The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders (12 page)

The Guide

A lot of work is done behind the scenes, and the world will see only a very small part of it. It is no surprise that – just like complex organisations – human beings
are more complex than the small part we get to see. But how should a leader work productively with that complexity? Wenger’s answer to the problem is clear and simple: ‘For me, being a
football manager is being a guide. A guide is someone who leads people somewhere. That means he has to identify what he wants in a clear way, convince everybody else that is where we go together
and then try to get the best out of each individual. Overall if you want to be a guide you have to question yourself, be somebody who can get the best out of people, and be convincing.’ While
the watching world is seeing the outcome, guides take time to think and work at all levels of the iceberg. Here are the lessons from guiding leaders in the world of football.

THE BIG IDEA

In football – as in business, government and all places where significant tasks fall to teams of people – leadership is a complex challenge. Tactically, the modern
game is in continuous change; physically, mentally and emotionally it is ever more demanding on teams and individual players.

In many businesses today, more and more is demanded from existing (or even declining) resources, and in times of great economic challenge, the need for transformation is overlaid on the daily
round of business as usual.

The senior professionals do not do it alone. They build, develop, nurture and sustain a leadership team, and together that team leads an organisation to deliver against the demands of the
business. Whether that team is in football or a global corporation, the core leadership challenges remain the same.

Sam Allardyce began his professional football career in the Bolton Wanderers defence in 1973; and it was back at that same club that he came of age as a manager. In the eight
seasons from 1999–2007, Bolton were transformed under his leadership from a small but proud club to genuine European competitors. Fielding such luminaries as the World Cup-winning Youri
Djorkaeff, former Real Madrid Captain Iván Campo and the excellent Jay-Jay Okocha, Allardyce’s side regularly defeated their more illustrious English neighbours, finishing sixth in the
Premier League in 2004–05 – level on points with Rafa Benitez’s European Champions up the road in Liverpool. After Bolton, Allardyce managed at Newcastle briefly and then at
Blackburn Rovers for three seasons, before joining West Ham in 2011. In his first season at Upton Park, he guided the Hammers back to the Barclays Premier League via a play-off final victory at
Wembley against Blackpool.

His Philosophy

The man they call Big Sam is truly a big man in every sense of the word. Big frame, big heart, big vision, big ideas. Surprisingly self-effacing, he is nonetheless rock sure in
his opinions. He knows where he wants to take a club, and will pursue his vision with passion and determination just as long as his employers will back him. Perhaps his most telling attribute,
though, is the manner with which he welcomes change. From new technology to new psychologies, Allardyce wants to be at the cutting edge. And far from feeling concerned about how leadership teams
seem to have grown, he brings expert colleagues on board with eagerness and expectation.

The Battle

For the manager, the day-to-day can feel like a battle royal. Forces are amassed against you. Opposition tactics, media challenges, public expectation, disciplinary issues, a
hectic schedule, uncertainty, anxiety, injuries and exhaustion. It raises the question: why would you try to deal with all this on your own?

Allardyce sees his work very much as a battle, and his core response has been to establish a close-knit leadership team around him that he can rely on without hesitation. At Bolton, their
headquarters was known as the ‘war room’. ‘We had our dreams and our war room; and we established a siege mentality, with an aim to break out of the Championship while everyone
was trying to stop us. We turned the challenge to our own advantage, and the confidence of the club grew.’ As we shall see, Allardyce’s approach to creating a high-performing playing
team is to create a high-performing leadership team.

Like Allardyce, Tony Pulis looks to close colleagues to support him in bearing the burden of enormous expectation – especially in the heat of the battle. He says of his time at Stoke:
‘I was very fortunate to have had my coaching staff with me for quite a few years. I trust my staff and if I were to miss anything I would hope that the staff would see it and pick up on it.
That 90 minutes is a very emotional time, and when I watch myself on TV on the touchline sometimes I can’t believe what I am doing! I just get so wrapped up in the game. I want to win so
badly for everybody, and the weight of expectation for the city of Stoke was enormous. Sometimes I feel as if it comes down to just me to get the result that everybody wants. I have to be able to
control the emotion, work with it, manage it and stay focused. My staff help me a great deal.’

Football managers speak of three core areas of challenge where teamwork can have real impact: complexity (problem-solving leadership), technology change (expert leadership) and people
(values-based leadership).

Complexity

There is a great deal of complexity in the modern game. Governance, stakeholder interest, societal pressures – all are significantly more demanding and harder to unravel
than in any previous era. And right at the heart of the manager’s trade, the game is evolving too. Changes to rules, attitudes and information mean that football – much like the world
around it – is constantly shifting. Howard Wilkinson is excited by the changes: ‘Since 1992–93, when the Premier League began, there have been many gradual changes in football.
There have been changes to the rules, starting with the back-pass rule, then the tackle from behind, then the offside rule. At the same time, standards of fitness and preparation have gone up; in
tandem with that the quality of players has gone up. Even the pitch has got bigger. The whole game is tactically more complex. Teams can outperform the competition for a short time, like
Chelsea’s finish to the 2012 Champions League – determination, a solid organisation and a smattering of luck. But you couldn’t play like that for a season.’ World-class
teamwork is essential for real success in such a changing and complex environment.

Allardyce’s own experience at Newcastle United is a salient example of complexity. Fresh from his long-term success at Bolton, he signed a three-year contract for the historic and
passionate Tyneside club in May 2007, but a series of poor results led to his resignation just eight months later. Reflecting on the experience, he says: ‘Newcastle United was the right club
at the wrong time for me. I wanted to build something like I’d built at Bolton – to take the same long-term view. But I knew that 95 per cent of my energy would be spent convincing the
Newcastle supporters that this team was going to improve. They’d finished 14th the previous year – when I left Bolton, we were fifth. That’s why I got the job – because they
had Michael Owen and other quality players and should have finished higher.

‘In the initial stages I did win over the fans, but then it went downhill. Newcastle had always blessed their manager with a decent transfer budget, but had never really achieved
expectations. Then they have 52,000 highly motivated, but also highly critical fans every week. So it was going to be a big challenge, and I knew I needed to restructure everything on the football
side. Most of the staff from Bolton wanted to follow me, and we knew we could attract the balance with good recruitment policies. Then we needed to improve what was already a relatively good side,
adding players and creating a high-performing team. But as we were getting started, suddenly the club was sold and then the transfer budget of £30 million came down to £14 million due
to the club’s debts at the time of sale. European football had recovered, transfer fees had gone way up and you have to pay foreign players a lot to attract them to the location –
Newcastle isn’t as attractive as Manchester and Manchester isn’t as attractive as London. That became a very difficult thing to deal with and in the end, Mike Ashley took the line of,
“I never picked him anyway – he wasn’t my manager.” So in the January, that was it.’

Historic context, soaring expectation, change of ownership, short-termism, macro-economic changes, personal relationships: in the end, the problems were too big and came too fast for Allardyce
to solve.

Technology change

With the increased demands of the game has come a balancing increase in the availability of information and technology. These channels can greatly benefit managers, but they
also need managing. Allardyce remembers keenly the shift as it happened at Bolton: ‘When I arrived in 1999, there were two computers – one for the physio and one for the academy
secretary. By year four we had so much technology – data and the means to crunch it – we knew there was no turning back.’ Wilkinson is another manager who has watched the growth
of technology in football with interest. ‘The information available to managers has grown over the years, and it’s good that it’s grown. People ask how we make good decisions,
right decisions. The first thing we need is fact. We need as much objective information as we can get. It doesn’t make decision-making any easier; but it does help us come to a higher-quality
decision.’ Harnessing the raft of new technologies available is a complicated and demanding business. Progressive leaders are surrounding themselves with experts who can do this and interpret
the data for them.

People

While all of this has led to significant shifts in the task of a manager, Wilkinson makes the case that the underlying people-focus of the profession has not changed. ‘The
job’s changed, but I don’t think the best managers have changed fundamentally. I think they still have knowledge and a thirst for knowledge, they are prepared to move and change with
the times, but not fundamentally to change what they believe is important and not to change what they expect from players. No matter what culture or background you come from, the best managers are
still interested in your being a better person when you have passed through their door and leave. They see that as part of being a better player.’

No business leader would dream of dealing with all his organisation’s people issues alone. Among his close advisers will be at least one HR professional, and beyond that he will typically
discuss critical people issues with other close colleagues. Chris Hughton finds his staff colleagues hugely valuable here: ‘As a manager of course you always want to be liked. But I know I am
going to upset players from time to time. The advice of my staff is very important here, and they often help me think things through.’

A story from the USA convinced Allardyce of the value of people focus: ‘Mike Ford [Performance Analysis Manager] came back with a great story of an American football team that won the
Superbowl. When he asked for the key success factors, they were clear that a major contributor was a woman who we’ll call Alice Smith. Everybody spoke about what they did in their department
to win the Superbowl, but they all acknowledged Alice Smith had a big part to play. So he’s going around from the CEO to the head coach and he keeps hearing the name Alice Smith, and he
didn’t know who this Alice Smith was. It turns out she was the ticket office manager and travel organiser! She was so good that the players didn’t have to worry about a thing. Every
ticket, every family, everything was sorted. All the players had to do was run out, wave and play. In football, things move on – but leadership is still all about people.’

Building the High-performing Leadership Team

Leadership is a lonely task unless you are surrounded by people whose character, opinion and expertise you can trust. So convinced is Allardyce of the need for support from his
staff that he considers it the heart of his work as a leader: ‘Daily leadership looks like leading the team behind the team, and making sure that the team behind the team is delivering on a
daily basis. It’s about preparing them for the battle ahead. We call it “managing the madness”. The best way to manage the madness is your staff, the team that works with you and
their heads of department. The staff that we recruit in each department is the critical side of delivering to the players. We have to earn their respect.’