The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders (30 page)

The Dynastic Leader

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

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.

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.

‘Our first game against Blackburn Rovers, we played really well in the match, had just a little bit of luck and scored twice late on to get three very valuable points. That gave the lads
confidence heading into the Christmas period. One way or the other we just seemed to deal with injury setback after setback. By the time we played Manchester City on New Year’s Day we had
midfield players playing in full-back positions, we had centre forwards having to drop back and play in midfield ... But all in all we had gained a bit of spirit at that time and the players saw it
through and actually won the game in the very last minute. It is remarkable because a couple of days later we travelled to Wigan and won at Wigan. Now whether we would have won at Wigan had we not
won against Manchester City is always debatable, but as the great Jonny Giles once said to me, “Ifs, buts and maybes – if you keep them out of the equation you may be able to think a
bit more clearly.”’

O’Neill brings with him into a turnaround situation an energy that is both practical and positive. He welcomes the chance to address low confidence, and seems to bring about early results
almost by sheer force of character. Once they got going, his Sunderland side hit a run of form, their confidence growing by the week, proving the value of early results.

Shifting mindsets

Like any turnaround leaders, football managers find that shifting behaviours in their people is critical. Arriving at Rangers, Graeme Souness and Walter Smith found some things
that needed to change. When players have become convinced they are second best (or worse), they can begin to behave negatively or disruptively both off and on the field. Complaining, blaming,
getting angry, arguing, dropping heads, making unforced errors. All of these behaviours are detrimental to any team – but especially to a high-profile football team looking for rapid
improvement. Gérard Houllier’s fourth foundational value is ‘be a winner’. Smith, Mancini and others speak of ‘a winning mentality’ and ‘shifting
mindsets’. But what does this actually mean?

Returning to the idea of the iceberg, we can only achieve lasting change to our behaviours if we do shift our mindset. A manager can tell a player to stop complaining, and he may well do so
– for a while. But unless he shifts the feeling of injustice that has led to his behaviour, he will simply return to the complaining.

The behaviours Souness and his assistant manager Smith encountered were being driven by a losing mindset – and they had to address it head-on in order to achieve lasting change. ‘We
had a group of players who hadn’t won a championship for nine seasons. At Rangers, that’s probably been the longest spell for 60, 70, 80 years. Nine years before, at the same time as
Celtic began their championship-winning run, Rangers themselves had a good team. But Celtic had a terrific team and they went on to win nine straight titles under a fabulous leader, Jock Stein.
Rangers were reaching European finals, winning cups, and having good runs in Europe, but Celtic’s dominance and a lack of investment at Ibrox created this losing mindset. When success is
elusive, players start to consider that that’s normal and that they can’t rise above it. It was important to instil in them the belief that those days are over and there’s going
to be a total change.’