Learning by failing
I have decided to write a blog about failure, and I am going to use ex-Manchester United footballer Gary Neville as my case study.
At first glance it might seem a strange choice. As a player, Neville won the English Premier League Championship 8 times, the FA Cup 3 times and the European Champions League twice. Very few players end up with such a large collection of winners medals.
However, as a manager it is a very different story. His first and (so far) only experience of club management was at Spanish club Valencia. The decision to go to Spain for his first management role, despite not speaking the language, took a lot of people by surprise and it certainly took courage, but it did not go well. He was appointed in December 2015 and ended up winning only 3 of his 16 league games in charge before being sacked less than 4 months later.
I’m sure the language barrier didn’t help and he also had to grapple with wider issues around the way the club was being run, so it was always going to be difficult, but Neville hasn’t returned to club management since. Instead he has focused mainly on his career as a pundit analysing matches on TV. He does this well, but surely he misses the competitive cut-and-thrust of driving a team towards success?
As a Manchester United fan, I hope he decides to take on a similar challenge again soon. My hunch is that Neville learnt more in his few months as a manager at Valencia than he did in his 18 years as a player at Manchester United.
I work in a very different industry but I have also taken on roles where the learning curve was steep, and on occasion I also found myself moving on before too long, but I have absolutely no regrets. I learnt a great deal each time and can confidently say I came out the other end each time with far more knowledge of how to do things — and how not to do things. In fact, my main career regrets stem from allowing myself to stay too long in roles where I was too far inside my comfort zone. If you’re not being stretched and not learning in a role, you have to ask yourself why you are still there.
So here is my message to Gary Neville — I am convinced you have what it takes to manage Manchester United one day. You may need to experience failure again along the way. I am not suggesting for a moment that your aim should be to become “a specialist in failure” but if you step out of your comfort zone and become a manager again, you’ll be taking a step closer to the cut-and-thrust of driving Manchester United towards success as manager. I’d love to see that happen and I know many many other United fans would too!
