In 2022, we had a huge increase in the amount of teams globally switching from other providers and opting to use Kairos as their communications and operations platform. This encouraged our team to delve into the why behind the reasoning of some of the biggest brands in world sport, competing in leagues such as the English Premier League, the NBA, MLB and NHL, decided to explore and implement Kairos. We soon realized that apart from a modern and intuitive platform, language and localisation were important elements of building a culture of belonging, understanding and trust – all a huge factor in swaying those decision-makers to make the simple transition to Kairos.
Teams are made up of athletes from different nations, cultures and traditions, and understandably, staff and management wanted to provide an authentic environment for athletes and staff to communicate in. An elite sports team allows for athletes to come under one roof and represent one establishment with rich history and core values, all while allowing those individuals to work towards one goal, collectively. For us, it was important that their communications & operations platform reflected that same level of versatility that would play a key role in an optimal performance environment.
Kairos allows teams to come together on the one app, whether it be in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch or German. Allowing Kairos users to benefit from the versatility of the app; wherever they are, whatever their goal.
The 3 whys:
- Inclusion & belonging 🤝
Inclusion and belonging play a huge role in successful team environments. While we know a sense of belonging can take some time to build, at Kairos we facilitate a smooth transition for each athlete by providing a layer of inclusivity in our app. Ideally, we’re erasing those early stages of fragmentation when athletes are finding their voice in a team. Fostering an environment that grows team connectedness is important for us. It means the core messaging isn’t lost and the key points are delivered to each individual while they play their important role in the club’s ecosystem and ultimately, performance.
- Understanding 💡
Our priority at Kairos is the performance of the athlete. We want to ensure the athlete understands the information being communicated to them – in a seamless, effective and familiar manner to enable them to execute their role as part of the transformational environment.
Receiving key information at the right time is so important for athletes, whether that be training schedules, travel itineraries, physio bookings, performance data, game strategies or files and folders on the opposition. Important too for staff is being able to retrieve objective information from the athlete in a manner that is seamless for both, such as menu choices, travel routes or ticket requirements. Kairos also creates an environment for subjective information to flow, with 1-1 messaging and wellness based data that can be of significant value to performance staff – all allowing the athlete to seamlessly focus on what matters: game-day.
- Action before strategy 🤝
In November, we curated a Masterclass at the Leaders in Sport Performance Summit, ‘Where Strategy Meets Execution’. One of our speakers, Matt Crocker, Director of Football Operations at Southampton FC said that to execute on transformational change staff and management have to build trust and relationships first, through quick wins – “action before strategy”. This struck a chord with us – we know how Kairos helps staff to build rapport with athletes, but we quickly realized that one of the biggest reasons that Kairos works so well is as a result of the trust that we have built with current customers. Through strong relationships with our customers we have not only built the best in class platform but we are able to respond quickly and continually to customer needs and wants. The world of elite sport is constantly changing and we too need to continually adapt so that we and our customers retain that edge.
As said by James Hume, “The art of communication is the language of leadership”. Through working in partnership with some of the biggest brands in elite sport and showing leadership in our field of expertise, we are providing a vital and continually evolving platform that allows for the effective facilitation of a culture of belonging, understanding and trust to drive high performance and success.
