Evidence given by some of the Footy Five at the Temby Inquiry – and carried through in newspaper stories at the time – suggested that Roger Cowan had a dictatorship mentality. Some Cowan critics interviewed for this book echo that view.

‘Cowan always had yes-men on the boards’, they said. ‘He was used to getting his own way and resented anyone who questioned his proposals or ideas’.

That’s an interesting comment, but is it true?

It was April 1984 when the Club finally moved to its new home. It walked out the doors of Station Street as the Penrith Leagues Club, and into Mulgoa Road as Panthers. It had taken almost thirteen years to create the physical part of the vision, but other foundations of the Panthers world were being laid all the time.

As soon as a new CEO takes over, a transition begins from the old culture to a new one. A lot of the culture of an organisation develops naturally from the interactions between people. Some of it is driven as a part of the strategic planning. Culture is the unique combination of stories, beliefs, myths and experiences within an organisation that influence how people treat each other and how they expect to be treated.

Every organisation has a culture.

By the late 80s the culture of Panthers became a management project as they searched for better ways to manage the dramatic growth that had occurred.

The words “corporate culture” came to many people’s notice in New South Wales at the time of the Police Royal Commission in 1994. Justice James Wood found that the NSW police culture had been carried through from the senior level to new recruits in an ever-spinning wheel over many years. Because of this, it had been almost impossible to wipe it out, though many had tried.

The Panthers story proves that the theory also works on the other side of that equation. Once the basic elements of a strong, positive culture exist, it too spreads through all levels of the organisation – from the board through management to new employees. The culture at Panthers was resilient and protected by everyone — it has also spread into the broader world of club-land with those who left Panthers.

Bryn Miller is now the CEO of Merrylands RSL Club in Sydney’s west. He worked at the Penrith club through the seventies and eighties, moving up through the structure. His responsibilities included poker machine promotions, entertainment, duty management and managing the new water ski park.

After 14 years in the job, he believed he was ready for another opportunity, but still looks back fondly on his experience at Panthers.

At Panthers we had a very strong team culture. In this ongoing environment of team bonding, you start to believe that there’s nothing outside Panthers. Other people who have moved on have said the same. For a long time afterwards, when you’re talking about Panthers, you still say ‘we’.

 There was none of that feeling at other clubs where I worked. You went to work and you collected your pay. If you tried to be creative or do things differently, there was always somebody white-anting you, including the bosses above you. There was none of the structure or discipline that was normal practice at Panthers.

And it wasn’t that Roger went around ranting and raving. He trod quietly. I found some of the situations in those other clubs absolutely abhorrent. But it also taught me a lot.

People who come through Panthers are usually greeted with open arms when they apply for positions with other employers. The discipline that Miller spoke of, the ability to work as part of a team, the creativity, and the leadership skills make them an asset to any organisation.

Panthers’ amalgamations have been an extension of the whole process. Steve Van Zwieten is the General Manager of the Penrith site.¹ He said amalgamations have allowed the company to retain many good people they may well have lost.

When top management positions are limited, and people have that drive and ambition, they will move on. Amalgamations allowed us to hang on to those people. We can move them out into our smaller clubs, where they can continue their growth – realise their potential.

‘It worked the other way too. When we went into those new clubs, we found a lot of good people out there, but often they had had no leadership. As we started to work with them and educate them to our systems and culture, we found many that began to flourish. We had stars rising from all over the place.

‘Growing people is certainly one of our strengths’, says Glenn Matthews. ‘You’ve only got to look at the number of club general managers out there that came through this organisation.’

Around 25 CEOs of clubs in NSW spent their ‘formative’ career years at Panthers. One example is Thomas Paynter, who progressed from bar staff at Penrith to CEO of Port Macquarie Panthers. His story is explored in a companion Beyond the Book article.

That culture had its roots in the early days, when employees were encouraged to believe in the importance of their own contribution to success. Some of the earliest examples can be seen in a removed section from the original manuscript, Culture — An Early Instance at Panthers.

Cowan says there was a strong spirit of helping each other, with less emphasis on seniority or status.

Kevin McGrath tells the story of the first big Sunday night show in the auditorium.

‘It was Col Joye, and the staff was just not prepared for the numbers. People came from everywhere. There were no tickets, it was first come, first served, and total chaos. We sent down for more staff, but it was still not enough, so we called Roger. He raced down and said, “OK, what do you want me to do?” We put him behind the bar working the till. We were his boss that night.’

McGrath says he’s worked in a lot of places, and the boss always says to you, ‘My door is always open’. But when it comes to the crunch, he said, it seldom is.

Roger’s door was always open. I had eight kids, and all you got back then was your wages and endowment. I was always getting into financial trouble. Every time I needed bailing out till payday – or help to pay a bill – Roger would help me out.

Glenn Matthews joined the organisation in 1984, and he confirms that the ‘open door’ really always was an open door. And he says as group GM, he continues that policy. ‘Although it’s not really policy’, he says. ’It’s more than that – it’s a culture, a philosophy that seems to have always been there.’

Matthews says not everybody is going to be successful working for Cowan.

If you’re the sort of person who can give yourself your own pats on the back, you’re fine. But if you expected that Roger was going to pat you on the back, well, that just wasn’t going to happen. He supported and encouraged you and showed his faith in you by letting you go off on tangents, and try new things, so you knew you were OK. But that doesn’t work for everybody.

I thrived in that environment anyway; I always knew if I was doing a good job. If I gave something to Roger that he thought needed more work, or wasn’t quite right, he would give it back to me. He was always constructive, never really critical. And I took on board what he said for the next time.

Bryn Miller agrees that there were few actual ‘pats on the back’ from Cowan, but he says they weren’t really needed.

When we started bringing in the big acts, and it was all going so well, he would present the latest figures at a meeting and make the comparisons. We didn’t need him to come out and say, “good job, guys” because we knew. I now have quite a big staff of my own, and I know that some people do need that kind of reinforcement in their work, but it was never really Roger’s style.

Recognition, at Panthers, was often implicit — built into results, trust, and responsibility.

1. Steven van Zwieten left Panthers in September 2007. ↩︎

Commentary and Contributions