Thanks Anthony
Anthony Angol
I mentioned in a LinkedIn post during lockdown 2020 that Slenky had been working with the Football Association (FA), on a meaningful (and long-lasting) response to the murder of George Floyd, and the wider issues raised by this very important moment in time.
In reaching out, the FA and Wembley Stadium demonstrated a corporate humility and authenticity, ‘what can we do to have real impact on football and the community we’re a part of?’ We may have helped a little, but more on that in a few later posts.
For the minute, I’d like to shine a light on someone key to helping the FA to shape and invest in their response; by creating a greater level of understanding and real ownership amongst the leadership team. It’s something every sport could and definitely should do, but… some seem to be really stumped ;)
Anthony
As CSR and Community Engagement Manager, Anthony Angol understood the sensitivity of the issues that the FA wanted to discuss externally and the business need, particularly given the issues around football, race and diversity. He understood the external discussions, the nuances, the protests and, vitally, the knee jerk responses being hurriedly made by a lot of businesses.
In the early days of the BLM protests I took so many calls from businesses with no understanding of the underlying issues, and sometimes even their own aims when saying ‘we want to do something’. Anthony got it, and helped his bosses to get it too. No knee-jerking. Over the next few posts, I’ll try to briefly intro what this all means and how it impacts the area I grew up in, Wembley, NW London.
What I want to highlight here is the value to a business of having people within it who really understand the issues, live the experiences and have genuine empathy with both a wider community, and their business’ needs. Tough job description that one, but you can immediately see the impact of having a diverse workforce (without having to attend another conference).
Slenky introduced Anthony to 6 entrepreneurs, and the organisations they’d created to impact specific issues also connected to FA/Wembley objectives.
Each organisation was already on the ground, already investing in young people and already making a real difference. Our role was to help the FA to create its own unique relationship with each organisation; bringing Wembley into the community and the community into Wembley.
The FA brought senior stakeholders, Mark Burrows (COO) championing change, and leaders across the organisation to make sure action didn’t get lost in the admin.
So far, so good.
I hadn’t posted anything else about this piece of work since we created the relationships, whilst we worked on nurturing them. I also wanted to watch from the sidelines for a bit. Could it be knee-jerk or was the FA really in this drive for change?
Then one of the partners recently updated me that so far over 100 young people have been to events they’ve staged in partnership with the Stadium. Cool - there are 6 partners, so potentially....
One of Anthony’s oft-repeated aims was to make the metaphorical ‘castle on the hill’ something any young person could gain access to, be inspired by.
By creating, nurturing and investing in these new relationships the FA is making this possible. The partners are, in turn, their leveraging well-earned credibility, and 1000’s of online relationships to help share FA values and to create meaningful experiences – life-changing opportunities at the home of football.
Your First Time? [Anthony introducing local game-changers to the stadium, many of whom had never been inside the stadium themselves - despite growing up and living locally.]
Anthony’s now moved to his next mission, but on behalf of the partner organisations, and the young people whose futures may have been impacted, “Thanks Anthony - Well done mate!”
I’ll introduce the 6 new Wembley Stadium partners in coming posts.
#achangeisgonnacome
