Lincoln Phillips Meets with the Think-Tank
My peaceful and quiet weekend with my family at our Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania home was interrupted by a scoop that the TD - Lincoln Phillips was in town in for a planning meeting in Columbia, Maryland, and I was invited to attend. My weekend's plan was quickly overhauled to accommodate this newly scheduled event. Lincoln was meeting with the brain-thrust behind the Goal 2014 Development Plan, a mission the TD established when he arrived in T&T to have every youth and senior national team qualify and successfully compete in every FIFA competition by the year 2014. This elite group included, but was not limited to: Dr. Trevor Leiba, Dr. Peter Keiller, Victor Gamaldo, Myron Garnes, Sheldon Phillips and Barry Henderson.
The meeting got underway at 11:00am and went until 4pm, with a presentation by Dr. Leiba entitled, "Organizational Sensemaking: Setting the tone". This was immediately followed by a vibrant discussion exploring the application of the main ideas from the presentation to the planning required to capture and sustain the positive direction for a successful World Cup 2006 appearance, especially in matters concerning communication and avoiding outside and internal conflicts/controversies that can interfere with the players' ability to perform.
The second presentation was made by the TD himself. Its focus was his Youth Football Development Programme - Goal 2014 which included a player identification system which he will collaborate with Leo Beenhakker. The recently completed 2004 - 2005 progress report was shown to the attendees. It catalogued the numerous achievements that he has made in Phase One of the implementation process. The future plans were also briefly outlined in the report.
I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of planning involved with great attention being paid to each detail. The future looks bright indeed!