The Opsimath

Management lessons from the Beautiful Game

Football management is a very visible form of management in action. Because of our obsession with the game in the UK (and increasingly most of the world), we read daily of the exploits of major football clubs. As a result, we can learn a number of lessons from how football clubs are led and managed.

Here are three recent ones.

Managers need time
Chelsea Football Club have an interesting recent history with their managers. Recently they 'parted company' (lovely phrase) with their latest manager Andre Villas-Boas (known fondly as AVB). AVB had managed the club for less than one whole season, and although the club are in the top six of what is considered the top league in the world and they are still in two cup competitions, including the European Champions league, this was not enough.

The most successful club in recent British history is undoubtedly Manchester United. Yet their manager, Alex Ferguson, spent several seasons in charge before winning anything, but the club gave him time. Time to adapt, time to influence, time to build his team. Managers need time.

Managers need to focus
Managers must lead with a  sense of purpose.They must single-mindedly focus on the goal (no pun intended there).

Under Harry Redknapp, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club have enjoyed their most successful spell for a long time. Just recently they were in 3rd place in the Premier League, with a significant points advantage over the team in 4th place. Until a major distraction.

England's national football coach, Fabio Capello recently resigned. Since that event there has been non-stop speculation that Harry Redknapp is the red-hot certainty to replace him. Except that no decision has been made, leaving a very uncertain situation.

The result? Tottenham's form has dipped, their results have been poor and they have just lost their once seemingly unassailable third position in the league.

Distractions are so unhelpful - managers need to focus.

Managers need rational, not reactive, leadership
Wolverhampton Wanderers were having a poor season, and with a 5-1 defeat at home to their local rivals, it did not look like it could get worse. So, in what seems like a 'knee-jerk' response, they dismissed their manager, Mick McCarthy, the day after that embarrassing defeat.

But, worse it has got. The club, in the four games that have followed, have seemed to go into free fall. Conceding goals at an alarming rate, and unable to score a goal in 3 out of the 4 games, their fate - relegation - seems sealed.

Which makes you think - was Mick McCarthy actually doing an impressive job with the team? Before he left they were outside the relegation zone, now they lie in last place in the league.

Was the decision reactive? Should the club ownership have allowed themselves a little more time to rationally assess the situation? After all, they dismissed him with just a few games left in the season, they had no replacement in mind, and they have had to temporarily appoint the assistant manager - a man with no experience of managing, and hardly any time to make a difference.

Managers need rationality not reactivity.

The beautiful game, but sometimes the management and leadership of it is anything but!

Knowledge transfer or Wisdom building?

One of the aims of many people working in the field of management consultancy is 'knowledge transfer'. This is the admirable goal of being able to pass on valuable knowledge to the client, so that they are left with added value at the end of an assignment.

Knowledge transfer is an interesting concept, as knowledge can take us one of two ways. With knowledge we can go down the route of arrogance or humility. The collection of knowledge alone can easily lead to arrogance as it can centre on me simply accumulating a number of things that I know - the more I know, the better I am.

The greater route to take is that towards humility. Greater, but not necessarily easier. So how can we take that route?

Wisdom

Wisdom always leads us to humility, because it is born out of real living; real experiences; real pain and real joy. Wisdom comes from the realisation that my knowledge is oh-so-small when put in the context of, and compared to, the knowledge and the wisdom of the whole of humanity.

So I believe that we have to take our knowledge and marry it with real living. The result will be our first step on the road to wisdom building.

And maybe that will become our aim as consultants - to help our clients build wisdom.

I leave you with one of my favourite quotes: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

Counting Penguins

You may have heard that London Zoo have recently been carrying out a stock-take.

This is Adrian Walls - counting penguins.

How was your day at work today?

(The count of more than 16,000 mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, invertebrates and amphibians is a compulsory part of the zoo licence renewal.)

Best Practice in India

I recently had the privilege of speaking at the Best Practice Showcase in Bangalore, India.

APMG-India did an excellent job of organising this, their second Showcase event. Something like 120+ people turned out for the event, which started at 5.00pm, meaning that they had already done a day's work and the next day was a national festival and so a holiday. Impressive dedication to project, programme and change management!

This late start meant that we didn't get to eat until gone 10.30 at night - but the food was well worth the wait!

I talked about how we can use Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) and Change Management together to give us the best chance of delivering good business benefits from our projects and programmes - it seemed to be well received (I'll post more about the topic later).

This was my first visit to India (and a brief one at that) - which is really a jolt to the senses and emotions.

Here are just two photographs that indicate the sort of contrasts that I saw. The first one is the very pleasant swimming pool on the roof of the hotel.

Then, just by walking to the edge of the roof and looking over to the neighbouring area, this is the view:

 

Although I'm still working those contrasting images through in my mind I did enjoy the visit. Everyone was very welcoming and we had some excellent conversations. Thank you India!

Tourists say the funniest things

On the BBC yesterday there was an item about a tourist's written complaint about their visit to a coastal resort in Devon, UK. Their issue was that the harbour area - a working harbour in which local fisherman landed their catch each day - "smelled of fish".

It reminded me some interesting questions that tourists have asked such as:

"In what month is the May Day demonstration?"

"Are there any lakes in the Lake District?"

"Why on earth did they build Windsor Castle on the flight path of Heathrow?"

"Is Wales closed during the winter?"

"Why did they build so many ruined castles and abbeys in England?"

"Which bus do I get from the Orkney Islands to the Shetland Islands?"

"Can I wear high heels in Australia?"

"Which direction is North in Australia?"

"Do you know of any undiscovered ruins?"

Essentials for Happiness

Failure is Instructional

So says Diana Laufenberg who teaches 11th-grade American History in Philadelphia. She goes on to say that learning must include an element of failure in order to be effective.

Take a listen...

 

There are no unimportant people in the world...

I recently read this quote in a book, and have been quite impacted by the significance of it since.

This advert, from those brilliant people at T-Mobile, captures something of the essence of the quote, and, if nothing else, will leave you with a smile on your face.

 

Ban Comic Sans

There's been a recent, and amusing, campaign to ban the typeface 'comic sans'. Take a look at it here.

More knowledge - where's the application?

Following my recent post about tomatoes, knowledge and wisdom, I read this on the BBC website (the informative QI section):

Tomatoes, as everyone knows, are fruits not vegetables. Fewer people know that avocados, pumpkins, coconuts, cucumbers, peas, beans (green as well as all other beans), peppers, corn, aubergines, squash and all kinds of nuts are also fruits.

So, now we have more knowledge, but to what end?

Living, as we do, in this age of information, knowledge like this assaults us from all sides - but what should we do with it? Is it all pointless unless it makes a difference to our lives?

It's a challenge that we face at pearcemayfield when working with clients in delivering training and consultancy for their staff. Is it enough that we should deliver a training course, give out masses of information (we have masses available!) but ultimately leave the delegates in the same (if not worse) position than they were in before?

That is why we use ''GAPI' Action Planning. Following 4 steps, it recognises that good learning is not about the acquisition of knowledge alone. We need to understand Goals, Actions and Practice steps before we consider the underpinning knowledge (Information) required - hence GAPI.

For a little more about our philosophy towards training take a look at this on our website.

We think the knowledge/wisdom debate is a really serious issue for organisations today, and we take our role in that very seriously.