Darren Shand on what he learned from 20 years as All Blacks manager

Darren Shand in his days as manager of the All Blacks in 2020.
Does the culture of high performance in the All Blacks translate to the world of business? Former All Blacks manager Darren Shand believes it does.
After 20 years of Rugby World Cup-winning highs – and some soul-searching lows – Shand has stepped away from rugby.
He’s working with high-performance consultancy Vantaset to share what he’s learned with businesses and organisations looking to create a culture of success.
“What I learned the most was that first, you’ve got to have yourself sorted,” he tells Money Talks.
“What I see a lot in business is very vertically oriented organisations where position and power mean everything.
“What I’ve found in sport is that we tended to operate more at a horizontal level where we collaborated a lot more to move up the vertical axis.
“And in the end, the position became irrelevant because it was more about the role. If you take the sports analogy, when you go on to a field in a rugby game, everyone gets a jersey and has a number on it.
“That just defines a role. Often I feel people are so in a hurry to get further up the ladder that they forget about improving themselves.
“And I think what we did in sport, was if we can get you the best we can be, the team will win, and you will win, like it’ll be a dual outcome.”
Perhaps surprisingly, for Shand, the All Blacks’ ultimate win-loss record was not the primary metric of success.
“Well, that’s what the outside world sees,” he says. “But that’s not what we’re driven by.
“Yes, to the public, we’re an outcome-based organisation, and that’s what high-performance sport is often measured by. But, internally, we were driven by a whole lot of other things that allowed us to achieve those outcomes.”
When it comes to his own career, Shand says money has never been a primary driver.
“Like, I never actually wanted the All Blacks job. It wasn’t something that I had put on my life path. Circumstances allowed it to happen and I never was one to debate what I got paid. I just always felt, you know, pay me what we’re worth. I think I’ve only once in my whole career gone back to a CEO and gone ‘hey, I think we need to have a look at this’.”
Shand grew up in Hawke’s Bay and “we lived amongst all the orchards”.
“So pretty early on I was next door in the orchard getting paid, I don’t know, 10 cents? That was my first job putting [fruit] in those boxes and thinking if I get a hundred done today, I’ve earned 10 bucks.”
As far as spending the money goes, Shand says his major indulgences were always sporting equipment.
“I always wanted the best stuff because I felt if I looked good, I felt good, that I’d play good. It was always like, oh, I need the latest cricket pads or, you know, I need these boots for, for rugby or for hockey.”
In fact, Shand only played rugby until he was 13. He had more natural talent for hockey.
Since then he’s been more focused on solo sports. These days he’s more likely to be splashing out on bikes or skiing gear… or surfboards.
“I’ve always been about the toys,” he says. “I’m still very passionate about biking. I do a lot of mountain biking and road cycling and still run. I can still get the old carcass around the block.”
“Skiing’s still probably my biggest passion and done a little bit of surfing in the last few years, which I’ve quite enjoyed.”
Shand talks through the unlikely career path that led him to the All Blacks.
After training in sports and physical education at Otago University, he headed to Queenstown where he worked as a white water rafting guide before joining A.J. Hackett in the early days of the bungy jumping boom.
“He was the first person who really believed that I could do more, that I could lead and manage people. And so he gave me the chance. The other thing I really learned from him was the notion of risk in business.”
Hackett was extremely entrepreneurial, Shand says.
“He took a massive risk, he had a really big vision. The funny thing was that bungy was a personal challenge for people and you’d stand there in that moment and think life’s over, but it was incredibly safe.”
“So while people saw it as a risk, the actual risk of the process was super low, you know, like far less risky than going rafting, for example.”
Shand says Hackett allowed him to “lead and manage”.
“He was trying to go global and go quickly. So it was very, very interesting. The final lesson I got from him, which I love, was whenever he came back [to New Zealand] because the company went international very fast, the first thing he’d do is organise a party.”
“He just wanted people to loosen up and tell him everything that was happening. Then the next day we’d, we’d have a debrief and get down to business.”
From there, Shand went to Canterbury Rugby in the very early days of fully professional Super Rugby. He never looked back.
As manager of the All Blacks, it was Shand’s job to make sure the coach and team were free to think about nothing but the rugby.
There were two “big buckets” to the manager role, he says.
“It was set up as a leadership role. So one [bucket] was to provide a bridge between the organisation and the team.”
“I sat on the executive of the organisation because a lot of decisions that were made commercially, financially, and legally, impacted the team and performance. So I needed to be part of that conversation and provide an All Blacks perspective to everything within New Zealand Rugby.
“And then on the team side, it was just the operations, which is 70 people travelling around the world.
“We don’t have a base. So, allowing the coach to turn up to any training field, anywhere in the world, and knowing that it’s pristine. Every piece of equipment they need is there. It’s secure. There was a big team of people contributing to that and it sort of grew and grew.”
When it comes to money and professional sports, young stars in many codes have historically run into issues with financial planning and preparing for their post-sporting careers.
Shand is proud of what’s been achieved within New Zealand Rugby with the Players’ Association and says it has become one of the strengths of the organisation.
“In my very early days at Canterbury, there was a pilot done for what they call a player development manager, so someone that comes in with full responsibility for looking for a player’s life outside of rugby, so family, education, employment.”
“It was a voluntary programme, but it’s still to this day in place. So that’s one aspect, where there’s a real good opportunity for people to jump into that and set themselves up.
The other aspect was that as the sport got more and more professional, agents became part of the scene.
“A lot of them do really good work in that space in terms of helping get players set up,” Shand says.
“One thing we did learn was if we could give them more real-life experiences outside of sport, while they were a sportsperson, that was really valuable because they often miss that real-life experience.”
“You just come into this world where everything’s there for you. So a lot of them would go and jump into a company and do a day’s work just to see what it’s like, and have an experience.”
“And I see more of that now, which I think is a really good thing because often you get to 30, you’re done, and you’re like, you’ve got nothing.”
Shand reflects that it has almost been a bit like that for him.
“I mean, I finished 20 years and it’s the same, in a lot of ways. I’ve got a whole lot of skills, but how do I best utilise them?”
“What I have learned is that success is built on motivation, “ he says. “Too often in sports, results become so paramount that people just get chopped. In the end, I go back to this whole notion of teams.”
“Because there was a consistency of people over a long period, that allowed systems and structures and cultures to be built that are sustainable.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more from Darren Shand.
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics – it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
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