Master's Thesis

Master’s Thesis Master's Degree Programme in Business Administration, Leadership and Service Design YDESAS16 2019 Susanna Lehtojärvi TOWARDS HAPPY ADMINISTRATION AND LEADERSHIP IN A SPORTS CLUB A design thinking approach to study the member experience with the Olympic Committee’s Suomisport ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Instructor Päivi Katajamäki, Senior Lecturer, Turku University of Applied Sciences, has provided intensive support on this thesis process. Also, all my opponents in the seminars have provided valuable perspectives to improve my thesis further. Ulla Seppälä-Kaven, Senior Lecturer, Turku University of Applied Sciences has guided our student groups’ way during these years. It has been fascinating and life changing experience to study with a such diverse group of professionals from different countries, various fields of businesses and especially with a group of persons who have an amazing ability to develop services but also our mutual co-operation and even the study program itself. It has been a privilege to work at the Suomisport pilot together with Hanna Hiilamo, Account Manager and Rainer Anttila, Manager, from the Finnish Olympic Committee as well as the professionals Jarno Ojala, UX designer, PhD, and Ari Kontiainen, Project Manager, from Vincit. Humble thanks belong to the badminton community, especially to those committed board members, who have sacrificed their precious and valuable time to enable insights and profound understanding for this thesis. Discussions with Ilkka Hellgren, Event Manager, the Finnish Badminton Association, has offered reliable source of understanding the existing challenges and the future direction also in a wider context than this thesis. Warm thanks to Laura Elo, Work Life Developer, Cambiare, who has provided me valuable learnings and perspective to understand differences of the people throughout my journey in the MBA studies. I want to thank my dearly beloved family of the bottom of my heart for their support during my studies. I hope that my example strengthens the positive attitude of my children towards the lifelong learning and embracing constant changes. MASTER’S THESIS | ABSTRACT TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES Master's Degree Programme in Business Administration, Leadership and Service Design 2019 | Total number of pages 105 + Appendices 11 Susanna Lehtojärvi TOWARDS HAPPY ADMINISTRATION AND LEADERSHIP IN A SPORTS CLUB A design thinking approach to study the member experience with the Olympic Committee’s Suomisport There are nearly 500,000 volunteers in 10,000 sports clubs in Finland. The need to even the administrative workload in them is evident. Suomisport as of today has 85 sports federations and 130 sports. The aim is to develop Suomisport to support everyday sports life of one million Finns. The aim of this thesis was to study how the Finnish Olympic Committee’s Suomisport sports club service would improve the everyday sport life experience in a sports club. Furthermore, the aim was to describe which digital services a badminton clubs need to operate in today’s world with increasing demands. The leadership experience and communication challenges were also studied. A literature review established the basis for the theoretical part of this thesis. The theoretical framework was developed around design thinking elements: co-design, empathy and member experience. Moreover, the theories covered communication, leadership and change management. Secondary data was acquired through various surveys and reports. Action research and a design thinking approach of this thesis might provide insights for the Finnish Olympic Committee to develop Suomisport even more attractive to the sports clubs in Finland. Various qualitative research methods, interviews and surveys, were used. The following (service) design thinking methods were used to gather information and to gain insights: a stakeholder map, a business model canvas, a service safari, an online ethnography, cultural probes, a persona, a customer journey map and a service blueprint. SWOT analysis and benchmarking, widely known in business research were also included. The Suomisport sports club service pilot enabled the co-designing together with 15 sports clubs. As a result, the badminton club’s processes were described demonstrating opportunities to improve everyday sports life with Suomisport. The results could be used as a benchmarking example to the sports clubs throughout Finland in a comparable situation. The conclusion of this thesis was that emphasis is required to increase the sense of belonging through enabling communal dialogue in the sports club community. There is an exciting potential in the Suomisport sports club service to be developed into a leading solution to support the everyday sports life among the sportspeople. Its MyData approach provides Suomisport a unique advantage as compared to other similar services. KEYWORDS: design thinking, service design, customer experience, administration, leadership, sports club, Suomisport CONTENT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND DEFINITIONS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Structure of the thesis 2 1.2 About the author 3 2 RESEARCH DESIGN 4 2.1 Aim 4 2.2 Frame of reference 4 2.3 Research process 5 2.4 Action research 7 2.5 Literature review 9 3 (SERVICE) DESIGN THINKING 10 3.1 Co-design 12 3.2 Empathy 13 3.3 Member experience 14 4 COMMUNICATION, LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE 21 4.1 Essential communication 21 4.2 Successful change management 24 4.3 Leadership in a non-profit sports club 27 5 THE WORLD OF SPORTS CLUBS 33 5.1 Operational model of the sports club 34 5.2 Stakeholder map 36 6 OLYMPIC COMMITTEE’S SUOMISPORT 40 6.1 The Suomisport roadmap 42 6.2 The Suomisport sports club service 44 7 BADMINTON CLUB EN ROUTE TO CHANGE 46 7.1 Snapshot of the badminton club 47 7.2 Satisfaction in the badminton club 48 7.3 Digital services at the badminton club 50 7.4 Digital service alternatives for the sports club 52 7.5 The Suomisport sports club service pilot 59 7.6 A need for a dialogue among the members 61 7.7 Badminton club chairmen meeting 62 7.8 The perspective of badminton club board members 66 7.9 The Finnish Badminton Association’s need for communication 71 8 INSIGHTS 72 8.1 Personas in a sports club 73 8.2 A member journey map 78 9 IDEATION AND PROTOTYPING 81 9.1 The annual operational clock 81 9.2 Service blueprint 83 9.3 Concept with Suomisport 85 10 CONCLUSIONS 88 10.1 Digital services the badminton club needs 89 10.2 Experience of leadership in the badminton club 90 10.3 Emphasis on the communication 91 10.4 Getting started with the Suomisport sports club service 93 11 ANALYSIS 94 11.1 Assessment of the methods 94 11.2 Assessment of the action research 96 11.3 Learnings 97 11.4 Suggestions for further studies 98 SOURCES 99 APPENDICES Appendix 1. Examples of single and multisport clubs Appendix 2. The Raisio Badminton Association: Satisfaction survey questions (2018) Appendix 3. Word clouds (in Finnish) Appendix 4. Pre-task questions of the Suomisport sports club service pilot kick-off Appendix 5. Cultural probes at the Basecamp (in Finnish) Appendix 6. Online game survey questions Appendix 7. Interview questions Appendix 8. Semi-structured interview questions Appendix 9 Customer Journey Map: “Junior player's membership” Appendix 10. Annual operational clock Appendix 11. Service blueprint: “One year at the board” FIGURES Figure 1. Participation % in various sports clubs’ activities based on gender and age during the past 12 months (Official Statistics of Finland 2017, 8). 2 Figure 2. Frame of reference for the member experience in a sports club. 5 Figure 3. Design thinking “Double Diamond” process model (adapted from The Design Council 2015). 6 Figure 4. Truths versus insights (adapted from Polaine et al. 2013, 39). 10 Figure 5. The Design Squiggle (Newman 2002). 11 Figure 6. Dimensions of empathy (adapted from Zaki and Oschsner 2012 in Huotilainen and Saarikivi 2018, 235−236). 14 Figure 7. The levels of the customer experience in the value creation pyramid (adapted from Palmu Inc. in Tuulaniemi 2016, 75). 15 Figure 8. Emotional engagement connects the worlds of logic and emotions (adapted from Gobé 2009, 111). 16 Figure 9. The elements of value pyramid (Almquist et al. 2016). 18 Figure 10. Say-do-make model for experience design (Sanders and Dandavate 1999 in Koskinen 2003, 60). 19 Figure 11. The organisational culture pyramid (adapted from Keyton 2011, 176−179). 22 Figure 12. Change needs five critical elements to succeed (adapted from Valpola 2004 in Elo’s presentation 8.3.2019). 26 Figure 13. Cross-Cultural Leadership Intelligence (XLQ) Model (Grisham 2006, 254). 29 Figure 14. 80+1 jobs of the sportspeople at sports clubs (adapted from Saapunki and Hiilamo 2018). 33 Figure 15. Terminology and relationships (adapted from Anttila and Kontiainen 2019). 34 Figure 16. Operational model of a sports club (adapted from Olympiakomitea 2019a). 35 Figure 17. Stakeholder map from the Raisio Badminton Associations’ perspective. 37 Figure 18. Sports club activities and Suomisport in the framework of the Finnish Olympic Committee (adapted from Suomen Olympiakomitea 2018, 8). 40 Figure 19. Digitalisation enables efficient communication in sports clubs (Suomen Olympiakomitea 2017). 42 Figure 20. Suomisport roadmap 2017−2020 (adapted from the Finnish Olympic Committee 2019, 5). 43 Figure 21. MyData (adapted from Poikola et al. 2018, 18). 43 Figure 22. Suomisport sports club service is a tool to support everyday sports life (adapted from Anttila and Kontiainen 2019). 44 Figure 23. The business model canvas for the Raisio Badminton Association (template from Strategyzer 2018, 46). 48 Figure 24. Example of the Net Promoter Score question. 50 Figure 25. NPS of the Raisio Badminton Association in autumn 2018. 50 Figure 26. Badminton clubs using MyClub (MyClub 2019). 55 Figure 27. An online ethnography indicated the need for two-way communication (RaSu’s Nimenhuuto 15.4.2019). 62 Figure 28. Question regarding the status of the member register divided the clubs.

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