What can businesses learn from Leicester City’s title win? — Quite a lot actually
I’m loath to add to the tidal wave of media coverage following Leicester City’s Premier league title victory at the weekend (especially as I’m a Spurs season-ticket holder), but it’s been the unavoidable story of the last 7 days and I felt obliged to add to that noise with my own unique take, as a half-football obsessive, half-business consultant.
So just how have Leicester pulled off the ‘impossible dream’? Most of the media talk has been centred around the manager, Claudio Ranieri, who arrived just 9 months ago with the team relegation favourites, on the back of a disastrous previous role in charge of the Greek national team. To focus just on Ranieri would do an incredible disservice to long-standing members of the backroom staff, many of whom were there when Leicester were in League 1 not so long ago. If you ever needed the perfect case study of the power of creating well-balanced, functional team that plays to the strength of the collective then this is it. So without further ado here are my 4 lessons businesses can take from Leicester’s success:
1. Managers starting at a new business should observe carefully before making any changes
Yes, Leicester have been brilliant over a 38 game season, but let’s not forget that they ended the previous season on phenomenal form. Bottom of the league with 9 games to go, they won 7 of the remaining fixtures and flew up to 14th place by the end of the campaign. Ultimately, they were the form team going into this season and had the manager, Nigel Pearson, not been sacked for non-football reasons during the summer it’s unlikely they would have been fancied so heavily for relegation. Change brings tension and uncertainty both to the outside world looking in and undoubtedly to the players inside the club who could be understandably wary that a new manager would come in and rip up all the good work previously achieved… especially if that new manager had a reputation for being ‘The Tinkerman’.
I was fascinated to learn therefore that when Ranieri took charge of Leicester the first thing he did was… absolutely nothing. And he did that for about week upon arriving. Ok, so it wasn’t absolutely nothing, instead he did something incredibly smart. He observed. Keeper Kasper Schmeichel revealed Ranieri’s unusual tactic recently:
“The best compliment I can pay is he resisted the urge to change everything. He came in the first week, introduced himself and then didn’t say anything for the following week.”
“He just watched us, how we worked and recognised he had a squad that worked well with each other, got on well and trained hard.“
“As a player, you appreciate a manager who can maybe compromise his own ways a bit for the good of the team. He did tweak things here and there — tactical things, like going 4–4–2. But he kept the whole backroom team together, which is a good link for us.”
It would be easy for new managers to come in and surround themselves with people they trust, change things to make themselves feel more comfortable, recruit a whole new team; but Ranieri was smarter than that. He took a step back, assessed what he had at his disposal, and upon realising he had the spine of a well-oiled machine, just needed to tinker with the formula slightly to achieve the marginal gains he needed to take the team to the next level.
Think about the businesses you’ve worked with for minute. How often have you seen senior managers come in take one look at the process, at the brand vision or the team structures and declare them to be completely alien and unworkable, then immediately rip it up and put their own structures in place? That might work if the organisation is struggling and in despair, but frequently managers come along and change things unnecessarily to make themselves feel more comfortable and to make their mark early. More often than not it proves counterproductive and only works to alienate existing employees.
2. A successful team is about creating balance and playing to your strengths
In the last decade 4–4–2 had fallen out of vogue to be more commonly replaced by the 4–2–3–1, which is designed to enable teams to hold more controlled possession of the ball, but Leicester played against type this season by adopting the 4–4–2 and sticking with it rigidly throughout the season. One of the key reasons the formation works so well, is that it allows the team to function as a clear unit and essentially, to work in pairs. The 2 centre backs, the 2 centre midfields, the 2 strikers, the winger and full-back on each side. Building relationships and partnerships is key to the productivity of any team.
Trust and understanding between the pair creates efficiency and effectiveness and more often than not that bond builds to the extent where each individual knows the other’s strengths and weakness and is able to cover and complement them. In my industry (marketing), it’s common for creative teams to come in pairs. They each know the others’ style and understand what they’re thinking. This frequently fosters great work and builds confidence in the rest of the team that the particular unit can be trusted to get on with their job and allow the other members of the team to focus on what they do best within their role.
More obviously, especially with regards to Leicester, playing to your strengths means observing the business and the people you have at your disposal and creating a system that helps individuals flourish and feel comfortable, but which ultimately benefits the team as a whole.
One of the first things Ranieri would have observed at Leicester would have been the centre-backs. Wes Morgan and Robert Huth are both seasoned pros and with all due respect are what you might regard as an ‘old-school’ pairing. Big and strong, especially in the air, but slow and cumbersome, particular when faced with more nimble, pacey opposition. Playing to their strengths would mean Leicester needed to defend deep and protect the space around Huth and Morgan, in turn forcing the opposition out wide into crossing positions which the centre-backs were much more comfortable dealing with.
It goes without saying that once Leicester had created a defensive plan they needed to work out how to cause harm to the opposition at the other end of the field. The answer, since they’d already decided to play deep, lay in a pacey striker, Jamie Vardy. By utilising the pace of Vardy, knowing teams would be pressing high against their defence, they were able to revitalise their attack through a player within their existing squad. Vardy went from 26 starts and just 5 goals in the previous season to 34 starts and 22 goals in this one, winning the Football Writers Player of the Year to boot.
It goes without saying therefore, that there’s so much businesses can take from this approach to management. Let’s take New Business, where the firm will often attempt to diversify their client base by pitching for clients in sectors and countries they’ve not worked in before. Yes, this is one inevitable consequence of growth, but it’s often a futile effort pitching against more experienced competitors, which wastes time and resource amongst staff that could be more effectively used searching for further opportunities to grow in areas the business already specialises in, but have not yet exhausted. Playing to your strengths might be predictable, but it’s efficient and frequently gets results. If those strengths lie within existing members of the team, then build your structure to support and complement those vital parts of your staffing unit.
3. Don’t be afraid to pivot on your ideas… even when you’re ahead
Probably the most fascinating (and key) aspect of Leicester’s success this season is that they actually changed their style midway through the campaign. The season began with the same 4–4–2 structure and spine, but more attacking players in wide positions in particular. This lead to a run of pretty exciting matches and high score lines (4–2, 3–2, 2–2, 3–2, 2–2, 3–2, etc.).
Great for the fans, but ultimately those score lines are the reason many people expected Leicester to eventually fade. Scoring goals is fun, but it’s unpredictable and only takes one miss or a striker off form and the results will quickly turn against you. Ranieri anticipated this and pivoted. In their first 18 games Leicester conceded 25 goals; in the following 18 games they conceded just 9 goals. The attacking wide players were replaced with more defensive minded players to complement the strong centre-backs. It was this unexpected pivot to an already successful formula that was the catalyst for a championship winning charge.
Just when the opposition thought they were getting to grips with Leicester, they took everyone by surprise and changed tact, enabling them to race away to the title with 2 games to spare. It might seem crazy to encourage businesses to change a winning formula whilst they’re on top, but actually if you look a little deeper, all Leicester did was re-analyse their strengths and weaknesses and make minor adjustments to the product to improve the overall service to its fans/customers. The moral of the story being, don’t rest on your laurels. Be critical of your product and output, even in times of growth and be able to optimise elements of that product quickly, with minimal disruption to the output.
4. Think out of the box with your recruitment strategy
This particular element of success really cannot be understated. No organisation succeeds without intelligent and gifted people at its core and how often do you hear recruitment specialists or business managers say how difficult it is to find good people these days? Well it’s even more difficult if your direct competitors have greater resources, better conditions, better long-term prospects and ultimately, are able to offer significantly greater wages.
To bridge this gap Leicester City have implemented a long-term strategy for recruitment which has unearthed talent that the average football fan had never heard of before last season. The Players Player of the Year, Mahrez, was signed from Le Harve in French Ligue 2 for £450,000 and Vardy was signed from non-league Fleetwood Town for £1m. Both risky signings as unknown quantities, but still young enough to be coached to better things, or sold off without much loss of value should things go south. This season Kante has arrived from Caen and Okazaki from Mainz in Germany. Neither signing made many headlines, but both were crucial to the season and balance of the team as a whole.
Whereas rivals spent big on the obvious talent, Leicester looked outside of the box, using data and analytics to reassure their decision making process. Businesses should adopt a similar approach when thinking about recruiting new skills to their team. Think about the skills you require, the type of expertise and thinking that could prove beneficial and look to other industries for that talent. New ideas were never created from inward thinking. Remember, the key to recruitment and team building is that it’s always about the person and the skills they offer and not the awards they one or the education they received.
I’m certain this list could be added to by people more experienced and intelligent than I am, but Leicester’s success has inspired me to think more carefully about both the strategic and daily projects and requests that land on my desk, and has challenged me to embrace the impossible and attack even the most daunting of puzzles. Here’s to writing another blog in 12 months’ time trying to understand how Leicester went on to become Champions League winners.
