21st Century Org Design, as seen through the eyes of a Football Nerd

Inverting The Pyramid & Reinventing Organisations

The 20th century’s paradigm of organisational structure is that of a classic hierarchical pyramid. You can picture it now: the food chain of seniority. Organisational design consultancy NOBL point out that this structure “exists because of the national railroad that connected the East and West of North America in the first decades of the 20th century…. companies could source and sell their products across vast distances, which required new forms of organizational complexity.”

Modern organisational design theories advocates dismantling that organisational architecture which can lead “to a slow, overly-bureaucratic working culture and makes companies very internally-focused, rather than oriented towards their customers”. The Future Of Work movement is committed to building new company structures that accommodate the unpredictable future that organisations now face. The focus is now on teams that are collaborative, creative, fast-moving and autonomous.

The history of football (aka “soccer”) covers almost the exact same era, and the tactics of the sport have followed a remarkably similar transformation. The first football formations, recorded in the late 19th century, were also pyramids. However, throughout the 20th century the formations and tactics have shifted such that the pyramid now takes many shapes, and teams that are best able to move the ball and work together not only win trophies, but are regarded by many as achieving high art.

Despite being obsessively interested by both football formations and org design for several years it is only recently, seeing Inverting The Pyramid and Reinventing Organisations next to each other on my bedside table, that I realized just how closely linked the two are. In this article below I draw some parallels between the history of the two disciplines, and use football tactics to explain some fundamental concepts of organisation design. In doing so, I hope to inform football strategists of the teachings of organisational designers, and vice versa.

The above diagram illustrates a rudimentary top-down hierarchy one might experience in the military or working in many legacy organisations of the 20th century. Wikipedia tells us that “possibly the first use of the English word “hierarchy” cited by the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1880" not long after the completion of the aforementioned transcontinental railroad. That same decade England played Scotland in the first ever International football match with teams lining up in a very similar fashion to the pyramid hierarchy above:

It seems a bit of a head-scratcher how either team could afford to leave just one defender (e.g. EH Greenhalg of England) up against 6 or 7 attackers (e.g. Smith, Lechie, Rhind, Mckinnon, Weir &Wetherspoon of Scotland). However, one must understand that the very idea of passing the ball from one player to another was at the time completely unheard of. Percy M. Young writes in Football In Sheffield that instead, players would “adopt the simpler and more direct method of ignoring their own colleagues and make straight for the goal on every possible occasion”. Therefore, EH Greenhalg could simply run across the back line to which ever attacking player had the ball and dispossess them. It is no surprise that this game finished 0–0, with neither team successfully able to reach their goal.

Total Football & Holocracy

Throughout the 20th century, managers began moving forward players back into midfield or defense, and focusing on the concepts of passing and teamwork. This reached it’s apotheosis with the Dutch sides of the 1970s who were inspired by the idea (taken from architectural movements of the time) that “to understand things, you have to understand the relationship between things”. The style of play they developed is famously known as Total Football (totallvoetbal), in which players (goalkeepers aside) continually swap positions, adapting to suit the situation at hand. Jonathan Wilson explains that “Total Football was a structuralist mode of play, players deriving their meaning, their significance, from their interrelationship with other players. Nothing was fixed; everything was fluid, to be negotiated on the pitch.”

The video below showcases this particularly well. In particular, look out for the bouncing afro of Holland’s Ruud Gullitt, the orange number 10, as he begins the move in a defensive midfield position, before moving to the right wing and accelerating into space as an inside-forward moments before Holland score. At he does this his teammates rotate around him to ensure that space is covered, and that that the team’s structure remains.

The Dutch players were given the autonomy to slot into roles and positions as the situation developed, and to be present for each other in resolving tensions, solving problems and reaching a common goal. To any team designer, or Agile coach, this will sound very familiar...

Allow me to get specific in using Total Football to explain one specific organisational structure. Holocracy is a modern system for self-organisation in which traditional continuous job titles replaced by Roles. People can fill several Roles, and Roles are often redefined as a company course-corrects. Roles with the same purpose are grouped together as a Circle. You may argue that a soccer team’s defensive unit is a Circle containing four Roles (right-back, two center-backs and a left-back). The Defensive Circle also has a Lead Link, the goalkeeper, whose Role is synonymous with that of the entire Defensive Circle: stop the ball going in the goal. Just as in Total Football, Holocratic Roles are occupied by a team-member only temporarily; there are no permanent job titles. Players move between Circles (defense to midfield, midfield to attack) according to the needs of the organisation, with other players slotting into new positions in order to accommodate the changes. As the phases of play changes, the structure of the organisation is updated regularly — a right-back may move up the wing to join the attacking phase, and take part in the Midfield Circle, whose purpose is to transition the ball from defense to attack. Like Holocracy, decisions are made locally by each player and this requires rigorous training as well as a rule set for how and when positions can change.

Tiki-Taka & Scrum

If the leap of logic between Total Football and Holocracy is something you are willing to indulge me in, let’s try something else... It is a truth universally acknowledged that the highest pedestal of 21st century football tactics is firmly occupied by Barcelona’s famous Tiki-Taka pass-and-move style. It is less well known that this actually had its genesis in Dutch Total Football. The man responsible for linking the two was Johann Cruyff, who typified Holland in the 70s and coached Barcelona in the 90s. He was rigorous in instilling the Total Football philosophy when he arrived at Barcelona and found players who not only believed in the style, but had the skillset to carry it off. One of these players was Pep Guardiola, who would go on to manage Barcelona for four years from 2008–2012, winning an astonishing 14 trophies in the process.

The key to Barcelona’s Tiki-Taka was the presence of two gifted midfielder-playmakers in Xavi and Iniesta, in the heart of their midfield. Xavi and Iniesta acted as a pivot in the “carousel” shuffling the ball between skilled players around them, allowing those players’ creativity to shine.

I liken this to the role of the Scrum Master, as servant/leader in an agile team — the pivot around which the project moves, who is always on the hunt for ways to make his teammates lives easier; to unblock them from tight spots where the forward path is unclear. The Argentinian national team do not always use pivots. As a result, Lionel Messi, the greatest player of modern times (unless you’re asking Cristiano Ronaldo), is much less impactful when playing for the Argentinian national team, simply because, unlike his Barcelona teammates, his compatriots aren’t as willing to immediately return the ball. At just 29, he has already quit playing for Argentina, frustrated at the style of play. Without a servant/leader to enable Messi’s brilliance to shine, Messi was frustrated at his inability to achieve his great potential. He quit the team, and Argentina lost their best talent — a lesson for any non-agile enterprise.

Xavi and Iniesta were the Scrum Masters who managed the exchange of information and allowed the team to remain agile and transition quickly. Manager Pep Guardiola was the Scrum Product Owner. He had the vision for what he wanted to build and communicated that to his team via daily training sessions. He has a solid understanding of the opposing team, the state of the squad and the wider market for players to purchase. He’s also working with stakeholders from the club — the chairman, director of football, fans representatives — to make sure that their needs are met as the product is built. During matches, while he may not be actively involved on the pitch in getting the team towards their goal, he can communicate changing priorities as the match develops depending on what has been achieved thus far.

Teaming & Sports

The link between workplace teams and sports teams is not a new one: Jeff Sutherland took the term “Scrum” from rugby, inspired by the idea of a team passing the ball down the line as they move forward. I hope to have shown in this article that the relationship goes deeper than that.

Football managers are always seeking new ways of re-organizing in order to adapt to new technologies, practices and market forces. Using football as an inspiration, I hope we can encourage more creative thought in the workplace of legacy companies, in order to adapt to a changing world, no matter how deeply entrenched companies may be in the the traditional organisational paradigm.