australia to feel proud of this team and you've got to think about all the levers that you need to pull. When we talk about United Nation, we used to use these words, what does that mean? Well, that means that we absolutely at all costs need to protect that half hour after a match their time and their schedules are down to the minute. And there's always this push pull between the SNC team and recovery team that want to get 'em into the ice baths, but that's part of their DNA. They spend time with fans. So things like that. Yeah.

Damon Klotz

I'd love to maybe touch a little bit on why Tony was the right person to bring in. And maybe a lot of people might not know this, but he's a lot more than just a football coach. He has this diverse skillset set that you kind of touched on. So why was it so critical to get a leader who cared about how you end up winning, not just what the goal was?

Sarah Walsh

Yeah. Well, we were hosting a home World Cup. We saw the opportunity. I mean, this beautiful thing happens when you actually reach equality. A lot of people were sitting around going, well, what next? I'm like, well, now we actually get to innovate. We get to actually think about how we build the brand of this team and how we increase investment and see where it takes us because we don't really have any blueprints for this and that come down to the selection of the coach. So we had, I don't know how many, is this Chatham House rules? No,

No. I think it's important that when we talked about success, there's absolutely on-field success of course. And we never socialised this during the World Cup or pre-World Cup. I don't think I ever answered the question, what does success look like? And the media is so desperate for us to say it, but if we are to say semi-final out loud, the players hear it, we hear it, and it's not all about making the semi-final. And we had some really hard work to do around bringing Australia on the Journey Australia love winners. We are one of 210 nations that play the game 210. There's not too many sports that actually have that much competition. We were 11th by the end of the three year period, so we are not favourites to win this thing. So we kind of were trying to manage expectations but also build good behaviours, not just within the team, but in the ecosystem that supports it as well, that hey, we do believe that this team's starting to transcend beyond results.

And we showed that you wouldn't even know if the team lost at most of the atmosphere around the grounds when a team loses wins. It's exactly the same for Matildas fan base. But so we sat down and talked about what the On-field piece looked like. I was in charge of the driving the legacy plan, and it's such a buzzword I actually looked for, I'm very big on not reinventing the wheel. And so I looked around to see what had worked in the past, whether it was Olympics or overseas, and I could not find anything. That was one started three years before the event itself and two had been delivered by the federation. It's usually delivered by the LOC that runs the tournament, which actually doesn't make sense because they wind up three months later. And I was like, well, this can actually just be our three year strategy for the business, but also for the game.

And so we built it and the Matildas were at the heart of that, and we would basically ask questions, pointed questions around legacy and how the coach felt about legacy and what that meant. And Tony absolutely blew us away with his answers around, I mean because he's such a leadership coach, he would talk about that he doesn't see equality and fighting for equality even though this team had reached that they're now thinking about doing that for other teams who don't actually have the same, they're very big voices with platforms. And he said, I don't see that as a distraction. I see that as something that fuels them, so I'll be lighting a match under that. We were like, oh wow. And we said, how do you feel about having a female assistant coach? We've got some amazing female coaches here because we've got such an issue with underrepresentation of women in our game. This is our biggest platform. It's going to be the biggest event, second biggest event behind the men's World Cup. I need a woman sitting next to you because our numbers are low on coaching courses. She's the best we have. Can you mentor? And he goes, absolutely took her under his wing and now Mel's kind of ready to fly onto something bigger. But yeah, we talked much more about what good looked like off the pitch than we did on the pitch, and he was the right person.

Damon Klotz

One of the off the pitch, I guess things that you had to implement, which I think there's been quite a bit of talk about in the media, was your parental policy, which allowed Katrina Gorry to actually not only have a child but also take that child with her and have children within the camp. So why is something like that so critical? When you think about the behind the scenes kind of like HQ policies, like something like a parental policy that many organisations have. Why was it so important for you to think about this in terms of a performance lens as well?

Sarah Walsh

Did anyone watch Katrina play? Honestly, I was just reading the parental policy and we're going to evolve it. We learn a lot over the past four years. We're coming into a new CBA now, and I was just reading it and there was this one line in there that says I the player, because it's for the primary parent, needs to be able to given all the opportunity to come back as the player they were prior to carrying the child. I was like, oh my God, she come back better. We're going to have to slightly amend that she did because when people invest in women, I've got to say that it's a real lightning rod for the change. I had never been told so much in my life that children did not belong in high performance environments. They are distractions. It's risky and it makes me think sport is in this funny period.

My wife works in tech actually, and so she's constantly questioning why we do things the way we do it. And I'm like, it's sport and we're slow to move. But this three years we really kind of just had the notion of testing and failing. And not that we did that with Katrina, but we were just in this space. And I remember talking to one of my male colleagues actually three years ago, and the irony is he's speaking to someone that's also from the high performance space, so he's from the high performance space and he said it won't work, it just won't work. Where's the evidence that it actually works? I'm like, well, if we haven't trialled it, how do you know it doesn't work? There is no evidence yet, so let's try it. But that's how startups operate, right? You're opening something new and breaking new ground.

We had a great CEO on board that just said, just go trial it. But this is why coming back to the coach selection, never did we have to ever be concerned about how Tony felt about it because he's completely on board with us trialling new things. And if you've seen the Disney docuseries, he talks about how Katrina and Little Harper who at the end of all this was considered the 24th player, has changed the high performance environment, changed his understanding of it as a player, you drift in and out of your high performance mode and you absolutely do not need to be in that 24 7 for two weeks. Sometimes the camps are longer. It's tiring and draining and it's a waste of energy. And Katrina Gorry actually used to be like that as a player. She was a little bit of an overthinker and now she's a mom and we learned so much.

I mean, she was fantastic. We learned so much about needing a breastfeeding room within the locker room. And not only do we have the carer and fund Katrina Go's mom to be there, but all the other additional support that she needed. But I think that the key one is the return to play because that looks very different for a female athlete and we really just were guided by her and now have a really strong policy. It might look different for the next woman. It's actually a parental policy, so the Socceroos can also access it in terms of being the primary carer up until the age of two. And so I actually recently had a chat with that male colleague again and he is like, Touche,

Damon Klotz

I feel like you needed a mic just to drop on his foot at that time and just walk

Sarah Walsh

Away. I'm here to bring everyone on the journey.

Damon Klotz

So I'd love to talk about maybe the key partnerships you had to really build inside of the organisation in order to bring some of these changes to life. And having trust among senior executives is critical in order to really drive fundamental change like you did, but you also need to ensure that sort of individual of all levels feel like they're sort of part of that journey as well. So you're navigating key exec stakeholders, but also you're representing so many people who are looking up to you to be that change. How did you navigate, I guess, the politics of sport and building those strong relationships with the other exec members at Football Australia?

Sarah Walsh

Yeah, well, I'll go back to the point I made around everyone being on board with the vision. You soon kind of work out who might not be so okay with the business,

Damon Klotz

Pretend there's a few people who weren't on the bus,

Sarah Walsh

They're on the bus, but

Damon Klotz

They pressed the stop.

Sarah Walsh

No, no. I think we're talking about culture change. We'd for so long been a business that'd been all about the Socceroos. It's all we'd done. I mean, when I first moved into the organisation, I learned very quickly as to why I wasn't feeling the love as a player or even the level of care around decision making or lack of strategic thinking for scheduling or investment to high performance and pay aside. But they would've really felt that the players on the end of it. But there's culture change within that because not only the Socceroos had given up and they did in 2019, they absolutely gave up an increase in pay. They're paid well enough already in the club ecosystem. That's still their money, that's still the funds that they earned to play for their country. They gave it up. And the irony of this is that our broadcast rights off the back of this World Cup are going to be so much higher and they will also see the benefit of that.

So I look at it as a small kind of pause that they took for a greater gain to have two strong national teams. And I think if you were selling that in at the start, it'd be hard to buy into it. So yeah, look, I think I said that the CEO come in and the Covid had hit, so the team was pretty much on board with the direction. And that doesn't mean everything's harmonious to be honest. And you talked about trust. I think one of the key things is when you are, I mean as I say, we're not used to innovating and trialling new things, but I think it's about respect and creating a safe space for respectful debate. And we had that many a times about the Matildas. I'll never forget one time we were starting to move into bigger stadiums and there's a little bit of risk in that, right? The first time we did it, it was USA, so got the right opponent, it's going to be a big following, let's put 'em in Stadium Australia. And we're like, oh, 80,000, what is 30,000? Can we get to 30,000? We'll sit around thinking about, oh, we'll get pre-match entertainment, and someone come up with, oh, I know someone from The Wiggles. And I was like, what?

Damon Klotz

It depends on which wiggle right?

Sarah Walsh

And our CEO's like Sarah, hear him out. I'm like, okay. He goes, well, we can get 'em. I know this guy. And they're doing a world tour for 18 year olds that used to watch The Wiggles. I can't remember what the tour was called, but they're happy to come and play to the 30,000 and we think they'll bring some kind of new families. And it didn't sit well with me straight up, right? We're trying to build a brand of women's empowerment and we're putting 'em up against a children's entertainment product. So I was like, it doesn't feel good, but we trialled it. I thought we've got 40 years history with this team. There actually are a core group of fans. I don't want them alienated, but you know what? Let's trial it. We sold an extra 10,000 tickets and as it turns out, the hardcore Matildas fan base grew up watching The Wiggles. And so we're looking to do that stuff again, but we wouldn't have known unless we trialled it, but it was done in a respectful, thoughtful way. We didn't have the data to say that it was right, but I got to voice my opinion that it didn't feel good. It didn't feel like we were really truly valuing the Matildas brand and what they stand for him. And we actually checked with the players first and they're like, yeah, fine. So we did it. Yeah.

Damon Klotz

Was John Von not available that week or he

Sarah Walsh

Was not? No.

Damon Klotz

Probably retired and come back or something else. Maybe broadening to media and storytelling and the role that it does have in both a brand, but also high performance stories are one of the way that I think you really captured the hearts and minds of future generations. Just yesterday at South by Southwest Sydney, there was a session on the film track with one of the co-creators of Drive to Survive about how storytelling has fundamentally changed how people consume sport. He even joked that some people don't even want to watch the Formula one anymore. They don't want to have spoilers for drive to survive next season. So the media has now fundamentally really changed how we think about it as part of the 2023 World Cup. You partnered with Disney to go behind the scenes of the Matildas and provide a real insight into the day-to-Day realities of what it meant to be a modern female athlete. Why was it so critical to work with such a huge partner like that to capture both the moment in time but also know that you would have the documentation of the story by the end?

Sarah Walsh

Yeah, I mean if you've seen it, it's fantastic to watch as a fan, but actually there's some really hairy moments at the start. I mean, we bowed out of the Asian Cup. I think it's hard for me to talk about the Disney docuseries without the on pitch strategy. Before we sat down with our coaches, we'd all done all the work to pull together an understanding of why we weren't doing World Cups. We'd never done this before. And we'd also worked out that the Matildas for a long time were playing very low ranked teams. And so Australia thought we were really great. And then every now and again we'd beat a really big team. And so there's a couple of things we learned that we weren't playing higher, ranked enough opposition, weren't playing enough European opposition, and we played a lot in Asia, mostly because it's more affordable to do so.

But we kept bowing out to European teams. And the next really key thing was that we were relying on a large amount of match minutes for a good seven to eight players rotating 'em through. They were playing some of the most minutes of any national team combined with their clubs. And that's not a good thing because back to that 23, you're going to rely on that 23rd player if they're not getting match minutes. And not only that, we weren't certain that we had the squad depth that we had at the time, and Courtney Vine wasn't in the time then, and I keep raising her. She's got a big profile now, but she absolutely was Connor on the periphery. He had job to do for the next three years, play harder teams on this three year period, you are going to bring in new blood, you're going to bring in new players.

And as you can imagine, with those two things combined, it's going to get bumpy. And it did get bumpy. We bowed out of the Asian cup, it was really bad. We lost six nil to Spain at a time when we rested our starting 11. They absolutely in the three year period needed that break off. And that's actually in the Disney docuseries is sitting around the table going, you've got your strategy in place and this is that whole conviction thing. Is this too much too soon? Is three years too hard to squeeze all this in? And then you're filming it.

So not only are we concerned about what the output of this docuseries is going to look like, it's applying more pressure to the team. There's a camera in their face. It's capturing all this bad stuff. So if you watch it, it goes from bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, good, good, good to we played Sweden, this is when we really felt good about what we'd done and think about the team within all that, right? We had a job to make sure that the media were educated on what we were doing and Tony was executing that, yes, in his own way, but he's only executing what we said we needed to do to win a World Cup that he agreed would get us there, or sorry to perform well at a World Cup and the Disney docuseries, I guess it couldn't have worked out any better.

We get to Sweden in our last game, we really needed a win actually, because you're getting to the point where players haven't won a match in a while now, and you're wondering if the process and strategy is right. We were at this point and they beat Sweden four now in Melbourne, and we all looked at each other and I'm getting goosebumps now. The players knew. We knew. We go into the start of 2023 and they beat England. They beat England, one of the best teams in the world. We knew The last match actually they played was a sendoff match in Melbourne. They beat France, they beat France. They ended up being really important later on at the quarterfinal. And so they were building muscle and confidence. But as it turned out, where we played France prior to the World Cup, we played every single Top 10 Nation. And that was by design and the diversity of who we played. And we'd just never done that before. So to film it, I mean we chose Disney. It's quite interesting because that was separated from the broadcast agreement with 10 because we really wanted to, the production that we went with was really important. Disney trying to open new markets in the UK and also families. There's some interesting things that played out because if you've seen it, the team actually swear a fair bit in it. Well, not a fair bit. A couple times

Damon Klotz

Disney's now broken out from just being fun little films for children that even back in the day, they probably actually weren't that appropriate if you watch 'em as an adult, that's the story for another day.

Sarah Walsh

But Disney are the storytellers. We were a football organisation, we weren't going to get into any of that, but we had a real moment at the end of the editing piece because you can keep the swearing in because it's authentic to who they are. They're unapologetic. We also want young kids to see this, but it actually changes the rating, which reduces exposure. So it doesn't automatically come up. Parents have to choose it now, and we chose to keep it in. It was a really hard decision. But when you're talking about the brand and culture, we thought it was important. And so there's all these little trade-offs we had to make. But yeah, the process was much different to the end result and we're pretty happy with the end result.

Damon Klotz

We're going to touch on, I guess legacy as well as the future of women's sport, but I think it's fairly clear for anyone listening, but as well as those in the room right now that you are not only a stinger but also a trailblazer and that you have fundamentally changed from the inside what it means to create real change that is going to impact so many people. So I'm sure you probably get this question from people, but what advice do you have if it's someone sitting or listening who's like, I want to create change inside my organisation. How do I go about it? What advice do you have for someone?

Sarah Walsh

Yeah, I just simply think you can't do it by yourself and it's awfully difficult to think you can and keep up the energy. I think it's surround yourself by with like-minded people who are on board with that vision. And I think more generally, it's best advice I was ever given was surround yourself by good people. I do that now. I am actually, because I have high levels of commitment, it means that I'm very selective with where I spend my time. I know I'm going to be all in. And so it's surrounding yourself by good people. And when I mean good people, I don't mean people that are, these people need to be able to challenge you. And all the people that I spend time with are very happily going to challenge me, but they're also the people that lift me up. And whether it's friends, colleagues,

Damon Klotz

And I think you've said before, that sort of feedback and having those people who aren't just like, yes, people around you going, great job. Well done, scored a goals, actually getting that critical feedback along the way. And I think as employees, it's always nice to hear when you're doing well, it's not always easy to hear when you get that sort of, you could have done better or I believe there's something bigger that's possible for you here, but getting that is how we actually end up growing.

Sarah Walsh

Yeah, I think my second piece of advice is it's something that's really, I dunno, it's a really kind of easy way to affect change and challenge traditional thinking is by asking questions. I'm sure it's highly annoying and I think a lot of people would say that of me, and I dunno why it is, but I find it easy. I don't feel vulnerable asking him because maybe it was my upbringing dad, always kind of really highly valued humility and being humble and I don't see anything bad in asking questions. And it really does help challenge the thinking of those that you're trying to influence.

Damon Klotz

So we talked about creating a better world by focusing on our work. And if you talk about creating a better world, there was a stunning image, a couple of stunning images shared recently from the opening attendance of the Women's Super League in England from last season to this current season. But then also the A-League women's season just kicked off this past week and the attendance record was broken twice on the same day. So clearly the Women's World Cup has had a tremendous impact, not just on sport in this country and how we think about inspiring FEMA athletes, but globally we are seeing change. Football has always been called the world's game. What sort of more change do you want to see to create a fairer world?

Sarah Walsh

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm just going to use the metrics that I've forever been told were the key metrics and it's most likely because broadcast revenue makes up a large portion of a sporting organization's revenue. But we broke all the records for TV programmes now that that's semifinal against. England is the highest watched TV programme in the history of tv. Since they

Damon Klotz

Put in those new sort of viewership data, it's like, yeah,

Sarah Walsh

It's crazy. The only thing that may have come close was Cathy's race, which

Damon Klotz

Inspired you

Sarah Walsh

That's right. I met Cathy during the World Cup actually, and I told her that story that you inspired me to move on and full circle, we broke your record, but she's completely fine with it. Do you know what she told me? We're in an event in Perth and she said she's got a daughter and her daughter just doesn't get the fuss about who she's no idea. And I love that when she found out who her mum was, when her idols met her mom, Kathy met the Matildas during, well pre-World Cup actually. And she brought a daughter, like hardcore fan of Sam, and she saw her idols idolising her mother, Natalie,

Damon Klotz

What's going

Sarah Walsh

On? And it was a beautiful moment for her that for the first time the penny dropped for her daughter as to the impact that she'd had on people. And she said that was like, so there's this full circle Matildas Cathy piece, but back to the records, they're important because we never sat down three years ago and said, you know what? We want to double what AFL get at a grand final for average viewership. No, wasn't it? Or that was an outcome. NRL State of Origin. These are organisations that have been around since early 19 hundreds. Matildas were established in 1979. So significant less investment, significant less established as a team. And yes, we can say it's a national team, but I fundamentally think that the work we did the last three years and the way in which we position this team and the way in which the community connected with it is probably how sports should have been designed.

It really should have, when we think about the rates of, we think about social impact, the rates of violence against women and children in many major men's events goes up. There's none of that here. Alcoholic consumption at venues down, all these things we're starting to learn about sport, yet it was highly commercial. We sold the same amount of jerseys in the Matildas jerseys going on sale in two days. Then we did the entire campaign for Qatar, for the men the entire two days. So this thing's commercial, it drives social outcomes, yet we've kind of overlooked it. And somehow it also managed to get in the hearts and minds of non-sporting fans. This is first time our country has been united on anything, and we had 11.2 million people. That was the total reach that watched the semifinal. And the average figure is something we've always used for broadcast, but 11.2, that's not even Optus figures. So I've tried to do the math here. We had had stadiums around the country with screens on

Damon Klotz

All the pubs that were full,

Sarah Walsh

All the pubs that were full. That's not the real count. And so we've gone through Covid, we've had vaccine wars just gone through this horrible campaign around First Nations rights, and it's just the first time our country's come together. And it's really given me hope around the future of women's sport, but actually the role it plays in driving better outcomes in society. So I hope at our next broadcast deal and when we sit down, we actually think about, we don't just think about the eyeballs, we think about what type of eyeballs they are and the impact of those eyeballs. So rather than the traditional metrics we've always used, I'm hoping that our next step is to not just change what we do with this team, but the broader ecosystem to support other women's codes as well.

Damon Klotz

Because this is your life, and I have all these quotes from you in the past that you don't remember saying, I am going to go back to 2012. I think it's a beautiful journey in full circle moment. Yeah. So in 2012, you said in an interview, I think we're just a product of our media and what the media feeds us. Consumerism of male sports is high because that's what the media shows. So that's what both men and women will probably follow. I can understand it in a way because I grew up with rugby league and it was what I was exposed to as a kid. Hopefully that will change though with more media coverage of female athletes.

Sarah Walsh

Great. I said that, did I?

Damon Klotz

Would you say mission accomplished?

Sarah Walsh

Yeah. Yeah. I mean the, not sure we've come out with this metric, but it's over $3 billion worth of media value. That's just unheard of and probably never happen again unless someone else repeats it. But yeah, that's a change we needed.

Damon Klotz

Well, the Matildas captured the hearts and minds of not only the country, but I think also the entire world. And like we're seeing this is actually creating a better world through organisational change, by strong leadership, and by focusing on the culture. This has been an absolute masterclass in a story that many of us know, but we've gone behind the scenes on it. So for everyone live here today and listening at home, can we please give Sarah a huge applause? If you would like to listen to the full episode of this, it will come out on the Culture First podcast in November. And if you want to sort of see, we'll potentially have some more assets from the Matildas that we'll put on the podcast webpage. So you can head to cultureamp.com/podcast or search on Spotify and Apple, give it a subscribe. And really thank you to everyone who was here in the audience today for being part of this very special first ever live taping. Thank you.

A huge thank you to Sarah Walsh for joining me on the Culture First podcast and a special shout out to the over 200 people who joined us live at SXSW Sydney to watch this recording.

What an incredible episode. The timing of this episode was even more special as the 2023 Collective Bargaining Agreement from Football Australia was announced that has gone even further to create the conditions for high performance.

After listening back to this conversation it’s clear to me that Sarah is a trailblazer. Her determination to create change is paying dividends for the organization and the players. Her ability to ask questions, collect feedback and surround herself with good people that want to further a cause bigger than themselves is something I truly admire.

I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to get to know Sarah and go behind the scenes of a sport and a team that means a lot to me personally.

I wanted to connect this episode to another one that we released a recently with Jamila Rizvi. In that episode we spoke about how do we make work and the workplace a better, safer and more equitable place for women. In this episode you heard quotes from Sam Kerr, the captain of the Matilda’s and Sarah talk about what are the conditions you need from your environment in order to perform at the highest level.

My learning from these two episodes is that there is still so much work to do in this space but hearing Jamila encourage men to be speaking up on issues of equality rather than leaving it all to women and Sarah reminding us about being brave enough to always question the status quo, along with all the other brilliant advice and insight they offer gives me hope that we can all play a part in making work work for women.

I’ve been your host Damon Klotz and the Culture First Podcast is brought to you by the team here at Culture Amp, the world’s leading employee experience platform. You can learn more about Culture Amp by heading to www.cultureamp.com

We believe in creating a better world of work. If that’s important to you too, please subscribe and leave us a review to make sure you don’t miss an episode as we build a community together where we share stories to inspire us all to create a better world of work.