Round #05 - Build what you can. Buy what you can't.
Ollie Dempsey
The true Geelong artistry is how they've consistently unearthed and developed unfashionable players carrying high 'intangibles' – distinctive qualities valued in our game but often undeveloped and certainly untapped. These include 2024 NAB Rising Star winner Ollie Dempsey (my drawing above) – players overlooked or undervalued who flourished in the Geelong environment.
It is the constraints that make the art possible.
The constraints leave us with a choice.
We can choose to blame them.
Do nothing.
Human nature seeks out blame, knowing it will find friends easily. But blame offers no solution and, therefore, no future.
As leaders, we must rise above this disposition.
As Ryan Holiday, the modern Stoic philosopher, reminds us, "The obstacle is the way."
My interpretation, from our constraints come our opportunities. Creativity is using existing constraints to find new solutions, brood for a while, becoming okay with them, embracing them, and rollicking with them.
It was decades ago that the AFL introduced measures such as the draft and salary cap to equalise the competition. Constraints to stop the big from dominating the small. There will be no more dynasties, it was predicted, yet there have been.
The artists have prevailed.
The Geelong Football Club has created football artistry within the very structures designed to limit by seeing constraints as creative forces.
The art emerges not despite limitations but because of them.
All good strategy must, at its very least:
Come from a compelling story, and
Make the best use of scarce resources (i.e. the constraints)
The Cats have created what leadership coach Owen Eastwood, in his excellent book 'Belonging', describes as a powerful 'Us Story'. In my view, a profound ‘Us Story’ seamlessly connects a story 'so far' with a story 'not yet', both equally compelling.
No club has done this better than Geelong, a club with a history dating back to 1859. They haven't just developed and executed an idea; they've delivered on a promise - the promise of the Geelong Football Club itself. This promise transcends any single season or era, creating an unbroken thread of identity and purpose. Their sustained excellence isn't merely tactical, the fodder that makes up the daily conversations around the game; it's about honouring the deeper covenant between club, players, and community through constant evolution and experimental courage.
This is a pure definition of leadership and its many layers, with the current generation carrying forward what President Frank Costa and CEO Brian Cook started at the turn of the century.
Both leaders understood that culture isn't some form of endowment you receive; it is something you have to work for, to learn, and like any skill that is hard to master, it is a process of constant iteration. Geelong has been iterating for a quarter of a century.
It recognises that team is an outcome to be achieved, not an assumption or a gift; it is something to be earned.
It plays out day by day, and in a football club, it will eventually show on the scoreboard.
In this regard, I would describe the Geelong philosophy that underpins all of this in simple terms:
"Build what you can. Buy what you can't."
Leadership will often ask that we hold two seemingly contradictory ideas simultaneously and be okay with that, and the ‘build/buy’ will often feel this way.
This Geelong promise is realised through what I have assessed as three critical characteristics that define both the players they develop and those they acquire - the connective tissue that brings the "Build what you can. Buy what you can't" philosophy to life:
Coachability
Competitiveness
Connectedness
Chris Scott, the Geelong Senior Coach and the steward of this philosophy, embodies these characteristics.
I was CEO of the Fremantle Football Club when we appointed him as an Assistant Coach straight from an outstanding playing career, having been a two-time Premiership player and leader at the Brisbane Football Club.
It took just thirty minutes into our first conversation to realise: "We can't let this guy out of the room". Without trying, and with humility, as he was in no way committed to a coaching career, the characteristics of coachability, competitiveness and connection were blindingly apparent, as were the benefits he and they would bring our club.
It seems he has brought this mindset to the Cats when they took a chance on the then 34-year-old just three years later. The results speak volumes - a Premiership in his first year, another eleven years later, finals appearances in twelve of fourteen seasons, and the winningest long-term coach in the game's history.
The "Build what you can. Buy what you can't" philosophy acknowledges that no organisation can develop everything internally. Geelong strategically acquires established stars like Patrick Dangerfield and Jeremy Cameron.
In this regard, Geelong has transformed perceived disadvantages into strategic advantages, offering both a lifestyle proposition, a kind of off-Broadway and/or tree/sea change with the prospect of Premiership silverware.
But what has been truly remarkable, the true Geelong artistry, is how they've consistently unearthed and developed unfashionable players carrying high 'intangibles' – distinctive qualities valued in our game but often undeveloped and certainly untapped. Tom Stewart, Mark Blicavs, Gryan Myers, Brad Close, Tom Atkins, and more recently Lawson Humphries and 2024 NAB Rising Star winner Ollie Dempsey (pictured) – players overlooked or undervalued who flourished in the Geelong environment.
These principles extend beyond sport. Consider your own organisation – your best performers likely rate highly across the three characteristics of coachability, competitiveness and connection. Conversely, when you've compromised, accepting technical expertise without these attributes, your team and culture-building efforts will invariably disappoint, as they did when I compromised any of the three too often than I readily admit.
Therefore, it is worth a deeper dive into the three characteristics:
They must be deeply coachable. This extends far beyond responding to feedback from coaches, for which they receive plenty. The world is always giving us feedback, and true growth comes from those who drive their own learning with a genuine growth mindset.
Taking responsibility for their career within the team context, often accepting roles different from preference, because that is what the team asks of them.
These special players absorb, recognise and apply the feedback the world is giving them – constantly evolving, never satisfied.
They need genuine competitiveness. Not just in the obvious diving-for-loose-balls way, but in modelling expectations and setting standards.
They understand that sport, like life, promises many things, but at no time does it promise to be fair. This is more than resilience – it's the capacity to manage inevitable disappointments, from moment to moment, week to week, year to year, to take lessons into whatever challenge comes next. They understand that loss and heartbreak are temporary states and essential for growth.
True competitiveness manifests in managing inevitable disappointments, taking lessons forward with renewed determination.
They are natural connectors. Teams exist in a rich hormone soup of personalities and behaviours. Yes, we need good mechanics – systems, structures, processes – but the dynamics of the collective make the real difference.
The great connectors embrace both mechanics and dynamics.
Having played most of his career under Leigh Matthews at Brisbane during their premiership era, it would seem that Chris Scott has absorbed and built on Matthews' fundamental principle that players must "know, accept and play their role."
Team isn't assumed – it's an outcome achieved only through this absolute expectation and the connection this asks of them.
Neil Balme, football’s very own Yoda and a key leader at Geelong during their run of three premierships, including Scott's first, sums up all of this wonderfully in his book 'A Tale of Two Men'.
"In our game, if you don't have belief in yourself, if you don't have a big ego and really high standards, and if you're not prepared to drive yourself to be the best you can be – you're no good to us. But if all you are is about you, you're no fucking good to us.”
"Everyone needs a good enough feeling about the overall to be prepared to give everything of themselves, knowing they're probably not going to make quite as much for themselves because you're giving something to someone else."
For the Cats, the obstacle has become the way.
Their art.
Their way.
Play on!
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