The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders

by Carson, Mike

  This is not about the leader declaring himself the best thing since sliced bread. Rather, it is about him using the strength of his character for the good of all in the organisation.

  2. Establish enduring vision and values:

  Paul Ince pays tribute to the sheer presence of Sir Alex – a presence created by his adherence to compelling values: ‘It’s the respect and standards that he has for his club and his players: how they should behave, how they should work in training and respect each other. There is awe about the man, when he walks in, when he speaks everybody shuts up and that is a great trait to have.’ Of course, Ferguson’s reputation as a match-winner alone goes before him, and helps to establish something special. But to have real impact on generations of newcomers requires some process – formal or informal – of induction. A player arriving at the club needs to see and feel that he is joining something special, something bigger than himself. The importance of this hit Sir Alex a few years ago: ‘It was a moment when we came to commemorate the anniversary of the Munich air disaster, and I realised that some of the young foreign players weren’t aware of it. We showed them a video of the team back then, and Bobby Charlton came to speak about it. The response was amazing – and I mean the emotional response. And that was a very poignant moment for the football club in terms of players from other countries like Brazil, immediately realising how big a tragedy it was and how big the club has become since then. So we do more of that now when players arrive at the club, to get them well clued in around how we’ve grown to the famous club we are now.’

  Now that Ferguson has retired, Arsène Wenger is the longest-serving Premier League manager. Like Sir Alex, he has infused his club with his character and has established clear values that have significantly enhanced performance. He also sets a high premium on vision. ‘I would say a person who is a good leader is a person who has ideas and has a vision of the world. To have a vision of the world, you have to have a philosophy of the world and values that are important for you. So I must say the first work a leader has to do is analyse what he wants, what is important to him, and the second step is to make that real. Our job I find very interesting because it’s more than being an intellectual. An intellectual guy is a guy who lives for his ideas; a football manager is a guy who needs to have ideas as well, but then he has to show that these ideas work and to transform it into a practical aspect. That’s why I find this job interesting: at the end of the day you can check how good your ideas are. I believe as well a leader can be a fantastic person who can influence other people’s lives in a positive way. Therefore he has a great responsibility.’ Have the right impact on those lives and you begin to create something enduring.

  The values that Bill Shankly lived out at Liverpool would endure well beyond his own tenure. Keegan has a prime example: ‘Possibly his most powerful value of all was honesty. If you did something wrong you were told: if you had a bad game you knew it, if you’d done well you knew it. So there was a passing on of genuine information and feedback all the time. If someone was pleased with you, you knew it. But no one said too much. At Liverpool, we never criticised anybody to other people – it’s just not what we did. Then it was all about Saturday, about winning, about playing for Liverpool: how lucky you were to play for Liverpool, we don’t do that at Liverpool, this is what we do at Liverpool. There was this real buy-in to how lucky you were, how privileged you were to be given the shirt to wear and run out wearing it in front of the crowd. That’s how it felt and still to this day I feel it.’

  The values point is not a new one in itself. What is significant in the context of sustaining success is when the values are established in conjunction with the leader’s character, and when they are established in such a way that they become a central part of the organisation and they outlive him. Powerful sustaining values are embodied by a leader – and then taken up with the same intensity by his successor.

  3. Ensure your succession:

  In his book Good to Great, author Jim Collins suggests that one of five traits of a truly great leader is to ensure his own succession. In 1974, Bill Shankly retired from the role of Liverpool manager. He was loved by just about everyone in English football, revered by the Anfield faithful and profoundly respected by his players. The question everyone was asking was who could possibly succeed him? Rumour had it that Brian Clough, then manager at Leeds United and future great at Nottingham Forest, would be the successor. But the club had plans to keep the succession internal. In the manner of a royal family, the role fell to the heir apparent – Shankly’s assistant, Bob Paisley. Keegan recalls that time: ‘The great thing about the transition was the ship just sailed on. When Bob took the job, my first thoughts were, “He’s not a communicator, he’s just a real, solid, down-to-earth guy.”’

  Likeable, knowledgeable – but did he have what it takes to lead a team of champions? ‘From the start with Bob we were all committed not to let him fall. It was a case of: “He’s too good a guy, he means too much to us”. And then he went on to become so much more successful even than Shanks because that team just grew and grew. I only had a year with him, and they went on to great things. What he won was incredible.’ The Shankly-Paisley succession was a superb example of a leadership transition. And the key to its success did not lie exclusively with the outgoing man. ‘If Bob had had an ego he’d have wanted to change things. But he just thought, “OK, I’m number one now: I’ve got my main players, I’ve got the same staff behind me, Bill’s gone, but we worked together 20 years” – and off he went! Nothing changed in that year I was there, and as far as I know nothing changed afterwards either. We kept the same training routines, the same fitness pre-season, the same people looking at teams. That’s all very clever because most people go into a business and think, “I’ve got to make my mark on this, I’ve got to change this” – and sometimes you don’t, especially if it’s successful. Ego’s the biggest thing.’

  Perhaps it is the absence of ego that makes a great leader into a great dynastic leader. Wenger is a firm believer in ego-free succession: ‘I find that above all the club belongs to the fans, and not just to one person, and it has to be a model that survives you when you go, that survives the biggest players when they go and economically it is just a viable model. That for me is the biggest part to think that this club will just become bigger and bigger and when I leave I feel a hugely proud moment that this club can go further and continue and get even bigger and become even stronger.’

  At Manchester United, of course, for several years it was the great unanswered question. Who would be able to succeed the great man when he eventually stepped away? David Moyes is the man tasked with the challenge, but Howard Wilkinson believes that Sir Alex has bequeathed to the club a form of continuous growth that goes beyond Ferguson as an individual: ‘I think Manchester United can ask no more from Alex than what he has already given. What he’s left there is fantastic. It’s the board’s responsibility to manage that change. They might ask him to help them, but it’s their responsibility to put in place a strategy for the change. In my humble opinion it would not have been a case of “we need to find another Ferguson”. It’s surely more around how do we keep steady the ship which has cruised along so well, now that we have a new captain?’

  Wherever the responsibility lies, it is a clear challenge: sustained success only translates into dynastic success with proper succession.

  The Dynastic Leader

  We have seen two parts to the work of a leader who seeks to establish a dynasty.

  1. Build for the long term:

  This involves bold decision-making, developing and sharing deep knowledge, building loyalty, strategic reinvention where needed and investment in talent. Sir Alex’s decision-making clears the space for him to think and plan for the long term; his great knowledge and his willingness to share it wins him lasting respect, the effects of which ripple far beyond his own club. His focus on people in the context of the task, reminiscent of Bill Shankly, ensures he builds
loyalty, his acknowledgement of the need to reinvent ensures new horizons of growth and his investment in the next generation has carried him and the club across a quarter of a century.

  2. Build something bigger than yourself:

  Both Ferguson and Shankly have bequeathed their very characters to their clubs, both have fashioned enduring values and Bill Shankly ensured his succession. And this was the last great professional challenge of Sir Alex Ferguson’s managerial career.

  Amid all the achievement and desire for success lies once again the great leadership challenge of humility. Shankly showed it in his willingness to appoint a successor when the time was right – and a truly dynastic leader must have humility at his core. And establishing structures to ensure sustained success in an organisation that embodies his values long after his departure is his greatest task of all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CRISIS RESPONSE AND TURNAROUND

  THE BIG IDEA

  The ideas of crisis and turnaround are closely linked. Turnaround is needed where dramatic improvement is required, for example when results have been allowed to drift and the organisation is no longer operating at the expected level. Crisis is, by definition, more dramatic and extreme. But, at its core, a business in crisis requires turnaround – some kind of profound shift – if it is to revive its fortunes.

  One of the key elements of both concepts is choice. A crisis is effectively a point of choice – a place where a leader asks ‘How shall I respond?’ Most of us think of it as a dramatic and negative situation – and so it may be – but the word essentially means a ‘decisive moment’ or a ‘turning point’. However, the Mandarin characters for crisis (wei ji) actually mean ‘danger’ (or ‘risk’), and ‘opportunity’. Crisis is all about provoking action, and the thoughtful leader asks ‘Where is the opportunity in this?’

  A second key element of both concepts is action. Crisis provokes action, and only truly radical action will drive the reversal in fortune and form that leads to successful turnaround. Leaders in a crisis may feel the pressure, but they at least have momentum driving them forward. Turnaround from a standing start – such as years of accepted under-performance – still requires radical action, and thus brings a challenge all of its own.

  In football, almost all managers are appointed into some kind of crisis or need for turnaround. Up to 98 per cent of professional managers in the four English leagues will be sacked at some point – an expression of frustration by the shareholders or at least of a strong desire for urgent change. The new manager often arrives on a wave of hope and expectation. What he typically inherits is low confidence and stretched resources. His primary goal is to deal with the crisis and set the team back on the path to long-term success.

  THE MANAGER

  With 21 major honours in 11 years over two spells as manager of Glasgow Rangers, Walter Smith is one of the most successful professional leaders in the modern game. He arrived at Rangers as assistant manager to player-manager Graeme Souness in 1986 and, when Souness left for Liverpool in 1991, Smith became Rangers manager in his own right. Between 1991 and 1997, he led Rangers to seven consecutive Scottish Premier League titles, securing the domestic treble in 1993. After leaving Rangers in 1997, Smith guided Everton through a notoriously difficult four-year period, beset by financial stringency, before taking the post of manager of the Scotland national side. In his three years as Scotland manager he again presided over a significant upturn, leading them 70 places up the FIFA world rankings. Then in January 2007 he returned to Rangers as manager for a second period to preside over the turnaround of a club whose on-field results had slumped. Initially the club were able to provide Smith with a level of resources to upgrade the team but then, in early 2009, Rangers were hit by a financial crisis which would see Smith unable to sign any players for a two-year period. Remarkably, despite such uncertainty, Smith continued to dominate Scottish football during this period, winning three more consecutive league titles, two league cups and a Scottish cup. In May 2013 he was appointed non-executive chairman of Rangers.

  His Philosophy

  Smith’s core philosophy is to instil a winning mentality in the group that he is working with: ‘Whatever your context and challenge as a football manager, the one thing we all have to do to be successful is to win. So we have to get that winning mentality in our teams.’ At Rangers, Smith had many successes, winning titles and having trophies to show for his efforts. But the winning mentality he insists is not contingent on winning trophies: ‘Many managers like David Moyes and Tony Pulis are winners because of the winning mentality they have instilled in their teams to ensure consistent progress. When I was at Everton, we had a good few problems to overcome including significant financial aspects. But even during that troubled three and a half years, the club was able to stay in the Premiership and to maintain decent levels of performance. There were no trophies, but for me that was like a win. We achieved a winning mentality.’

  The Challenge: Building the Aircraft While it’s Airborne

  It is ludicrous to imagine building an aircraft in the air. Two things would be going on simultaneously: the minute-to-minute operational challenge of keeping the aircraft flying, with all the challenges of navigation, communication, technology, engineering, safety and passenger comfort; and the foundational work of design, sourcing and manufacture of components, heavy engineering, assembly, testing and the rest. These are clearly incompatible. And yet when a new manager is asked to take on a failing or under-performing team in crisis, this is effectively what he is being asked to do. Week to week there is training, coaching, analysis, selection, inspiration – not to mention a whole raft of stakeholders from owner through fans to the press, and, of course, the matches themselves with all the preparation, execution and fallout they bring. Then at the same time there is foundational work that will transform the club altogether: setting and communicating a new vision, getting buy-in from players and stakeholders, reshaping the squad, buying and selling, dealing with anxiety, resentment, questioning and monitoring progress against the overall goal.

  Success in crisis response or in any form of turnaround requires a leader to strike a balance between the immediate needs of the team (keeping the aircraft airborne) and the long-term needs for future success (building a plane that will keep on flying for years to come).

  The Response: Creating Turnaround

  Glasgow Rangers is a fiercely proud club with an undeniably great history. In the summer of 1986, Graeme Souness took over as manager and brought with him an experienced assistant manager Walter Smith. Souness arrived at a club in a poor state of repair that had not won a major trophy for seven years, and trailed their bitter rivals Celtic by some distance. Like many leaders in these situations, Souness faced a broad array of challenges, which Smith recalls well: ‘When we got there, like a lot of football teams – and like a lot of businesses – there had been no real investment in the team. The standard of player we found at that time was probably lower than it had been for many, many years. Since the Ibrox stadium disaster in 1971, most of the money had been ploughed into making sure they had one of the best and one of the safest stadiums in Britain. So the team struggled a little bit. The management team’s challenge was to get in fast, make the changes and try and get the team to be successful. So phase one was about having an impact by bringing in some new players, throwing out old mindsets, doing the management basics well – and hoping the results would come, which they did.’ In this first phase Smith, as assistant manager, observed Souness applying the first two rules of turnaround: get early results, and start to shift mindsets. It was an experience that would serve him well as a manager in his own right.

  Getting early results

  Sam Allardyce arrived at Bolton in 1999. He recalls that in the early stages, many players simply didn’t want to be there: ‘They felt their career was going to be benefited by going elsewhere and making a few more bob. Everybody knew that Bolton was in a financial dilemma, so they all wanted to be the
one that got away.’ This undercurrent can be very dangerous, but is not uncommon when a team is in crisis, and typically it was not out in the open. Most dissatisfaction only came to the surface once a player got his agent to begin the process.

  In this climate, Allardyce did two significant things. The first was to keep an assistant, Phil Brown, who knew the players well from the previous leadership and could provide instant benchmarks to assess whether or not a player was really trying. The second was to secure some good early results on the field: ‘Good results will make life very difficult for those that want to get away. If you keep getting results, players actually start to like it again – they begin to think, “it’s not so bad here” – and quickly the team gets on an upward spiral. In that way the cycle of negativity gets broken.’

  Martin O’Neill is the master of the early impact. Taking over at Sunderland in December 2011, he took the team from 17th to 10th in the Barclays Premier League, winning four out of his first six games and inflicting only the second defeat of the season on eventual champions Manchester City. This was a considerable impact on a side that had taken just five points from 18 before he arrived. What’s his secret? ‘I try and prepare as well as I can a couple of days before arriving, to learn as much as I can – which won’t be phenomenal! Then something happens in the mindset of the players. We all know that everything is down to the performance and the result at the weekend. So we focus entirely on that – to get a result from somewhere, because that more than anything else will give the players the confidence to carry on. You can talk to them forever and a day about the changes you might make at a football club, and that’s all fine – but it’s all in the future. Players need the instant result and the best way to do it is get it on the field.