Like most sports fans, I was appalled at Thierry Henry's deliberate cheating to put Ireland out of the World Cup. So today's subject is soccer - with a business angle.
In this blog I am borrowing heavily from some great thoughts given to me by Colin Reid of Consilium Technologies on the analagous comparison of players on a football team to the people in a business.
The strikers, Kevin Doyle and Robbie Keane (smashin' goal Robbie!), are your sales people, scoring goals / getting orders.
The defence, Kevin Kilbane, John O'Shea, Sean St Ledger, Richard Dunne (titanic performance!) and the great Shay Given, are your customer services/support team, not conceding goals / not letting the customers down.
The midfield, Glenn Whelan, Keith Andrews, Liam Lawrence and Damien Duff (brilliant game!) are your production/product people, winning the ball to feed your strikers / giving them good products to win orders, protecting the defence / delivering quality product that doesn't cause customer service problems.
Then there is Trappatoni's superb individual coaching (that is the job for the MD) and each player/person having to be the best they can be individually; as good a striker as possible but being a committed team player as well, i.e. when your team don't have the ball the strikers are aggressively tackling back.
Everybody comes back to help defend corners and defenders come up when you have a corner. So the sales people help out with difficult customer issues and your customer services people help out with sales.
The development of a football team is a good guide as to how a business develops. Starting out in the lower leagues is like starting a business in Ireland; then you get promoted to the premiership which in business terms is making it in the UK market; then competing in the Champions League is like being successful internationally.
The analogy plays out further in that the players who got the team its early success are not necessarily the people who will get them to the Premiership and the people who achieved promotion to the Premiership won't necessarily keep the team there, never mind win the trophy.
That rule applies to the Manager as well as the players, but football is demonstrably more efficient than business at making the necessary personnel changes in line with growth.
What about the cheating? Thierry Henry will be considerably richer and French football will make millions from his blatant openly-admitted action.
But despite my indignation, I do feel rather sorry for the sublimely talented Thierry in the "long game" of life and how he will be remembered.
Turning the analogy round, what first comes to mind when you think of the following business people who were superstar successes in their time?
Bernie Madoff, Robert Maxwell, John DeLorean.
Subscribe to the RSS feed
5 comments:
I know this isn't the point, but poor Henry's action was an instinct, rather than a systematic underlying programme of being a complete bounder. He has on other occasions shown himself to be a very fair sportsman, to his own disadvantage. Unlike the three amigos at the end!
If by cheating you mean dishonesty it doesn't work in the long term but sadly some firms do it at the start up phase to get going. When they become established they become 'paragons of virtue'
It's my expereinece that cheats often win and in some peoples eyes, inclding mine, its despicable behaviour. However, these people dont care what others think they just want to win even if they loose thier reputation in the process! Its probably why trust is one of the most difficult traits to find in business.
Technology....video refereeing....is part of the answer in this particular case. And, what business position is equivalent to the referee's role? Regulator, perhaps? Another example, then, of the regulator asleep at the wheel!
Willo, our aversion to cheating arises from our primate evolution - we will do what we think we can get away with, but in general the disapproval of the other members of the troupe will act to curtail our share of the bananas in the long run. Indeed, this is the probable major factor in the evolution of human morality. It's not just the job of regulators (old silverback males ;-) to enforce good behaviour, but society itself automatically generates a "statistical" response, as we saw with the MPs (and indeed, Old Silverback Michael Martin was deposed).
Thierry Henri was lucky and unlucky at the same time. No intention to cheat, but perhaps dishonestly taking advantage of a situation that panned out in his favour, rather than doing the decent thing and fessing up.
The question is this: is the troupe powerful enough to turn this around? In football, perhaps not. In business, perhaps not either - unless laws get broken. But it is a question of degree too - what can people get away with? And we all know that morality and legality are not the same things at all.
Now, can I please have £10K - my moat needs a bit of a sprucing up...
Post a Comment