Writing
Eighteen years inside clubs, in recruitment and sporting direction. Boards do not need another report; they need the sentence the last three advisers would not write down.
Your recruitment problem is a structure problem
Clubs call about scouting. The finding is nearly always that three people each think they have the final say and it has never been written down.
Academy productivity: the only metric that matters
Not how many turn professional somewhere. The share of your own first team's minutes played by players you trained.
What a sporting director actually does
Mostly: absorbs the decisions that would otherwise be taken by whoever is angriest on a Sunday night.