What Silicon Valley could learn from Johan Cruyff

If you don’t know anything about Johan Cruyff please take a look to the news these days. That’s my, maybe biased, maybe inexact, tribute to him. (Sorry Johan for not expending some buckets on making someone proofreading it)

I think Silicon Valley has a lot to learn from Johan Cruyff. I see SV now like Germany’s soccer team at ’74 World Soccer Cup final: a team which won, but which won’t be remembered for that but for being the team against whom the Holland of Johan Cruyff lost. For those who don’t know how soccer history evolved after that, you should know that the current world soccer champion is Germany but only after having adopted most of Johan Cruyff’s philosophy, being tired of losing on every championship, over and over, against Spain, which adopted Cruyff’s philosophy far earlier.

Note: I say Silicon Valley for easier understanding, but it would be more accurate to say “Startup ecosystems”.

What were the differences between Germany and Cruyff?

Magic comes from disorder

The Netherlands practiced what it is called Total Football. Every player needed to be skilled on every aspect of the game. Defenders had to be prepared to control and pass the ball, and attackers to push the adversaries when not having the ball. Players often exchanged their position causing disconcert on adversary teams and taking advantage of unexpected tactics.
It doesn’t really seem like a big difference with some of the institutional values of Silicon Valley, where it is supposed to prevail a more adaptive mentality than in other business cultures. But is it really this way? Diversity gap seems to emphasize the fact that very concrete skills are sought and the same skills are often applied to the same positions. It’s especially noteworthy for managing positions and for getting funding opportunities.

The idea is beyond the outcomes

It’s not the result what matters, it’s the idea and the process for getting it realized. Results will come from optimizing the process and commitment to the idea. What does this philosophy imply over a business environment? It implies that privileged knowledge is less valuable than commitment. The idea is the force that makes a group of different individuals to push in the same direction and that makes the team progress faster, even if making more mistakes due to lack of experience. It’s not winning what motivates the individuals, but the way of winning. Winning is a means for something else.
Once again it seems quite in concordance with some of the foundational values of Silicon Valley. But is it really this way today? Today you won’t listen from a VC this kind of message. You will instead quite often listen something like “ideas are worthless” and “show me the metrics”.

Rationalizing efforts matters

One of the most remembered quotes of Cruyff is: “All coaches speak about movement, about running a lot. I say it’s not necessary to run so much.” For Cruyff you play with your head, and the 85 minutes in that you are not in control of the ball are more important than the 5 minutes in that you are controlling it. You have to take pauses and think.
For Silicon Valley it’s “up to the right” what matters. It’s being earlier than your opponents at the top. Then it comes a successful exit and it’s someone else’s problem. If someone fails, someone else will succeed at it, so let’s simply try it a lot. Rationalizing expenses has no sense. We see it on the burn out ratios. Nobody wants that, but curiously they don’t say “we are doing something wrong” but “founders are doing something wrong”.

Even in a team’s game, it’s always the one vs one what matters

“The team” is the number one factor for being funded and therefore for having chances of making your project succeed. Balance between team members is more important than breakthrough talent. The consequence: only the 1% is naturally skilled to be founders and is at the same time able to disrupt a market. Privileged knowledge gets, this way, a high valuation, given that it’s the only way that a non-breakthrough team could disrupt a market. It’s not ventured to think that it has some impact on macroeconomics, slowing down the economy, and that we see the consequences on news.
For Cruyff, the player who is able to make a difference has to be on the field. The team has to adapt to his characteristics as he is the one that gives you the advantage for scoring more often than rivals.

You win if you score one more than your opponent

Silicon Valley maybe applies this rule to Venture Capital, but not to startups. Startups are supposed to fail fast or succeed. It’s a 1–0 or 0–1 strategy. You win or you lose and end of story. If you want to win later, play another match. This takes to conservative strategies for most startups. They only have one chance to win. You don’t try anything new or risky if you have only one chance. Everybody does mostly the same, except if they are second time entrepreneurs or they have their lives solved by other means. If you are going to play the game, better you are ready to do everything possible to win at first try: minimize the risks, have a tested plan.
For Cruyff, what matters is the idea and optimizing your methods. From your superior skills, in conjunction with a cohesive strategy you get the ability to break any defense and score more often than your rivals. If your opponent knows three tricks to score a goal, he will score three times, not more. The number of scores you can make, in contrast, will be decided during the match. The plan is less important than your skills, and risk is inherent to the game.

“If I start running slightly earlier than someone else, I seem faster”

For Silicon Valley (remember, I’m saying SV for simplification) being the first doesn’t matter much. If you are the first you are most often too early. Once again, SV strategy is to grow fast, starting from a privileged position, making an exit in a few years, and letting the monster created as someone else’s problem. Consequently those who are skilled for running always slightly earlier than others carry no weight on startup world.
Cruyff succeeded basically because he ran always slightly earlier than someone else. He wasn’t faster than everybody, he wasn’t stronger, he didn’t run more. He simply ran slightly earlier. And he changed the world this way. His teams got unprecedented successes and everybody now wants to play football (soccer in USA) according to his philosophy. Cruyff was innovating football all his life. He succeeded innovating; not copying innovation from real innovators.

“If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better”

For Cruyff the idea is what matters. An idea must be shared by the team and the opinion of the rest of the world doesn’t matter much. He demonstrated this attitude often in his life, being often confronted with managers, media, or the environment. The team learns by practice, not by following rules, and so, the team members are the only ones able to fully understand the strategy. Any attempt to explain it without being inside is mostly a waste of time.
This conceptis a sacrilege for Silicon Valley. For SV, ideas are worthless, and ideas that nobody understands don’t even have a name to designate them. Even if the customer doesn’t know what he wants before you make it, you better be sure that media and investors do. You won’t even start anything without being able to explain your idea. Ideas need to be simple, and understandable by everyone. It obviously limits the number of ideas that you can develop.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, I think Silicon Valley should take care not resembling too much to Germany at ’74. They are winning, but they could be obsolete faster than they expect.

P.S.: After winning the ’74 World Cup, Germany still won two European Championships and a World Cup before perceiving any need to approximate Cruyff’s philosophy.