A Chat with the SportImpact team – Nuno Delicado

“A Chat with the SportImpact team” features a series of interviews with the team at SportImpact. These interviews cover their opinions on the progress of the company, personal motivations and expectations going forward. We hear from Nuno Delicado from Portugal, who has been in Timor-Leste over several periods since 2003, and is back since mid-2013 for the launch of the SportImpact project here.

Nuno Delicado

Brief introduction 

Nuno focuses on management consulting, social entrepreneurship and business model innovation. He also leads the Social & Public Sector practice at Pluris, a negotiation and conflict resolution consulting firm, and lectures at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, in Singapore, and at INSEAD, in particular at the INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Programme.

Nuno earned an Executive Master in Sport Organizations Management (MEMOS) from Université Claude Bernard, and an MBA with distinction from INSEAD. He also trained in Mediation and Dispute Resolution with the New York University.

Nuno was four times Portuguese champion in modern pentathlon, and has completed marathons, pentathlons and triathlons in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

For more information: http://www.sportimpact.org/nuno.html

How has SportImpact grown over the past 7 months? 

SportImpact came from an idea – with many thoughts, frameworks, strategies on how to impact the world with sports – into something real that interacts with real people who can benefit from our work.

The last 7 months were very important testing whether this work can be done, as opposed to just an idea in a couple of peoples’ minds that may not necessarily impact the world.  Implementing the project in Timor-Leste with certain activities, structure of training sessions and meetings with federations to help them work on things, engaging all the sport stakeholders, some more than others, is very good compared to just the analyses and theories of the past two years. In fact, the idea started two years ago, and these past 7 months were important in making it happen.

What was different from what you had expected it to be?

I don’t remember if I thought too much about what it would be like. I think it is similar in terms of human structure – a small team working with many different stakeholders at the same time, in a country we thought would be a natural candidate for a pilot because of previous relationships and work done in the country. This means an easier approach to working with local stakeholders, easier relations and a reputation we could build on.

The surprises were the resistance by some stakeholders to working with us, and the challenge of managing human resources in a sustainable way.

How did this project come into existence?

In personal terms it came into existence over my lifetime, and as a group in the last two years or so.
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Sport has been important in my life since I can remember. I played football during all breaks in school until I was 14-15 years old. When I was 11, I learnt that I was a fast runner and became a fan of running, running longer and longer.  Personally, sport is a big part of my life. Later on, I was a member of the national team in modern pentathlon, which meant I trained 30 hours a week during my undergraduate days. I felt that I was more of a professional athlete and undergraduate was something I did at the side, although with good grades.

I got so much from sports, I ended up doing a masters in sports management that became the seed for SportImpact. It’s called MEMOS, where Jaume also graduated from (we were colleagues in the same year). Loïc Pedras, a Portuguese, also graduated from the same programme but in a different year. Loïc and I started speaking about this idea 2 years ago during the London Olympic Games. Loïc was a staff in the Olympic Committee of Portugal and I thought Loïc would be someone to speak to about this idea of developing sport in the world.

This idea came from work I did in Timor-Leste in 2003 over 3 months to help start the National Olympic Committee and several sport federations. With Loïc, the idea was: why don’t we do this longer term? Around a year ago, we started engaging Jaume in the discussions. He showed up and decided to jump into the idea.

What motivates you to continue working in a place like Timor-Leste?

There are many challenges here and the pace is different from the pace I would expect in many other places in the world I have lived and worked in. That motivates me even more – the challenge to overcome certain barriers and find solutions. This incentive maybe comes from my experience in sport. The bigger the race, the bigger the challenge, and the adventure comes with belief and excitement.

That’s part of the motivation that comes together with the belief in impact. If it were only challenges without achieving something positive and just wasting energy, I would stop. I believe we can achieve something positive here, and that our work is planting seeds, generating small change that will lead to a change that gets bigger and bigger. At some point, maybe after a generation, there can be a huge effect. Seeing that change overtime, and facing the challenge of finding the most effective and efficient ways of achieving the impact motivates me.

What about this project has inspired you?

When I think about my motivations, I see some moments of validation that it makes sense, for instance when I see a couple of very motivated participants in our workshops that tell me “last Saturday I was unable to attend the workshop, sorry!” when there was no workshop. I thought, since they like it so much, maybe I should be there every Saturday to prepare a workshop or an activity.

Even though these participants are not the top leaders in sport right now, I think they are future leaders. Hence, seeing them engaged, motivated and wanting to work with us is a bit of validation. This inspires me to do the best I can, to come back to engage them in the best possible way because they deserve that.

Another moment is seeing kids in sporting events giving their best in that match or competition. There is so much human energy put into being the best of myself or trying to be the best of myself, not necessarily being a winner. That’s inspiring and a validation that it makes sense to do this work. They are going to be better kids, youths, adults, and therefore better citizens who will contribute to the development of Timor-Leste.

Final comments?

Anyone who feels passionate about sport for human development can do their bit in their context. It can be with SportImpact in Timor-Leste right now or maybe with SportImpact elsewhere in the future. It can be in your neighbourhood organizing something for yourselves or for others, or in schools organizing activities for kids, but I encourage everyone to see sport as a tool for human development not only in developing countries, but anywhere.