Month: October 2017

Ten Years of Underperformance – Skill or Will or Something Else?

The decade long erosion of the financial stability of the IOF discussed in the previous post did not come as a result of a sudden event. It was the result of continuing underperformance of the IOF leadership who missed the budget target for 10 years in a row.

Please see updated numbers to this post here.

This post has turned out to be longer than expected. I had little time to write it, so I could not make it shorter. Here is the summary if you are also pressed on time:

  • The IOF Council has missed the budget target every year since 2009. The target set by themselves, and rubberstamped by the General Assembly without change.  It would take a miracle to achieve the targets for 2017 and 2018. That makes 10 years of missed targets. 10 years of continuous underperformance.
  • It is unlikely that this was due to lack of skills: the leading figures of the IOF during this period (Ake, Brian and Leho) all prided themselves with business background.
  • Looking at recent events one may get a feeling that the IOF leadership just did not care about the budget approved by the GA, hence they could not possibly deliver it:
    • In a letter to member federations about the difficult financial status of the IOF signed by Leho and Tom, the “GA Budget 2017” is different from the 2017 budget published as approved on the IOF website in the minutes of GA 2016.
    • In the same letter they claim that in October 2016, 2 months after presenting the 2017 budget to the GA, they already started to modify it “to get costs in line with expected income”. There was not a hint of an unexpected event that could have modified expected income in the 2 months after the GA. This gives the feeling that the Council presented a 2017 budget to the GA that was not realistic, but the GA approval gave the Council free hand to modify it to their liking.
    • The outcome of budget modification(s) started in October 2016 was not shared with member federations until 14 July 2017, nine days after the  Presidents’ Conference in Tartu. This gives the feeling that the IOF leadership decided to avoid any open discussion about budget modification with the member federations who approve the IOF budget.

Here are the details of the story that may make you wonder how long IOF member federations will put up with being treated like this.

The numbers

The Council missed their own target every year since 2009, for 8 consecutive years. They already conceded that 2017 will be missed (€66,235 surplus was budgeted, but only €9,767 was expected in July 2017). It looks also highly unlikely, that in 2018 the budgeted €169,010 surplus, that is 2.5 times(!) higher than ever achieved in the IOF’s 56 year history, will be delivered. That gives a solid 10 consecutive years of missing the budget as shown on the chart below.

For updated data please see this post published after the October 2017 Council meeting. 

IOF Net income vs budget v2

 

This level of  underperformance is most remarkable under any circumstances. It is even more remarkable, because
a) the IOF was run by experienced managers according to their CV, and
b) the budget was set by the Council themselves, only rubber stamped by the General Assembly.

Officially it is the General Assembly who sets the budget, but in practice it simply approves the one submitted by the Council. I could not find a case in recent memory when the GA modified the budget. I could not even find a case in recent memory when the GA has even debated a line item. There were some high level remarks now and then, but everything was approved as suggested by the Council. So we are not talking about some stretch targets not being met. No, simply the IOF leadership could not deliver for 10 consecutive years on their own promises made with no external pressure. Remarkable.

Skill or Will?

Seeing this level of underperformance one should ask whether it was due to missing skill or missing will. Could it happen that the leadership of the IOF did not have the basic skills required to prepare and deliver a budget for a quite simple small operation? Or was it due to lack of motivation or intention to deliver on their promises, and follow the budget approved by the General Assembly? Or was there something else behind all this?

Let’s try to find some pointers that may help us decide.

Continue reading “Ten Years of Underperformance – Skill or Will or Something Else?”

How financial stability was lost

Over the past couple of days I managed to reconstruct the process how financial stability of the IOF was lost over the past couple of years. As I discussed in my previous post, IOF finances are on a knife edge. Net cash reserves are close to zero level, and debt has jumped almost ninefold from €29,000 to €252,000 in one year from end 2015 to end 2016.

But that was not always so. A decade ago the IOF had sufficient net cash reserves to cover around half a year’s operations. Since then the combined effect of rising expenses (3 fold in 10 years!) and evaporating reserves (over 80% lost since end 2008!) has resulted in the current situation.

Financial stability has been lost for many years to come. A serious revision of the expense structure and many years of reserve building required to regain the stability the IOF enjoyed a decade ago. But that is unlikely to be delivered by a leadership involved in losing that stability.

The chart below shows how the net cash position of the IOF has decreased close to zero over the past decade due to increased costs and lower reserves. For details see the previous post. It has been adjusted for the revised 2017 forecast. Obviously, the downward revision of expenses by €100,000 was forced due to unachievable revenue targets presented to the General Assembly in August 2016.

IOF Expenses vs net cash v2

This chart shows an optimistic view of the situation. As discussed in the previous post, the actual net cash position was probably less than half of the book value at the end of 2016  due to items that were unlikely to represent cash equivalent value.

Important to note that it took a decade to build up reserves to a level that provide stability (at least half a year of expenses). It is also interesting to note that the decade long erosion of the financial position of the IOF correlates closely with the rise of the position, and thus the influence of the current and previous presidents. That may reduce the likelihood of meaningful short term adjustment of the financial strategy of the IOF.

There are three additional thoughts I would like to share on this topic:

  • the importance of reserves
  • the triple whammy of IOF finances
  • the value of financial stability

Continue reading “How financial stability was lost”