What the Springboks Measure That Business Doesn't

Siya Kolisi is one of those players people struggle to explain. You watch him for eighty minutes and you are not quite sure what he did. You only know the Springboks are better when he is on the field.

Rassie Erasmus worked out what it was. According to Bob Skinstad, Kolisi is the most effective assist tackler in the history of the game, and the most effective assist carrier. If you are running the ball into three or four big All Blacks, he is probably the one latched onto your back, driving you forward. None of it shows up in the normal stats. He did not make the tackle and he did not carry the ball.

"Rassie was saying, well, hang on, that's important to me. So let's measure on that."

Bob captained the Springboks, walked away from professional rugby for an advertising agency, came back to play World Cup rugby, spent years in venture capital at Knife Capital, and is now a Partner at Elixirr. We spoke on 17 September, a few days after the Springboks finished the series against the All Blacks 3-1 in Baltimore. The rugby turned out to be the best way into the business.

Measure what you actually value

Most teams measure what everyone else measures. Ball in play, tackles made, carries. Erasmus went back into the analytics and asked a different question.

"He said, well, why should we listen to everybody else's analysis? I know what's important for a player."

So he built what he calls battle stats: a definition of what makes an outstanding Springbok, measured for every player throughout the year and across their whole career. That is why selections that look like they come out of the blue, a hooker at flank, a centre on the side of the scrum, are nothing of the sort. "He's already been sold on the fact that this guy's a contributor."

Kwagga Smith is Bob's favourite example. Per minute played, he creates more impact moments than anybody in the history of the game. Most selectors would look at him and say he is too short, no use in the lineout, not heavy enough to carry. "But Rassie watched his games and his contributions and picked him anyway."

The question for any business is the obvious one. Which of your people are doing the assist tackles, and would your reporting ever tell you?

Care creates speed

Bob explained the next idea with his two daughters. One is sensible. The younger one is more carefree, and if a bus came down the road he would worry about her first.

"I would stand on the street side of my youngest daughter, but not worry about doing that to my oldest daughter. And that means I would then have speed to action because I care about her."

The Springboks found the same thing in the data. The more games a combination played together, whether centres, a back three or a loose trio, the more likely those players were to help the people around them, and the more likely that was to end in a Springbok win. "Nobody else was measuring that."

So they built for it. Bob says the front row and the loose trio have played together more than any others, the lock pairing had run to twelve games or more before injuries, and the centre pairing is the most decorated there is. By his count Erasmus has made around 25 innovations like that.

Curiosity, with a structure

I put it to Bob that this is not what you expect from a set-up run by experienced former players in their forties and fifties. It sounds more data driven than most businesses manage.

He gave the credit to Erasmus, who was picking apart opposition lineouts while he was still playing. "The great innovators are the most curious," he said, and the ones who succeed are the people able to put a structure around that curiosity and turn it into outcomes quickly.

He had heard a line from inside the coaching team. They meet every Sunday "to see if we can make Rassie's dreams come true." Erasmus has an idea on the Saturday night after the match, and on Sunday the team works out whether they can find it out, test it, or build it.

Walking away, and walking back

Bob's own career has not been a straight line.

In 2003 he was injured in a warm-up game and missed the World Cup. He did not get on with the coach at the time, went to play in the UK, and, as he put it, made a decision around money, "which I've never really done before." Halfway through the season he wrote to the owner of the Newport Gwent Dragons and offered to cancel his contract. The owner told him to follow his dreams. Bob went to work in account management at Saatchi & Saatchi in London.

It was less of a leap than it sounds. He was the first contracted professional rugby player in South Africa, signed as captain of the under 21 side in 1995 when the union realised it needed to lock up its young players. The contracts changed nothing else. Same coaches, same managers. So he always worked: an internship at a Cape Town ad agency while playing for the Stormers, the Men in Black campaign, stakes in hospitality businesses.

Then the phone rang. He was playing amateur rugby for Richmond when Dick Muir called, having watched him play against England. A physio friend got him fit, his wife was pregnant and wanted to settle, and he went back to play a year for the Sharks. At the end of it he was picked for the Springboks. "That was my little mini fairy tale."

What he does regret is not spending longer abroad. He would have liked to play in Japan or France and learn another language.

On side hustles, he thinks the case is stronger than ever. With AI, a business plan or a piece of market research takes a fraction of the time and money it used to. "Even in a big corporate, you still need to be someone who thinks independently and challenges the status quo."

Built for speed

After Knife Capital, Bob's biggest decision was joining Elixirr after COVID, almost four years ago, as a Partner. The connection was local. Stephen Newton, Elixirr's South African founder, has a wife who taught at the school in Bob's village in the UK.

Newton's view was that consultancy is not far from venture capital. You are solving problems, helping a business grow, picking a market apart. Bob was not so sure. "I was really nervous about going into a space and surviving in that space."

I asked why Elixirr has grown where so many consultancies, South African ones especially, struggle to get a foothold. His answer went back to the founders, who did their time in the big traditional firms and asked what had happened to strategy. "When did we just stop talking to our clients and start putting bums on seats and running a new big technology program?"

"We were built for speed from the outset," he said. The firm does not use the classic leverage model, where a senior partner wins the work and it is handed down to people who cost much less. Clients get senior judgment next to them, and someone who knows exactly what the engineers are doing. The proof, as he sees it, is the clients who move to a new company and bring Elixirr with them.

Sales starts with the brand

"Sales is not independent of marketing," Bob said. People need to recall who you are and what you do. As a Partner he has his own clients, but he is also responsible for marketing delivery, and he treats the two as one job.

Elixirr's platform is championship sport. It is digital transformation partner to the Tour of Britain and British Cycling, and has just come on board with a South African mountain bike race. The attraction is who turns up. "Middle-aged men in Lycra," as he put it. A conversation after a hundred kilometres becomes a friendship, then curiosity about each other's businesses, then an opportunity.

Then LinkedIn. He had around 200,000 followers on Twitter and found it an acerbic place to be. LinkedIn felt casually promotional but genuinely informational, so he went all in. "It's been one of the best decisions I've ever made." The market is already there.

I suggested this all sounds quite traditional: networks, friendships, trust, patience, not selling anything at all. He agreed, and added one word. Authentic. Without it, "you can slap some tickets on someone and take them to a sports event and never follow up, never care about their brand, never care what's happening. You've had the same spend, but you've got no outcome."

And Zoom does not replace any of it. "There's nothing better than a firm handshake, a cup of coffee, a cold beer."

An absorption problem, not a value problem

On AI, Bob thinks the technology is outrunning the ability of organisations to absorb it. He cited a KPMG study published a couple of weeks before we spoke, which found large organisations cutting back AI spend they had promised their boards would save money, because they could not see where it would make a difference.

Newton, he said, compares it to the internet. Thirty years ago every client panicked. The internet did not go away and it did not solve its own problems, and Elixirr is still working with those clients. AI will not make consultancies disappear. It will separate the ones that get clients to an outcome quicker.

"People are underestimating what they're going to get done in the long term and overestimating what they're going to get done in the short term."

That leads them after the wrong outcome. "A lot of people think that they've got an AI value problem, but it's actually an absorption problem." They treat AI as a tactic when it is a strategy. The question he says clients should be asking is what the organisation is built to do once the work is faster. Fewer people? Less process? More profit? Something better for customers? "Everybody's serving somebody."

His example was a South African executive running a business in the US who wanted better sales efficiency with no loss of headcount, ahead of selling the company. Elixirr built an internal system across the platforms his salespeople already used. He has since moved to his next business, and Elixirr is working on a different problem for him there.

Bob holds himself to the same standard. "I'm a middle-aged flippant Neanderthal when it comes to technology," he said, having just had to stop mid-interview to charge his iPad. Every week he is assessed on how well he is adopting the tools Elixirr has built internally.

Let the players pick the bomb squad

Sport has an easy goal: win. Business goes on forever, and I have never trusted companies whose purpose is simply to be the biggest. Bob's answer on Elixirr was ownership. Although it is listed, the founders and partners hold far more of the equity than the public does, and everyone takes part through options. "You hold everybody around you to the same standards," he said, because people trying to get away with things erode the culture.

On no-jerks policies, he was honest that every organisation aspires to more than it lives. What he admires in Erasmus is how protective he is of the players, and how much he lets them decide.

The bomb squad is the example. The analysis showed around sixteen forwards needed to share the minutes. Erasmus took it to the players. "I don't care who starts and I don't care who's on the bench. You decide that and you tell me."

Some chose to start, some chose the bench. Because they made the call themselves, nobody kicks the water bottle when they are replaced. "They're running off with a big smile on their face, knowing, I've already bought into this."

Fifty-two dreams a year

The last question was on experimentation. You cannot innovate if you cannot fail, and most businesses are not built to.

Bob's answer was speed, and the willingness to put out an idea before it is fully formed. He leans on venture capital. He pointed to Roelof Botha and Sequoia, where by his account most funded businesses did not work, and the outlandish returns from the few that did were the model. At Knife Capital there was no endless capital, so the job was a big funnel and catching the failures early.

Erasmus works the same way. He can try a million things on the training paddock. He will not try them in a test match.

"If Rassie Erasmus dreams every single Sunday, that's already 52 dreams that he's trying to implement in a working year. Probably two or three of them will work and maybe one of them wins them a series."

Which is Kolisi again. Decide what actually matters, measure it even when nobody else can see it, and give yourself enough attempts to find the one that wins the series.

Get in touch

Bob Skinstad. Message Bob on LinkedIn and mention the interview with Colin. He's happy to chat about Elixirr, his journey, or how he's built his presence on LinkedIn.

FDC, the event sponsor. For tailored recommendations on how to build greater influence and attract new opportunities, like Bob and hundreds of other leaders FDC have helped: book a consultation and review with Jacques, Head of Partnerships, or take their LinkedIn Influence Assessment.