The eight
leadership lessons condensed by Elberse were:
1.
Start
with the Foundation
2.
Dare
to Rebuild your Team
3.
Set
High Standards – and hold everyone to them
4.
Never,
Ever Cede Control
5.
Match
the message to the Moment
6.
Prepare
to Win
7.
Rely
on the Power of Observation
8.
Never
Stop Adapting
Through the
eight leadership lessons, Elberse examined Sir Alex’s qualities that enabled
him to propel Manchester United, a terrible club on the cusp of derelegation to
a lower division in 1986, to the most loved/hated (depending if one is a fan of
the club or otherwise) club in the English Premier League in 2013, having
captured 13 English League titles and many other domestic and international
trophies, and with many glittery alumni as well.
Elberse’s
article is a good read.
She traced the raise of a ho-hum club through the shrewdness and
foresight of a tough Scotsman who suffered no idiots from his young charges. Sir Alex also explained his rationale on the
actions he took.
I was quite
surprised that a Harvard Business School case study was built around a club
manager. However, with clubs changing
owners more frequently and being run like billion-dollar enterprises now (case
in point: Manchester United’s value was
USD2.3 billion when the Glazer family floated it on the NYSE slightly more than
a year earlier in August 2012), there is logic in studying a man who ran a club
much like a person who ran a billion-dollar business. Elberse’s eight leadership lessons were also
very generic and could be applied to many situations: a start-up, building a sports team, building
a family unit, even. A bit too
over-generalizing, I thought, for a “standing-room-only condition” class.
Elberse did
a good narration of things done right by Sir Alex. However, I felt she had not
properly examined or acknowledged the context of Sir Alex’s success. As Sir Alex elaborated on “1. Start with the
Foundation”, “In today’s football world, with a new breed of directors and
owners, I am not sure any club would have the patience to wait for a manager to
build a team over a four-year period.”
When Sir Alex was hired in 1986, business cycles were starting to
shorten from the ten-year cycle. Many
players came from working class backgrounds, and sports was probably their
tickets to success. They were not
represented by agents and commercials mainly stared celebrities and
models. Oh, and most players were not
the spoilt superstars paid gazillions to strut their stuff and demanded to
start for every match today. Club owners
also probably had a longer horizon on their investments and did not allow prima
donnas to dictate the firing of an unpopular manager.
Now, money
to the English Premier League flows in from Russia, Middle East, and I dare
venture, soon from China. This has
brought greater excitement to the League, where managers now have greater war
chests with which to acquire players.
Performance is now measured in terms of numbers of matches, instead of
seasons. A manager who loses matches
consecutively could be fired during the season.
I wonder,
given the current situation, if Sir Alex has just become a manager in the past
few years, would he have attained the same success with the same club (never
mind Manchester United, any club in the English League) for 27 years. Perhaps things may have turned out
differently. With huge war chests and
demanding owners who want results yesterday, Sir Alex might not have spent time
and effort to spot and nurture young talents.
Simply purchasing a proven player from another club (Inter Milan springs
to mind) would be a speedier route to hitting a manager’s KPIs.
Harvard Business Review does a great job
putting together case studies of success stories and creating lists of
qualities and action items as guides.
For every successful company or executive, there is another failed
company or executive. Telling readers
what was done right is really helpful.
Telling readers what was done right given the situation would have made
the eureka moment even brighter.
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