Navigating crisis management

Peter Jackson (00:02): When was the last time you had this 03:00 am conversation? I’m talking about those times when you wake up with a start in the middle of the night thinking, “What the heck am I going to do about this? How do I solve this problem?” I’m Peter Jackson, and as the former CEO of International Law Firm, Hill Dickinson, I’ve been there too. In this podcast, you’ll hear from high achievers about their own 03:00 am conversations. And I think that’s useful because once we realise that we all go through this from time to time, we can then work out how to solve our own problems. In this episode, I’m going to introduce you to Daniel Gidney, the CEO of Lancashire County Cricket Club. Now, when he first took on the job, as he will say, it was basically insolvent, but now it’s a world-class multi-entertainment venue holding international sport, concerts, and with a hotel and conference centre to build. So you can understand why Daniel’s had a few 03:00 am conversations along the way.

Daniel Gidney (01:06): I’m generally thinking at that point, I don’t know how we get through this. I had to write down, send them a formal letter to say, “If I can’t manage the cash flow by moving creditors around, I will do one of these three pretty new clear options that will generate me my million pounds.”

Peter Jackson (01:22): All that’s coming up. But first, let me introduce you to my co-host for this episode, Helen Evans. Now, Helen works in Manchester with our property litigation team. So Helen, what does that entail and what does a typical day for you look like?

Helen Evans (01:38): Well, real estate litigation is effectively solving problems related to land and property. We as a team at Hill Dickinson cover a whole range of matters, disputes, issues involving land and property. We act for a variety of clients ranging from commercial landlord and tenants. We also deal with some pretty niche areas within our team as well. So for example, telecoms insurance, rights to light trespass. So it really is a broad church real estate litigation, and so therefore no two cases are the same. Litigation is the name of the team, but really we don’t just deal with dispute resolution. We also deal with risk management, portfolio management for some of our commercial clients. So yes, it really is a broad church and my caseload is very, very varied.

Peter Jackson (02:31): Very diverse. But what got you into law in the first place?

Helen Evans (02:37): It’s a bit of a fortunate story really. My mum was a receptionist in a high street law firm in Stoke. One summer, her office junior left, and so she dragged me in straight after my A Levels to be her assistant, which was interesting. And I spent my time helping her with photocopying, making drinks for all the partners, taking their newspapers, dealing with posts and admin. And from there stepped into different roles, and caught the bug really and here I am.

Peter Jackson (03:08): And the rest is history.

Helen Evans (03:09): The rest is history.

Peter Jackson (03:10): So, what are the key insights you want to get from speaking to Daniel about his 03:00 am conversations?

Helen Evans (03:17): I’m really looking forward to speaking with Daniel today, Peter. We’ve both seen his 03:00 am conversations. We’re expecting him to be incredibly frank, and to be quite honest, I was very shocked to see such topics on a list of questions from somebody like Daniel in the position that he has as CEO at Lancashire. So, I can’t wait to get stuck into our conversation with Daniel today.

Peter Jackson (03:39): You and me, both. Thanks for that, Helen. Okay, so let’s now hear from Daniel. Today’s award-winning guest is Daniel Gidney, the CEO of Lancashire County Cricket Club, one of the most prestigious and iconic cricket clubs in the world. Daniel’s route to cricketing management was somewhat circuitous in that he started his professional career managing bowling alleys for Hollywood Bowl and then went to work for Admiral and Live Nation before becoming CEO of the Ricoh Arena in Coventry in 2006. And in that role, he brought World Cup Rugby, Olympic Football and Professional Rugby Union to Coventry, and was integral in the sale of Coventry City in 2007. Coming to Emirates Old Trafford in 2012, he’s now one of the loudest voices in support of the English domestic cricket game and a vocal and outspoken supporter of the women’s game. And ultimately is a man after my own heart because in a BBC interview last year, he described himself at heart as an old cricketing romantic. Daniel, welcome to 3AM Conversations. Good to see you.

Daniel Gidney (04:52): Thanks for inviting me.

Peter Jackson (04:53): Thanks for your time. No, our pleasure. Now I really do want to move to your 3:00 am conversations as quickly as possible because they’re great quite frankly, and I think there’s a lot to talk about there, not just in respect of cricket and sport, but also business and indeed society, how you framed some of your early morning conversations. But before we get there, just a bit of background. So, did sport play an integral part of your upbringing, your school and your early days?

Daniel Gidney (05:21): Yes, very much so. I’ve always been a lover of sport. I grew up in a family that was big Birmingham City supporters, would you believe it? So some people might say that that’s not really supporting sport, but I think these days-

Peter Jackson (05:33): Oh, you’re back on it now, aren’t you?

Daniel Gidney (05:34): … they’re back on it, yeah. So, I was brought into a Birmingham City family. I played rugby at school, really enjoyed my rugby, so I’ve always loved my sport. I only really got into cricket probably after I was 15 or 16 when my uncle took me to a test match at Edgbaston and then I started playing a bit at school at that point. So yeah, sports always played a very big part of my life.

Helen Evans (05:55): And what is it, Daniel, that attracts you to the role of CEO of Lancashire?

Daniel Gidney (06:00): Well, I’ve always had a passion for cricket, but I think stadiums are unique beasts. People talk about stadiums being cathedrals of sport, and they’re large, complex buildings. And stadiums bring so much joy and pain to people, and from all walks of life. And I’ve always found that societal mix fascinating in terms of the customer base and that you can get so many people in one area that you’re giving so much pleasure to on one day for some form of whether it be music or entertainment or sport in terms of Lancashire specifically. Lancashire’s an iconic cricket club, been around for 160 years and it was an opportunity that enabled me to combine my love of sport and live music and live entertainment, but also with the love of cricket, and with a big business opportunity because there were a number of challenges when I joined. And I think for me, it’s always been through my career, how can I add value to this organisation? And definitely, I saw a way that I could do that here.

Peter Jackson (07:04): And indeed that was the first 03:00 am conversation that you identified to us that you’d like to talk about it. And I’ll use your words if I may, as how you put it to us. So joining the club in 2012, you had a 9 million pound per annum turnover. You’d had four years of cumulative losses of £9 million. You’re basically insolvent as a club, and you immediately identified the human elements of that because how do you keep the lights on? How do you make payroll? It’s not just about the business, it’s about the people, obviously. So clearly, that was a challenge. Had you identified that in advance of coming here, or did this sort of unwind as you were in role?

Daniel Gidney (07:45): That’s a great question. One of the things I’ve done for the two CEOs roles that I’ve applied for both in Coventry and here, I was the only one of the final candidates to ask for a copy of the set of accounts, which I find astonishing. But for me, I’m very clear that you can’t run a restaurant unless you know how to cook, and you have to have a basic understanding of how a balance sheet works. And you can manage and run a P&L, but you have to understand the balance sheet because if you don’t, I think it’s very difficult, particularly the larger the size of the organisation to really run an organisation in that senior leadership role unless you can understand the levers of what can cause you to go bust, and what the levers you need to pull to help pull an organisation a company through.

(08:34): So I pulled the accounts, I think that surprised people. And then as part of my interview process, I was asking questions about the accounts. So I knew a lot of it, some more detail came to light after I came in. But I knew the bare facts, I knew the facts, I knew the turnover, I knew the cumulative losses that the club had faced, and I knew that we had been technically insolvent. I think the board had done really well to fight off a legal action to stop development. They’d enabled to get grant funding from what was the non-development agency at the time. So it was technically insolvent, but they had the green shoots, they had the ability now to move forward. But you’ve still got a bridge from what was a pretty horrific situation for the club to a point where it could trade out.

Peter Jackson (09:20): Yeah, yeah. Knowing what you knew and as you say, a bit more became apparent as you got into it, but knowing what you did at the outset, why did you come? This was a challenge, wasn’t it?

Daniel Gidney (09:34): Yeah, that’s a good question. I think I always look for the opportunity. People talk about succession in leadership roles all the time. From my experience, working in England is people find it difficult to talk about succession. And if you look at Manchester United, look at the challenges that they’ve had since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down, I think it’s very, very difficult to follow a period of success in an organisation over a sustained period of time.

(10:02): I’ve always been motivated by an ability to add value to an organisation. And coming into an organisation that’s flying, I don’t think I’ve ever done that in my career because it’s like starting a game three nil down really. It’s very difficult to make your mark on that organisation and add value to an organisation. I’ve always been very clear that if you’re successful and fortunate enough to be appointed as a senior leader, you can’t just sit in the chair, take a large salary and coast, you have to be looking at ways that you can drive the organisation forward in a positive manner. So for me, every challenge is an opportunity. That’s something my father taught me, and it’s something that I saw huge opportunities at Lancashire. So I think, for me, it was definitely about… I had the vision working through with the executive team and the board to say, “Look at where we can take this. We’ve just got a tricky period to ride through first.

Peter Jackson (10:56): What steps did you take then?

Daniel Gidney (10:58): Well, it’s interesting. A lot of people talk about, you can hear podcasts on leadership. I smile often because you’d be amazed at the broad variety of descriptions if you ask people for their own personal view of what they think leadership means to them. And I’m like, “Wow, okay. I remember doing my MBA. I don’t remember that list.” In my mind, it’s actually quite straightforward and simple, and this is just my personal opinion. If you are fortunate enough to be in a leadership position, whether it’s managing partner, whether it’s CEO, whether it’s MD, whether it’s general manager, my view is there’s only two things that you need to focus on. It’s not all the sexy interesting stuff, but it’s two basic facts. One is you have to be prepared to make decisions. Earlier in my career, I worked for a guy who didn’t make a decision at all for 15 months, strangled the organisation.

(11:42): And I vowed at that point, if I was ever fortunate enough to be in a leadership role, nobody would ever criticise me for not making a decision. They would criticise me for making the wrong decision because that happens to all of us, but I was never going to be criticised for not making decisions. So you have to be prepared to make difficult decisions. And secondly, and this is a bit more base, a bit more fundamental, you have to make payroll. Whether you like it or not, your primary and sole responsibility before anything else is to pay the people that are working in the organisation on time. Because as soon as you don’t do that, you break the covenant with that individual and they will almost certainly look to leave to go and find another job. And when I hear of organisations that have missed payroll or are paying people over three months, it horrifies me, because whatever the challenges that you face, everything has to be secondary to making payroll.

(12:35): And when I first came to the club and we were part way through a development programme at that point, I think the players in media building had just finished. I think a couple of the stands had some challenges. So they had to be reorganised, which had to work through the pavilion was half constructed. So that was good. They’d lost test match status. Now, for a club like this, I would say at 9 million turnover, probably 80% of our turnover, if not more, came from the governing body, which is a third party. Well, my analysis of that is we’re effectively a subsidiary of the ECB if 80% plus of our turnover is coming. So any sports stadium, the number one challenge is professional sport is between 18 and 23 days a year. So, you can’t run any business on 23 days of revenue. You’ve got 365 days of costs that you have to manage.

(13:24): So you have to diversify revenue streams outside of the sport to be able to pay the bills on an annual basis. So effectively, it had lost test match status for four years, which is the primary reason why it had lost 9 million over four years. The ground hadn’t been developed, the facilities had become run down. And so the governing body quite rightly said, “We’re going to give the 2009 Ashes test to Cardiff.” Catastrophic for the people of the Northwest. Horrendous for everybody at the club at the time. But I understand the ECB’s decision, the club needed to rebuild its facilities, but the short-term pain of not having test cricket effectively meant we had a couple of one day internationals and IT20 here or there. So it still meant that majority of many came from the broadcast revenue and from the domestic cricket that we staged, and from the ECB’s International Cricket that they did let us have.

(14:15): For me, any business you cannot operate at 80% turnover provided and guaranteed by third party. It’s just a very unsafe place to be. And I look back at previous records and even before they’d lost test match status, the club pretty much made all of its profit from six days of international cricket in a year. Again, not a healthy place to be. When I arrived in late 2012, we got an Ashes back in 2013 first time in eight years. The club had sold £6 million worth of tickets in advance. And I’m thinking, “Well, do you know what? That’s great. That’s got us back on track.” But then of course as a truism, if you lose 9 million over four years, you’ve got to pay the piper. And when I arrived in November, all that cash had gone. A lot of people don’t understand the difference between profit and cash.

(15:05): So we’re still in our six days of international cricket driving the profitability. And people couldn’t understand that for 2013 and probably for the first three or four months of 2014, I was managing cash on a weekly basis. I was running a weekly cash flow for that 14, 15 month period. And people look now and think, “Well, from the outside you just recorded the highest ever profit for a first class county ever.” But we were struggling to make payroll and pay our creditors. And we had a 15-month period where payroll was first, payroll was before everything else, even our people screaming at me, threatening legal action on unpaid bills. But we made payroll, and I’m proud of the fact that even those dark times, we made payroll every single month. And I would speak to creditors directly and negotiate deals with them. And from my experience is you have to be honest and straightforward.

(15:58): You have to say when you can pay. And sometimes people don’t like the answer, but they’d much rather a straightforward answer that says, “I know you want me to pay you on Friday, but I can’t pay you on Friday. I can pay you in six weeks.” They don’t like it, but they much rather that than you tell them you pay them on Friday and then don’t pay them on Friday, from my experience. So it’s about building relationships with creditors, building that plan so that you built that confidence to enable you to trade out. So making payroll, building creditor plans, and getting through a very, very difficult period, which we did. So, the first point was about getting through some of the development, the initial phase, getting through that period, riding that wave of managing the cashflow in those difficult periods. And then in second quarter of 2014, I went to the board and said, “Okay. Now, we need a strategy of how are we going to move away from reliance on the third party, and how we going to manage our cashflow better and drive revenue streams outside of cricket.”

Peter Jackson (17:03): And you look at the ground now and the development you’ve undertaken and the success you’ve had, it’s obvious to the outside observer. But during that initial period, that trading out period as you put it, was the one particular moment at three o’clock in the morning and one particular issue where you thought, “What the heck?”

Daniel Gidney (17:20): I can come straight to it. I remember it distinctly. I told you I had that 15 month period 2013, first quarter 2014. And in 2014, I think it was February 2014, the cash tightened. And I knew that because at that point we had no cash, but this was before the hotel was built, which was part of the strategy of how we trade out. At that point, we pretty much didn’t have any cash. We had a bit of conferencing and Christmas and what have you, but a lot of those people paid on invoice. But really between September and April outside of the season, we generated virtually no cash. So that’s where you’ve got all of your utilities overheads, everything else, payroll. So the winter was always the most challenging. And we’d signed the biggest naming rights in cricket with Emirates, the previous share, something I’m really proud of.

(18:06): So that was in 2013, but we got paid on April the 1st, big number. And I spoke to the bank and said, “Look, I’ve got a million pound challenge, I could do with a short term million pound overdraft extension for six weeks.” It’s a time-based issue, and I’ve contracted revenue coming in from an aiming rights partner on April the 1st and it’s middle of February. I basically need a six-week overdraft extension of a million pounds. And you can see with the contracted revenues coming in that it can go straight back. Bank relationship managers said, “Yes, no problem.” And then something that I’d learned, bank relationship managers often don’t have the authority to make these decisions. And sometimes asking a banker question can cause you more problems than actually having a problem. And I’ll say what I mean. So this was the 3:00 am conversation. So three days later, the relationship rings me, I’m about to give the eulogy at my uncle’s funeral.

(19:16): My uncle was the one that had got me into cricket. Without him, I would not have this job at Lancashire Cricket Club today. So, quite an emotional day. And I’m about to give the eulogy, I’m 10 minutes away from doing that. And the relationship manager rings me and says, “I’m really sorry, I’ve spoken to credit, but because you’ve asked us the question, they’re now going to put you back into recovery group, which is what we were in before I came to the club.” And I worked really hard in my first four months of the club to get us out of special measures. And to be told 10 minutes before, I’m about to give the eulogy for my uncle that we were going to go back into special measures, which the interest rate becomes punitive, massive management fees because the risk profile has changed. I’m generally thinking at that point, “I don’t know how we get through this.”

(20:05): So that was my 3:00 am thought. It’s a bit like wrestling a tiger. I then had to work through three emergency scenarios, which I’m not going to bore you with the detail, but effectively to say to the bank, “We haven’t defaulted on facilities. So I haven’t breached my overdraft even with all these cash issues. Not only have I made payroll and managed credit plans, but I’ve paid all of my capital repayments and interest.” So I’ve kept all of my debt servicing. I’ve checked the loan agreement.

(20:35): “And in the absence of me achieving all of our debt servicing milestones and not breaching my overdraft facilities, you don’t actually have the ability to put me back in recovery? Yes, I know, but you’ve told us that you need a million pound.” I’m like, “Here’s my three options of how I’m going to deal with the million pound. Well, they’re not guaranteed.” I said, “They’re not. But they are three that I’m working on at 03:00 am in the morning. And until I breach my overdraft facility or until I miss a capital or interest repayment, this conversation is moot.” So yeah, that was a real 03:00 am conversation.

Peter Jackson (21:09): Wow. So, what did the bank say to that?

Daniel Gidney (21:14): Well, it was an awkward conversation, Peter-

Peter Jackson (21:17): I can imagine.

Daniel Gidney (21:17): … as you can imagine. Hence, why it was a 03:00 am conversation. It was, you can’t prove to me that you have a solution, which was a bit, well, but the loan agreement talks about special measures. If I breach my overdraft or if I don’t hit my debt servicing milestones. It doesn’t talk about me proving something that doesn’t necessarily have to be proven. So you’re talking about conversations here, he said, “But now you’ve told me that you need a million pound over that short period.” I’m going to need in writing. So I had to write down, send them a formal letter to say, “If I can’t manage the cashflow by moving creditors around, I will do one of these three pretty new clear options that will generate me my million pounds.” And then, once I put that in writing, the bank had nowhere to go.

Peter Jackson (22:06): And they backed down. Well, done. But you came through it.

Daniel Gidney (22:10): I did.

Peter Jackson (22:11): And Helen, your family’s local and you’ve seen the developments here and you have a very firm view on this, don’t you?

Helen Evans (22:16): Absolutely. I mean, as a cricket fan and a local girl, I mean, being on the outside looking at Lancashire and looking at that evolution under your leadership as you’ve come in moving from a basically insolvent first class county cricket club to this top class multipurpose venue now, and how important it is for the local community. People genuinely are proud of Lancashire and rightly so. And there’ve been moments over the last few years where I’ve thought, especially during COVID when we hosted the test match here, how proud we were of Lancashire able to do that.

Peter Jackson (22:56): Moving on though to the second of your conversations, and another phrase I’ve heard you use is, “Cricket in our heart, business in our head.” And these days in any elite sport, you can’t differentiate the two, can you? To compete at the elite level, you’re in business, end of story. But your second conversation, I’m going to quote you again because the phraseology I think is very strong. And you said this, “In 5 to 10 years time, what is the future of the relationship between professional cricket clubs, Lancashire, and elite players with a strategic threat of global franchise leagues and the potential decline of test match cricket.” And your language there with words like threat and decline. Do I surmise that you’re a bit troubled by the developments?

Daniel Gidney (23:43): Peter, I’ve always prided myself in my career that I’ve been fortunate to be able to be pretty good at forecasting. I’ve been in cricket 13 years now, and the landscape and environments has changed dramatically. And I think there’s a couple of bits. So, test match cricket has always been my favourite. I am a cricket romantic. Test cricket to me is the purest form, but I also recognise that you have to balance that with a consumable product that can be your acquisition product for new customers. And that’s where shorter formats come in, whether it be the T20 or the hundred, you have to find a balance of the two. But if you’re going to have a successful test team, you have to have a successful county championship domestic red ball tournament. And this is where I think over the last three or four years, there’s been a bit of a widening gap.

(24:34): So if you spoke to the England coaches now, they would be frustrated that they feel that county cricket doesn’t provide players that can compete at test level. And I agree and I disagree. I think there has been a gradual, almost not on purpose, but almost subconscious dumbing down of the county championship over the past five years. Test cricket is the lifeblood of 18 first-class counties. The test match model in this country, in the world at the moment, I think, isn’t right. In simple terms, the rich boards get richer and the poor boards get poorer. So, if a team tours here to play test cricket, the host board, the ECB would pay for all of their costs, hotel, flights, food, everything, but they would keep all of the ticket revenue and all of the broadcast revenue. And the broadcast market for England and India and Australia are the three highest broadcast markets in the world for cricket.

(25:34): But if you are West Indies and you are looking to tour, then when England Tour West Indies, West Indies have got to pay for all of England’s costs. The broadcast revenue they get for England touring West Indies, and the ticket revenue they get is much lower than what England generate in an alternative. So, there’s significant disparity there. If you look at the World Test Championship at the moment, it’s not symmetrical. You get some teams that are playing almost double the amount of test matches as other teams. After 2031, I don’t believe that unless the model changes that the likes of West Indies, New Zealand, Sri Lanka will be touring as regularly as they are at the moment, which means that you won’t get six or seven test matches in the UK in 2032 and beyond. But there’s seven test match venues that need feeding. And Lancashire is in a good place because we have other revenue streams that can help us weather the storms.

(26:35): But we’re still a test match venue that has been hosting test match cricket for over a hundred years. That’s in our DNA. We still want to host test match cricket. So, you’ve got this threat over here of less teams touring in 2032, which means less test cricket, which means the broadcast revenue goes down, which means that the hundred broadcast revenue has to go up to match that. And the ECB are working hard on that because they recognise that particular threat. But when you couple the test match threat, which is a threat to the whole game, I think this is a real issue. With the current ECB Men’s coaching management saying, they’d rather pick somebody from the IPL to play an England test team rather than the county championship because they don’t believe the county championship is good enough. If you’re on a PLC and you talk down your product, your share prices in the toilet. Cricket PLC is talking down its product of the county championship, now there is a clear and present danger to the game of cricket with the global franchise leagues.

(27:36): They’re now 20 franchise leagues around the world. Now, some of these don’t really have proper broadcast support, which means that when you don’t have proper broadcast revenue support, you run the risk of potential anti-corruption issues. Which means that the ICC and the ECB have to be really looking very closely at, are all of these leagues actually proper leagues? And also some leagues currently, there’s a couple of leagues that you can have nine overseas players. Now, it should be maximum two, three, or four overseas players because then it means that the home country has to spend money on a pathway. People find that hard.

(28:17): Do you know what? Lancashire had developed more professional cricketers than any other county. We had 440 appearances from people who come through Lancashire’s Academy. We are the highest by miles. We are proud of that. But developing a pathway for boys and girls cost money and it takes 10 years. A lot of countries don’t want to do that. They just want to go straight shortcut to a global franchise league and then rely on overseas players. So, this is something that keeps me awake at 03:00 am because I’m thinking, how do I balance employing players that want to pay for Lancashire cricket, that prioritise Lancashire cricket, that want to play in the county championship when the England coaching staff of don’t value the county championship. That’s the thing that keeps me awake at 03:00 am.

Peter Jackson (29:00): And that is complex. And I was going to ask you what the answer is, but I’m not because we’re a bit strapped for time and I’m desperate to get onto the third conversation. But what we will do is invite you back for the answer because that is so complex, isn’t it, and difficult. Well, let’s move on to your third conversation if I may. And again, the language struck me that you used, and the words you used were this, “Why does misogyny in sport and business still exist in 2025? As a middle-aged white man, what can I and others do about it?” And I actually looked up the word misogyny because I thought, “Wow, that is strong.” And Helen, I think you had the similar view, didn’t you?

Helen Evans (29:37): Isn’t it a very, very strong word for somebody like you to use. And I’m fascinated to know, what do you see that makes that an issue for you?

Daniel Gidney (29:48): Okay, so I have to go back and give you a little bit of context. So I’ve never seen gender as a thing, and I’ll explain why. My parents had their own engineering business for a long time, entrepreneurs, but my mother is 88 now, is the oldest living fellow of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries, which is an accounting qualification. And when she was at school, she was told that she was probably going to go to Oxbridge, but at 16 her father said to her, this was in the ’50s. “No, you have to go to work and support the family.” So she had to stop education at 16 and go and work. She then ended up going to night school training as a chartered secretary. She became a chair of a public company, and she’s a massive role model for me, always has been. So when I was growing up, yes, I had a successful father, but I also had an incredibly successful mother, and I’m proud of the values that my mother instilled in me.

(30:40): So when I started my career, which was the early ’90s, some of those environments were pretty toxic. But as a young manager coming through, there was not a lot I could do about that. But there’s still times now when I think, could I have spoken up and said more things? Yes. Do you know what, probably I could. But now I’m in a position of leadership. I think it’s something that I have to do. We know what the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s were like. But today in 2025, why is there still misogyny, particularly in sport? There is, sorry to say. Women’s elite sport is growing rapidly, and there’s a culture I think of men’s elite sport is very mature, has been for a long time both in terms of playing and both in terms of commercial and in terms of viewership. And my experience of working in professional sport for 19 years now is that there is subconscious and unconscious misogyny, and that it’s still there now today.

(31:39): So, let’s talk about Lancashire Cricket specifically and cricket specifically. I’m being proud of the fact to be involved in our elite women’s journey. Amateur pre 2016. 2016, we were part of the first cohort of the Kia Super League Amateur Cricketers across the country. Coaches just saw it as a bit of a joke. We were committed to it. We worked hard. I think we’re one of not very many counties that were part of the original Kia Super League. Then we went to the regional programme. We had a Women’s England International Kate Cross who is a fantastic individual. She was the first woman in our boys academy. Teachers rang up the academy director and said… And not teacher’s, parents and said, “She’s taken my son’s place.” And the academy director said, “No, she hasn’t. She’s better than your son.” The journey she’s been on is horrendous, frankly.

(32:32): And I’m going more into subconscious stuff right, but the regional programme was set up, which was very sensible where more money was put in by the ECB, but it was concentrating talent into eight regional centres of excellence because there wasn’t enough of the talent pathway, which we’ve worked harder on now and there is. But at that time, eight centres of excellence made sense. But then I noticed that it got brought to my attention that our women were getting 15 PMR mileage, but our men are getting 45 P. I’m like, “Well, that’s against the law, I think.” So I spoke to the ECB and I was told, “We’ve had legal advice and we can get away with it.” I’m like, “Wow, okay.” So, I’m not comfortable with that. So Lancashire is going to pay the difference immediately.

(33:23): Because we were semi pro at that time, we had a number of pay as you play players. So we might have somebody working in a warehouse, 05:00 am coming to us at 04:00 pm. Absolutely exhausted, expected to do full training to try and get a chance to get themselves to be available for selection, and they’re immediately at a disadvantage. Semi pro is one of the hardest things you can imagine running. People don’t quite understand that. So I said, “Okay. Well, there’s something else here.” I said, “We should be paying our pay as you play women, not just to play, but when they train.” ECB said, “No, no, no, we don’t have to do that.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s interesting because five years ago we had an HMRC investigation on our Men’s Second XI programme on trialists,” and the outcome was very clear.

(34:07): It was unequivocal was that if we have a men’s trialist in our Second XI who is training in an elite environment, and those are the keywords, that we had to pay them at least minimum wage whilst they were training in that elite environment. Raised it with ECB. “Yeah, we’ve had legal advice. We don’t think we have to do that.” So I said, “Okay, Lancashire are going to pay the difference,” and we did. And I’m proud of that. And also, we are the first county, I still think we’re the only county that have changed our men’s away changing room to a women’s home changing room. So, when we had double headers when we started, both women’s teams home and away had to change in the Cricket Centre facilities, which were a bit like school facilities, and the men had the players and media world-class facilities.

(34:53): So I immediately changed it on a double header in T20s that said that, “Lancashire Lightning men, Lancashire Thunder women were changing their changing rooms. And the opposing team, men’s and women’s were changing in the cricket centre.” I had a director of cricket for another county go berserk that it was outrageous that his men’s team should have to train in the cricket centre. Why was our women’s team using his changing room? That’s where I’ve seen and experienced misogyny in cricket. And I’m proud of the fact that when I came to the club, we had a 100% male board and a 100% male executive. That’s quite difficult to move immediately or quickly.

(35:34): I’m proud of the fact now that we have now four out of nine female representation on our board, which is going to become five out of 10, and the exec team is four out of six women to men, and we have the most female representation in leadership across cricket. And it’s something that I’m proud of. And it’s not a tokenistic thing, it’s something… Because I don’t see it. It’s about merit. Unfortunately in sport, I ask, if you look at governing bodies, ask the question, how many women are on their senior leadership team that aren’t in an HR or PR role or in a director of sport role? How many? Because to me, actions speak louder than words in this space.

Peter Jackson (36:18): And this is a leadership issue, it is about calling… When you’ve got that platform. And presumably, we know there’s a process going on around the hundred at the moment that might generate more funds into cricket generally and particularly into clubs. Has any of that been earmarked for the women’s game? I mean, I hope I’m not prying and asking you to break confidence, but specifically?

Daniel Gidney (36:40): Very much so. We see-

Peter Jackson (36:41): Good.

Daniel Gidney (36:41): … Manchester Originals particularly has always started with gender equity. Obviously, from the change rooms perspective as well, same as Lancashire, everything is equal. Whether it’s us going on pre-season tour, same facilities, same hotel, same flight seats, everything is the same. I call out the ECB on the commercial side because Deloitte recently wrote a report that talks about elite women’s sport in his country now is going to be worth a billion dollars a year. The commercial opportunities around women’s elite sport now, there are more than those than men’s. Now, are still seeing the women’s game as a purpose or social driven enterprise, and giving the women’s asset to the men’s sponsor for free or for not very much. I find this fundamentally insulting, and I call governing bodies out that do this. Look at what the Red Roses have done, you look at what the Lionesses have done, women’s elite sport is absolutely there, and there are commercial sponsors that want to spend money on women’s elite sport.

Helen Evans (37:51): Daniel, you mentioned the Lionesses, if you look at the WSL, the success that the Lionesses have brought to English football for women, do you consider that a blueprint almost for what women’s cricket could do in the domestic game?

Daniel Gidney (38:09): A 100% I do. I think the sky’s the limit here. You talk about vision today. The vision to me for Lancashire Cricket Club, our women’s elite sport is right front and centre of that vision. And it’s not just about me trying to move the dial from an equity perspective. This is about a real commercial return, and I can’t believe that some traditional ways of doing things in governing bodies still don’t recognise that because they have this boys club of big commercial sponsors that want to protect the boys assets. And I’m calling for, “Let’s separate the assets.”

(38:48): And they’re saying, “Oh, well…” Because they know some of these brands that are involved with the men’s teams know that they need the women’s teams involved. And I’m saying, “Well, they need to pay for it and they need to pay an appropriate market rate.” So, definitely it’s a blueprint. If you look at Manchester Originals women that does have a broadcast deal, other sports are jealous of the demographics and the customer profile that we get from Manchester Originals women. Premier League football is virtually all men. So cricket has a fantastic opportunity commercially, and I’m not going to shy away from that. That’s something that is definitely the future of the club.

Peter Jackson (39:25): Daniel, fascinating, but we are running out of time. There’s one last question I ask all of our guests. When they do the film, Lancashire County Cricket Club the movie, Daniel Gidney saved us. Who’s going to play you? Who’s going to play Daniel Gidney?

Daniel Gidney (39:42): Well, I’m embarrassed by saving us. I think I’ve been part of 160 year historic journey, but my wife will burst out laughing at this. But yeah, no, for me there’s only one choice and I think it would be Matt Damon.

Peter Jackson (39:54): Matt Damon.

Helen Evans (39:55): Good choice.

Peter Jackson (39:56): Excellent choice. Good, good, good. Well, I’m sure he’d do it, so no problem at all.

Daniel Gidney (40:00): Well, if he can learn how to be a blindside flanker and invictus, which is one of the most technically complicated positions in rugby, then and actually get away with it. I think he could cope with this.

Peter Jackson (40:10): He can bowl a bit of offspin maybe as well. Indeed. Daniel, we are out of time. Thank you so much today. Thank you for your honesty. I mean, it’s been fascinating to listen to you.

Helen Evans (40:19): Absolutely.

Peter Jackson (40:19): And maybe we will do it again, and you can give me the answer to the second one, but seriously, thank you very much indeed.

Helen Evans (40:24): Thank you for the opportunity.

Peter Jackson (40:32): So Helen, we’ve just finished there with Daniel, Daniel Gidney. What were your initial impressions?

Helen Evans (40:38): Wow, what a fantastic. Open, honest interview with Daniel. It covered a huge range of topics from the challenges he’s faced in business, the difficult decisions and the bravery really. He’s had to show as CEO to get this business, to pivot this business from essentially an insolvent cricket club to this multipurpose business that it is now. What about you? What were your takeaways?

Peter Jackson (41:08): Oh, a number. I was incredibly impressed by the practicality around his leadership, taking hard decisions, standing up to his regulator, supporting those elements of his business that needed more support than others, particularly around the women’s game, for example. And that really, really struck me. Also, for someone who’s came into cricket only 12 years ago, he is at the absolute top of his game in terms of understanding the politics, the technicalities globally, not just locally. And that was incredibly impressive, I thought.

Helen Evans (41:44): Yeah, I think one thing that really stood out was the number of difficult decisions he has to make as CEO. And obviously, there are lots of 03:00 am conversations, there are lots of difficult moments. He has to make people unhappy in order to get those decisions right. But Peter, I was wondering if you could tell us about a decision you’ve made as CEO, which has been unpopular but absolutely necessary for the future of the business.

Peter Jackson (42:10): So I’ll go back in time if I may, to 2010 ‘11. We were in the back end of the global financial crisis. And I’ll remember that the head of our business services group at the time, a great friend of mine, David Chin, came to me by halfway through the year and said, “I’m going to have to have a reduction in my budget. I just can’t meet the targets that the business has set me. Work is dropping off.” And we agreed a reduction. And then two months later he came back to me and he said, “I can’t meet those lower targets, but the work just is not there. The economy is not in a state that it is supporting the work that we do.” And I sat down with my FD and my executive team, and we went to the board and we basically had to say that we need a redundancy exercise. Now, Hill Dickinson at that point was about 200 years old and it had never had a formal redundancy exercise ever.

Helen Evans (43:04): Wow.

Peter Jackson (43:05): And when we looked at the scale of what we would have to do to achieve a turnaround in fortunes, it meant losing something like 10% of the workforce, about 150 people. Over a period of time, it meant actually involving every level, status, position, whatever you want to call it, within the business from partners, owners of the business, all the way down to more junior people. And there was no alternative. And obviously, that was an incredibly difficult decision to even contemplate, never mind implement. And I had a lot of sleepless nights, never mind 03:00 am conversations about it.

Helen Evans (43:45): Yeah, I can imagine.

Peter Jackson (43:46): That taught me a great deal about making difficult decisions. It was probably the largest, most difficult decision I’d had to take by that stage of my career, but it taught me a lot. It became clear that if there is really no alternative to the horrible action you’re going to have to take, then get your head around it. You’ve got to do it because you are saving… In that example, you’re saving jobs for 900 people, a thousand people. You’ll have heard our chairman say, and I totally stand by him when he says it, “As the leader of our business, the leader of our law firm…” He and I, when I was the CEO and my successor now, “They’re the custodians of the Christmas presents for about two and a half thousand people on an average of two kids per family, et cetera.” And that’s a people issue. But the reverse is true as well in when you are doing a redundancy exercise, you are affecting the lives of, in our case, it was about 150 people. That’s the difficult conversation.

Helen Evans (44:47): See, that’s difficult, isn’t it? Because you’ve brought the emotion in there. You’re talking about not just the staff, the employees, the partners, the people who are working in the business, you’re talking about their families. You brought the emotion there, but really to actually, would you agree that in order to deal with that process, you almost have to be clinical?

Peter Jackson (45:08): No, I wouldn’t, Helen. So, let me say this about that. I don’t think you can cut the emotion out of it, because at the end of the day, Hilton is a good example. We’re in the service sector. Our assets are our people, and it is a people business. I know that’s trite and it’s truism, but it is right. And so I don’t think you can cut the emotion in that situation because you are dealing with people, but it then should lead to defining how you deal with the difficult decision once you’ve made it and how you implement it. So for example, when we made the decision, we were entirely transparent about it. This wasn’t the night of the long knives that nobody ever saw or heard the reason for. We were very, very transparent with the business. We explained why, we didn’t seek to sugarcoat it.

(45:55): We said, “This is going to have to happen. It will be difficult, but we will work with you insofar as you can to achieve the best possible outcome.” We had an army of recruiters trying to find people jobs. We ran a voluntary scheme so that those people who saw there might be a way out of a business for them. We gave it to them. We paid more than we had to in terms of how we settled financial obligations. The great thing after the event, I was proud is not the right word. I don’t see how you can be proud of a process like that, but I was satisfied that we’ve done it the right way. Was that I went to our recruiters, particularly those that we work with regularly who I know and trust will speak to me honestly and say, “What was the feedback in the market?”

(46:41): And we were told that, “Yeah, it was a difficult thing that we’d done, but the market generally understood why.” We weren’t unique at the time in having to do that. And that we did it humanely, we did it properly. We enhanced our reputation in terms of how we deal with our people. And secondly, I think of the 150 people now, the leader of the process, David Chin, who I mentioned, I think fell out with one person. And that was a particularly difficult partner who he just couldn’t come to terms with. And I dealt with it, and we’ve dealt with it amicably. But insofar as we possibly could in that situation, I think we dealt with it humanely. As I say, we dealt with it properly, openly, transparently. And that’s because you can’t cut off the emotion in my view. You do have to take hard decisions and you have to implement them.

Helen Evans (47:31): Absolutely. Absolutely.

Peter Jackson (47:31): You can’t avoid it.

Helen Evans (47:32): Very interesting. Thank you, Peter.

Peter Jackson (47:34): So Daniel talked about misogyny as he put it in sport, and that’s a massive word, and he goes far beyond prejudice and bias, doesn’t it? And he explained it with great articulation, why he believed that to be the case, but it must be a similar situation or have been a similar situation in business. And obviously, you’ve been with the firm now for some time. So, how have you faced that type of issue? Have you faced it?

Helen Evans (48:01): I mean, Daniel talked about very specific circumstances where there was clear gender bias and clear discrimination against the women’s players. I don’t think we have a comparable situation in our firm, thankfully. I think having been at the firm for 15 years, one area that did need to evolve really was senior leadership positions. The firm has obviously made a very, very conscious effort to address that. And it set itself some fairly ambitious targets, which pleases me to see because it means we’re taking it seriously. So now we’re in a situation where we have female heads of offices, we have a female head of business services, we have a female head of people, we have female non-executive directors on our board. So we are moving in the right way. There are still some pockets where we could do better.

(49:00): Real estate sector generally is not great for equality, not necessarily within law firms, but the real estate sector as a whole. I think there is a lot that needs to be done there to encourage women to go into construction. But from my perspective sitting here looking at the fact we’ve got women in senior leadership positions, who I can speak to on a level makes a huge difference. And I’d like to think that our new recruits, our graduates, our apprentices, our junior staff, our junior talent that’s coming through can look at that and say, “There’s a place for me here. There’s an opportunity here for me to really shape the future of the business.”

Peter Jackson (49:40): From there you have it. Lots of food for thought there. So thank you for listening to this episode of 3AM Conversations, and you’ll hear from us again in a month’s time. Don’t forget, please rate, review and follow this podcast, and that way you’ll be able to spread the word. And if you’d like to find out more about how Hill Dickinson might be able to help you, then head to hilldickinson.com.