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BUSINESS
To complement our chat with SAFC head coach Tony Mowbray , Wear Business consultant editor Rob Lawson talked business and management styles with SAFC chief operating officer Steve Davison .
In a world where football clubs are owned by billionaires , oligarchs and even country states , SAFC are striving to do something different .
Steve Davison is spearheading the club ’ s ambition to be entirely sustainable , for it to pay for itself with profits being reinvested to improve the team on the pitch , while creating a club at the heart of the Wearside and County Durham communities .
It ’ s a bold plan and to achieve it a clear strategy is in place – a plan that has seen the club promoted from League One with a brand of exciting , passing football played by young , developing footballers at the start of their careers .
Meanwhile , off the pitch , fundamental , long-needed improvements are being made while the club reconnects with the city and its fans .
While everyone of a red and white persuasion prays and hopes that the strategy will continue to deliver results , no other Wearside business leader comes under the same level of scrutiny as Steve .
Tens of thousands of Wearsiders have an opinion on how he is performing .
Surprisingly , Steve doesn ’ t see this as a bad thing : “ So many people think they could do a better job and are never shy in expressing their opinions on what I ’ m doing wrong , often on social media .
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“ But I see this as a fantastic opportunity . First of all , it shows how committed everyone is to the club , how passionate , and secondly , it ’ s a great way to get free , independent advice most of which is well meaning .” However , Steve isn ’ t on social media . “ My wife is and she sees the comments , and sometimes the vitriol . It does annoy her from time to time , but if she sees something she thinks I need to know about , she will tell me ,” explains Steve .
“ This helps me to head off some issues before they become a problem ,” adds Steve , who graduated from Durham University with a maths degree before spending 35 years at engineering and project management consultancy Atkins , where his senior roles included director of operations and he specialised in turning around failing companies .
It ’ s important to know that as well as running SAFC , he is red and white through and through .
He was born in Sunderland ; his earliest memory is of shuffling snow off a path in front of his house in Grangetown in order for a midwife to come and help his mam deliver his younger sister .
His dad was a sheetmetal worker at Laings , the same shipyard which also employed his granddad .
Both were huge Sunderland fans and even though the family moved to Hertfordshire so his dad could find work after losing his job at Laings , that love of SAFC and the family ’ s connection to his home town has never left him : “ I ’ m a Sunderland fan and always will be ,” he said .
As a business leader he ’ s clear about his management style : “ It is the board ' s role to set the strategy and I ’ m responsible for designing the overall plan . It is then up to my team to deliver the best way they see fit .
“ I want to empower people to be able to do the job we want them to . I want to give them the freedom they need to succeed .
“ Now we ’ re in the Championship and are able to invest more , I ’ ve been able to start building a management team to help run the business – but while we were in League One we couldn ’ t afford to do that , so we limited resources which constrained the progress we made .”
As you ’ d expect , his main ambition is to see SAFC back in the Premier League .
“ That ’ s where we belong and we need to be , but no-one is going to write a blank cheque to get us there ,” he said .
“ It ’ s fair to say the team on the pitch is further ahead than the business side of things , but we ’ re heading in the right direction – and to get there we need to be the same as we are on the pitch – bold , industrious and creative .”