The Art Of Collaboration
As the business world becomes faster-moving, ultra-aggressive and more unforgiving, no organisation or business is immune to the change. If in the good times organisations got a little flabby and complacent, the tough times have forced them back in to shape. For the best part of almost two decades football has sat isolated in its own ‘bubble’ as the Premier League has gone from strength to strength, but times have changed and the progressive and far-sighted are fully aware that football clubs have to be run with a very different business model than before.
Football and business are now so closely linked and intertwined that it is impossible to separate the two, and when I sat with Sam Allardyce on the panel at the LMA Annual Conference last month, it became increasingly apparent just how similar the roles of business leader and football manager have also become.
I spend most of my time acting as a mentor and ‘critical friend’ with first appointment CEOs, and by far the biggest hurdle they have to overcome is that of having nobody to talk to. At all other times in their career they have been part of a wider team with peers who they would share most things with, and subordinates to keep them in touch with the frontline. But once they finally get to the premier position they had always hoped for, the loneliness of command becomes all too apparent.
Life at the top is very different, with no sounding board or support network. Be it hiring, firing, performance feedback, setting the vision, rallying the troops or deciding whether to divest or acquire, the big decisions and the big statements have to come from the leader.
Most of these decisions are taken long-term with a necessary and healthy run-up but football managers don’t have the luxury of time. Listening to Sam was a master class in agility and man-management; reacting quickly to the shifting terrain that engulfs any football club and making rapid decisions every day that are scrutinised by millions. No person can do this alone, otherwise the organisation can only move as fast as that one person develops.
Nothing is best done alone anymore.
Yet sharing personal pain with a critical friend is a big step, as I have found out first-hand over the years. My experience says that Europeans tend to be far more collegiate leaders that are willing to talk and trust more than their counterparts in the British boardroom, and once again football is in close alignment with business. If you look at the leadership model on the continent, it is a simple yet effective one of the division of labour and specialisation of roles.
The reason why Carlo Ancelotti feels so comfortable at Chelsea FC, despite not having the power to hire and fire, is because that’s the way he grew up in Italy with the managing director above him (who he reported to) doing the commercial deals and a communications director handling the media.
It means jobs are broken down into constituent parts, leaving each one being done by an expert, such as Ancelotti coaching and selecting the team.
Put simply, it comes back to the simple tenets that every good leader adopts; surround yourself with people better than you and get your people doing the things they love. When people do what they love doing, they’ll never work a day in their lives; starting a virtuous circle that can only benefit the organisation.
A leader’s job is to inspire people to follow their vision; setting the tempo, seeing the bigger picture and utilising expertise amongst their people. A new generation of ‘British’ football manager/coach is finally emerging and some of our strong, solid, more senior managers are beginning to see attraction of a more specialised role.
The advent of this more collaborative style does not mean a loss of authority but a means to increased success and perhaps less pressure.
As ever, change can seem daunting and not an easy way forward, but the strong role models of Mourinho at Real Madrid, Capello and Ancelotti, not to mention Martinez at Wigan and Di Matteo at West Brom, might just be the way forward.
The best of the best know that when you are surrounded with top talent you no longer have to give them tasks to do. You give them decisions to make.
After all, no leader is flawless. I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the world’s great leaders – from Bill Clinton and Allan Leighton to Kofi Annan and Sir Richard Branson – and none of them are infallible. But they know exactly what the two or three things are that they are great at, and hone them to near-Olympian standard. They then put teams together behind them that compensate for their weaknesses.
We are living in a world of coalition and collaboration is key.
And it is a world where football and business need to keep learning from each other.