Elite Performance Partners are a global business, focussed on taking the best principles of elite sport performance into the boardroom.
Founded by the former Harlequins and Connacht Rugby Union full-back Dave Slemen in 2013, EPP provides recruitment, leadership and advice for professional sports, including football, rugby, cricket and tennis, as well as the GB and Australian Olympic and Paralympic teams.
Managing Partner Anna Edwards brings a wealth of experience from a 12 year career with some of London’s top advertising agencies, working with brands including Amazon, IKEA, Bacardi and Lego. Anna is also a leading head-hunter of talent across the media, sport and entertainment sectors.
Dave on the early days of EPP:
“After I stopped playing, I was really keen to get away from sport for a while and learn from business. I got my energy from interacting with people and thought recruitment could be an interesting industry to gain more skills. Working in the Chemicals industry, I just remember one day, being sat in Cologne Airport, doing three different searches for the three different roles, and yet running fundamentally the same process, and I thought, “why doesn’t sport do that?” That was the lightbulb moment that started the business. Applying the rigour and processes that I had seen in the business world, back into the sport and industry that I loved.”
Anna on longevity in decision-making in sport:
“Is it that long term decisions are hard to make, because teams are only successful for a certain amount of time, or is it that teams are only successful for a certain amount of time, because people do not make long-term decisions in sport?
I was shocked when I came into sport with how short-term a lot of the thinking is. I totally understand the level of pressure that people are under in sport, but I don’t believe that the top team at Amazon are under any less pressure. It’s different, because it’s not media pressure and fan pressure in quite the same way. But there is still pressure.
I think we can sometimes over-index on the kind of short term pressure that exists in sport and therefore flip to making emotional decisions rather than long-term decisions. It’s a brave person who thinks long-term in sport.”
Dave on boundaries to growth for clubs by governing bodies:
“The strength of the NFL for example, is the NFL. All the decisions get made at the top and all the teams kind of filter down from that. The power is in the league and everything comes from it. In rugby, everyone has a majority shareholding of the Premiership, so you are never going to get agreement and you can’t keep everyone happy all the time. Three rugby teams have gone bust in the last couple of years. If the Premiership had ownership of decisions that were best for the game, maybe that would be better because that’s what works in American Sport. The culture is different and the landscape is different. Look at rugby’s World Cup, it’s huge. But the club game isn’t anywhere near as big as it should be commercially”.
Anna on future growth of EPP;
“The size of the market is huge, the opportunity is huge. Our business does three things; We advise, recruit and coach senior leaders and their teams in sport, so there’s a lot still for sport to learn about itself and from each other, and from the corporate world, so there’s a big piece of work there as things get more complex and as diversity becomes a bigger issue. There’s lots of things that sport needs to address.
Recruitment is competitive but some of our competitors are going through their own life-cycles at the moment, so that’s an exciting space for us.
Then, leadership development and coaching is always interesting because, one of the things that surprised me when I came into sport, was seeing what excellent people exist, yet often they are left in a role and don’t get the training, development, nurturing and coaching that you might expect is just par for the course on the corporate side.”
