Governance Shortcomings at the Heart of USA Swimming Struggles ...Middle East

By SwimSwam Contributors on SwimSwam

This post is courtesy of Michael P. Gibbons, originally published on his SubStack channel.

Follow Gibbons Lectures on Governance on SubStack here.

Recently there has been a lot of public chatter about what is wrong with USA Swimming. Some of the biggest names in the sport have made public comments mostly directed at the failings of the USA Swimming Board of Directors. Included in the list are such swimming luminaries as Michael Phelps, Rowdy Gaines, Ryan Lochte and Dara Torres.

I don’t specifically disagree with any of the comments from the aforementioned Olympians, but I will suggest that, without using the word, they have correctly identified what really underpins the whole problem – Governance. Many of the problems identified by the legends of the sport are directly due to failures in Governance!

Governance is not exciting or sexy. In fact, many people find governance to be uninteresting or even boring. But governance for an organization is kind of like nutrition for an athlete. Strict adherence to good principles will lead to improved performance and excellent results. Ignoring solid principles will eventually lead to a degradation in performance and unwanted outcomes. It is my opinion that this is the heart of the current problems within USA Swimming right now. While a new CEO has just been named and a new Board Chair is about to take over as well, unless there is a new commitment to good governance along with the new leadership, I wouldn’t expect much to improve within the organization.

From 2015 to 2018, I was a member of the USA Swimming National Governance Committee. This committee was in place to advise the Board of Directors on governance-related matters. I was invited to take on this volunteer position because in my professional life as a lawyer, I have advised numerous clients on exactly these sorts of matters. In addition to my committee position, I also served on a number of short-term task forces that were established to handle a couple of specific governance issues. Here, I intend to highlight a number of disparate dots that, when connected, draw a clear picture.

In 2016, USA Swimming set out a bold plan to conduct a four-part evaluation of the way it handles its governance. Each was intended to study the current structure of a key component of the organization and make recommendations for updates and improvements. The planned breakdown and sequence were as follows:

Each of these subdivisions of the entire organization plays an important role in the overall and I will attempt to explain each one when I get to its relevant section. There is significant interaction among the parts and there are reasonable arguments to be made regarding the order the parts should be evaluated. But this was the order that had been set and was underway at the time I got involved.

Part 1 – Zones

USA Swimming divides the country into 4 Zones – Eastern, Southern, Central and Western. Over the past decade or so, many of the Zone functions have been shifted either up to the National Office or down the Local Swim Committees. At the time the study started each Zone had the opportunity to elect two members to the national Board of Directors. The Zone study was intended to rationalize what functions (if any) made sense for the Zone to handle and what functions should be shifted elsewhere. The Zone study created a list of proposals, suggestions really. Some of the proposals would have required either Board of Directors action or House of Delegates approval. As the proposals approached the approval process for implementation, a decision was made to shelve the proposals until after the other 3 stages had moved through their process, and ultimately, no action was voted on.

Part 2 – Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is the highest decision-making authority for the organization throughout the year. At the time this study was started, the Board had 35 members. Some of them were directly elected by the House of Delegates. As already mentioned, 8 of them were elected by the Zones. There were a number of them elected by the Athletes’ Committee. A number of the USA Swimming Board of Directors were on the Board due positions they held with other organizations.

The Board Study and subsequent proposals led to a reduction in the size of the Board down to 15 members. It also phased out the constituent representatives. Other significant governance improvements that were adopted include the creation of a Nominating Committee to oversee the process of Board nominations, and real meaningful term limits for Board members, for the first time. Additionally, the requirement of a minimum of 2 independent directors was introduced. This is a fairly standard requirement in Boards of all kinds, but it was highly contentious here. (The task force actually recommended 3 independent Board members, but this number was reduced to 2 in an effort to secure passage of the entire reform package.)

This Board restructuring received a fair amount of attention at the time it occurred, as it should have. It was ultimately approved by the House of Delegates at the USA Swimming annual Convention in 2017. The first elections to the revised Board occurred at the 2018 Annual Convention.

Part 3 – Local Swim Committees (LSCs)

In addition to dividing the country into the 4 Zones mentioned above, USA Swimming is further divided into 59 LSCs. Many of the LSCs line up with state lines. Some smaller states are grouped into a single LSC (for example, New England). Some larger states are divided into multiple LSCs (Texas and California). So, it’s not perfect to say the 59 LSCs line up with the 50 states but it’s a close approximation. Leadership positions within the LSCs are held by the folks who make up most of the House of Delegates.

The LSC study on first blush, was intended to review how LSCs interact with each other and the national office and recommend possible improvements. Redrawing LSC borders and possibly combining some were also initially on the table as well as a number of other wide-ranging changes. Ultimately, the work of the task force was reduced to simply a rewrite of the model LSC Bylaws. There is no doubt that a bylaws rewrite was needed and overdue. Over the years, new and sometimes contradictory language had been adopted in response to an array of situations that presented themselves. The new model bylaws were less than half the length of the previous version. Much of what had been eliminated was language that would have been better suited in an operating agreement between the LSC and the national office. (LSC bylaws should dictate the terms of the relationship between the LSC and its members. The relationship between the LSC and the National office should be spelled out in an operating agreement, not the bylaws.) Creating an LSC/National Operating agreement was recommended by the task force. I am happy to report that an agreement has been put in place.

Part 4 – House of Delegates

The House of Delegates is the body that votes on proposals at the organization’s annual meeting. The Delegates are supposed to represent the interests of the overall membership of the organization. The majority of the delegates are in place as a result of holding leadership positions in their respective LSCs. There are additional delegates who have their positions as a result of serving on a national committee.

This study was expected to evaluate the distribution of delegates throughout the LSCs and the non-LSC delegates. A review of items within the purview of the House of Delegates as opposed to the Board of Directors was also intended to be a part of this work. Another consideration in the composition of the House of Delegates should have been its lack of gender balance among the Delegates. A number of times I attempted to get specific statistics of the gender breakdown of the House of Delegates, but was never able to get any official numbers. Having been in the room for the House of Delegates meeting on a number of occasions, anecdotally, I can say that the body is overwhelmingly old, white and male. (Personal disclosure – I also am old, white and male.) According to USA Swimming’s own statistics, overall athlete membership of USA Swimming is 53% female. Both the House of Delegates and the Board of Directors should more closely reflect the gender balance of the athletes the organization is in place to serve. This could have been studied and possibly addressed if the plan had been followed. As far as I am aware, this study never occurred, and no reforms to the House of Delegates were ever proposed or implemented.

Assessment of the Plan

Overall, it was an ambitious plan and in the midst of it, the organization went through leadership transitions in both the office of the CEO and the Board Chair. It’s also impossible to ignore the COVID global pandemic that occurred toward what would have been the latter part of this evaluation process. But it is clear to say that the process had been abandoned before COVID kicked in. There’s no way to know what good may have accrued had all 4 parts been seen through fully. But to have only completed roughly 1½ of the 4 parts undeniably has made the organization less capable of dealing with a number of the unexpected challenges that popped up.

What happened next?

Even in the process of implementing the approved changes, there were a number of missteps that demonstrate a lack of commitment to governance best practices. As part of the Board restructure process the existing National Governance Committee was dissolved. This was supported by the existing Committee members, but intended to be a temporary move, allowing the newly restructured Board a chance to establish itself and get its footing. The expectation was that the new Board would, at some point, reconstitute a new Governance Committee to provide input on such matters. As far as I know, this has not happened.

Another significant example of actively disrespecting good governance was the 2021 Board election. The Nominating Committee, as it is charged to do, put forward a slate of 4 vetted candidates for 2 open Board seats. The House of Delegates, rather than voting for the vetted candidates, instead voted to elect 2 self-nominated candidates. (As part of the Board restructure, a self-nomination was allowed, mostly as a compromise to make the overall reform package’s passing more likely.) So, while the self-nominated candidates technically followed the rules, it certainly is not consistent with the principles of good governance to completely nullify the work of a committee that has acted on its remit. The committee put in long hours, fielding and reviewing applications and interviewing candidates in furtherance of their goal. Completely disregarding the work and recommendations of any committee sends a clear message to all committees, and the message is not one that respects good governance.

An additional point to make on this is that during the Board study process, hundreds of surveys were completed and one of the most common concerns expressed in Board elections was to open the Board up and break up the “old-boy network”. Both of the self-nominated candidates elected in this instance were textbook “old-boys”.

Furthermore, as detailed in a recent SwimSwam article, the organization’s rules against active campaigning (not at all included in the Board reform proposal in 2017, but in place from before that process) do nothing but protect those already within the inner circle and provide a huge deterrent to new ideas and new thinking.

Campaigning prohibitions

No single act of ignoring good governance principles on its own will result in decreased results. Just like for an athlete, one single bad meal, or missed bedtime or half-hearted practice will not cost someone a medal. But the continued pattern of a lack of commitment to excellence and respect for long-term improvement undeniably will eventually result in underperformance. And in the case of USA Swimming “eventually” has arrived.

In summary, my recommendations for the incoming USA Swimming leadership include the following:

These steps alone won’t by themselves deliver more medals at LA 2028. But as with improved nutrition, adherence to strong governance will strengthen the organization and allow it to be more resilient and responsive, and better able to consider the recommendations mentioned in the intro to this commentary.

ABOUT MICHAEL P. GIBBONS

Michael P. Gibbons is an attorney and lecturer based in Minneapolis, MN. His work is focused on sports & entertainment, organizational development, and athletes’ rights. Over the course of his career, he has advised organizations ranging from youth development to Olympic & professional levels on achieving excellence through the development of best practices in operational management and governance. 

In addition to his professional experience, Mr. Gibbons has served various roles in swimming, including more than a decade as a meet official and decades in Board and committee meetings. He remains committed to both inclusion and excellence in the sport.

Mr. Gibbons earned a BS degree in Business Management from Tulane University in Louisiana, an MBA in Finance from Seton Hall University and a JD from William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota. 

Additionally, Michael Gibbons shares a birthday with Michael Phelps – June 30. But since Gibbons is older, he had it first. 

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