Teamwork is all about synergy and very great endevours taken up in human history has been based on great Teamwork and synergy. So what is ideally needed for the teamwork to flourish?
Football and teamwork are synonymous and analyzing the great football clubs maybe we can answer that. I say football and teamwork are synonyms as a good football cannot be played independently but needs a good team spirit and support both on and off the field.
Now when we talk of different clubs on how they handle the team each club has a different style and philosophy. Say for example, when we say of FC Barcelona. They play beautiful possession football. Right now they are the best team in the world, even after their best ever manager left last year in 2012. They play as per the guidelines and culture of total football laid down by Johan Cryuff long time back. They have a football training school called La Masia which teaches this basic principle of teamwork and mutual respect along with football playing skills.
Some of key aspects of team spirit can be understood by looking at the way the Barcelona plays.
1) Creating space for the team mate to move with the ball either by blocking opponents or by a faking run.
2) If your teammate is in trouble with the ball, making oneself available to receive the ball.
3) Appreciating a good pass from your teammate, recognizing a good save and celebrating a goal with the whole team.
4) Never shout at your teammate for missing a golden opportunity. Always believe that we can always create a new one.
5) Fighting together to win the ball possession back, even though, it was not you who lost the possession of the ball.
6) Running back to defend with all the energy accepting the mistake that you made by losing the possession of the ball. Also next time when you have the ball, playing with confidence that you will not lose the ball.
7) Accepting the role of a substitute and sitting on the bench with a smile. Understanding that every great team needs good bench strength. At the same time fighting with a healthy sportsman spirit by sharpening your skills and knowledge to be a regular starter in the team.
8) Always taking the training sessions and team discipline seriously. Playing and training as per the strategy and tactics decided by coaching staff and management. Respecting the Team Manager as he has done lot of ground work and has plenty of experience and competent enough to design the strategy.
It is a choice a leader will have to make. Either you invest your time and energy in team building and get a great result out of the synergy or continue to pump money into the club on regular basis and buy some good players and assemble a team and get a reasonable result. Some choose a hybrid of the two like Manchester United. Barcelona legends chose the first option. They have now a great team that the world whole respects.
Great teams are built on strong foundations based on long term vision by great leaders with a disciplined culture and high values. It may take years or even decades for some results to show but the team must have faith in the tradition and have patience to stick together.
The people in Barcelona appreciate football and humility. This does make the manager’s job a bit easy but still it is difficult. Especially when the backbone of the team is same as that of the Spain’s national team and they have won almost every tournament that they have played. (Please note Spain won 2008 & 2012 Euro Cup and 2010 World Cup) So to motivate the team and plan for every week that they keep winning week in week out – NEVER EASY. Some may argue that these players have attained the highest hierarchy level of self actualization as per the theory of motivation by A H Maslow, when they don’t want lose anything. But still to keep the hunger of winning every game alive and play with same level of telepathic passing, eye pleasing game of possession football –it is incredible. May be it is that there is no dearth of talent with players waiting in La Masia to get into Barcelona B team and from B team to get into A team that these top quality players are forced to still maintaining their game at really top level. At the same time be so humble and flexible to accept a new member in the team and at times even sitting on the bench to allow the new player get the real feel of the game. If he is not he is shown the doors, however great the player is-he can’t be greater than the club policy and culture. But the club also respects their loyalty to the club.
Say for example, Messi who has won the fourth Ballon Dor is so down to earth. Everyone knows he is not going to leave Barcelona, even if someone would approach him with a billion dollar contract. It may be because Barcelona had paid the medical bill for his growth hormone treatment when he was 13 years old. Or that is his integrity and loyalty for the club. But the club signed a new contract extending it to 2018 even though a contract was in place and still running till 2014. That is mutual respect. Similarly they extended the contract of Xavi and Puyol. New contract does imply a wage hike with contract extension.
Treat the team members with respect and dignity. Recognize and appreciate their contribution and never take them for granted.
Just imagine we managed to bring in Messi, Xavi and Puyol and ask them to play for India, do you think they will win the World Cup for India or even qualify for one?
Barcelona had won 14 of the possible 16 titles in last four years when Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid won La Liga from them title last year. This year they came back stronger with a record start to the season winning 55 points of the possible 57 and lead the La Liga table by 11 points.
Another example that comes to my mind is of Manchester United. This club was nowhere in world map when Sir Alex Ferguson took over some 26 years ago. They were very inferior in history when compared to Liverpool. They only drive SAF had in his mind were to have more trophies in his cabinet than that of Liverpool. Liverpool had won 18 premier league titles, and recently two years back Manchester United won the 19th premier league title.
So to build a great team you should have even a greater competitor who gives you a cut throat competition. A competitor that motivates you to go a step further.
Even national team management is difficult task as the players are not available all the time and clubs release them only on the FIFA regulated dates in the calendar. Here the managers and his support team needs to do ground work and some even visit the club games and interact and see whether the players will fit in the squad. One of the Netherlands’ managers Bert Van Marwik has said that the players in a team need not be great friends but should have mutual respect for each other. Vincent Del Bosque who has successfully managed Real Madrid Galaticos consisting of David Beckham and Zidane found no difficulty in handling the Spain squad of Real Madrid and Barcelona stars. Mind you, Real Madrid and Barcelona are fierce rivals in the La Liga, the Spanish football league. Still they won the 2010 World Cup and retained the 2012 Euro Cup.
So bottom line is – team building is all about managing egos and motivating the team to cultivate a habit of winning. At the same time replace a player who breaks the harmony of the dressing room.
I remember the news headlines of Sir Alex Ferguson throwing the boot on football star Beckham and asking him to leave, people said it was over for SAF and Man Utd. But SAF rebuild the team. They won many titles after that. Then, came the time for Cristiano Ronaldo to leave as he had grown bigger than the club. Now again SAF is rebuilding the team. During that time Rooney was growing through a bad phase in his personal life and wanted to leave. But SAF convinced him to stay. He is 71 and he still has got the same passion and fire to go on and rebuild a team to win another premier league title this year. He was called to Harvard business school to give a talk on his managerial career at Manchester United. He said it is difficult line between using fear and love that he has to travel to manage the team. Everyone knows the hard firing hairdyer treatment SAF gives to his players in the dressing room if they under perform. But players just love him and many respect him as many don't know his soft side.
It is very thin line that divides a good ego from bad ego. An individual is motivated to achieve more to satisfy his ego. The drive to go a step further or bring a complete paradigm shift is guided by skill, talent and ego. But too much ego can be devastating to a team’s atmosphere and the manager needs to make the right call at the right time.
So a good team means right people at the right places. Convincing the individuals about a dream and vision and the role he has to play to make it come true.
The one thing good and easy about football management is that everything is transparent and open to all. If one player underperforms or commits a mistake- he has to face the music as per the laid rules of the team management. Especially, when you are playing week in week out. You get a quick feedback. If you win you will be appreciated and applauded and criticized when you lose. The way many managers handle this situation is that they face the press after a loss and let the players hog the limelight when they win.
This has bad effect too. Like the case of Jose Mourinho at Chelsea. He was building a new team at Chelsea and winning too, a few of them. But owner was very ambitious not patient and wanted more and more trophies. He sacked Jose Mourinho. People easily forget that SAF took 5-10 years to build a team. The management was very patient with SAF as compared to Chelsea management. Not only that, the Management did not give José free hand to run his team. They were continuously interfering with his style of play. This left Jose frustrated many a times, which ultimately led to his sacking. Now it has become very common to see football managers and coaches being sacked in less than six months.
This thing of quick feedback on performence is at times is not very clearly visible or possible in an intellectual/ scientific/technical project/assignment/experiment till the project or an assignment or an experiment fails. This issue is even more crucial with strategic and classified projects. This make the feedback loop really long that it is too late to make corrections thereafter.
Divide the larger tasks into smaller ones evenly among smaller teams and evaluate each at shortest possible time with pre-defined goals and milestones and frozen design requirements. Allow Project/Team managers to choose his Project/team. Don’t interfere with the Project/team’s style of working. Appreciate the success and critically analyze the failures but never take knee jerk reactions.
Another aspect regarding football that I like is raising the bar every year with the concept of promotion and relegation of teams in the league. The league in each country is divided into different leagues namely first division-where the best quality clubs in the country play, the second division and third division and so on - with each division having some twenty clubs playing each other -on home and away basis every week. In the end of the each season, top 3 clubs in third division is promoted to second division, and bottom 3 clubs in second division is relegated to third division. Similarly top 3 clubs in second division is promoted to first division, and bottom 3 clubs in first division is relegated to second division. The top three in first division go on to play next season with best three of other countries in big money Champions League. Going up the ladder the prize money increases and so is the quality of the game and players.
Classify projects as tier I and tier II. Have more challenging projects reserved for teams which successfully deliver second tier projects. Relegate the teams to handle second tier projects which don’t deliver first tier projects successfully. Always have at least two teams handling a tier I project which are supposed to be very critical and challenging.
Another incident that I want point out is - not related to teamwork but still is useful in project management. It is regarding Arsenal management sticking with Arsene Wenger even though he hasn’t won anything since 2004. This was a result of the management decision was to move from 30000 seats Highbury stadium to 65000 seats emeritus Stadium. This transition phase has led to small bad patch in Arsenal’s football glory and revenue. This lead to a situation of big names leaving the club as the club could not afford to pay their wages. The club also could not manage to sign good players. Arsene Wenger had to manage with the home grown players. They slowly moved into the new stadium and reached a break even situation. But till date they have finished in top four and always qualified for UEFA Champions’ league Group 16- keeping the gate registers ticking and TV broadcast revenue coming. This financial prudence lesson is for everyone. At the time when whole world was going through recession, clubs were going bankrupt after having continuously spent more than they earn, Arsenal is one of the few football clubs who have a significant profit to show on their balance sheet.
Football and teamwork are synonymous and analyzing the great football clubs maybe we can answer that. I say football and teamwork are synonyms as a good football cannot be played independently but needs a good team spirit and support both on and off the field.
Now when we talk of different clubs on how they handle the team each club has a different style and philosophy. Say for example, when we say of FC Barcelona. They play beautiful possession football. Right now they are the best team in the world, even after their best ever manager left last year in 2012. They play as per the guidelines and culture of total football laid down by Johan Cryuff long time back. They have a football training school called La Masia which teaches this basic principle of teamwork and mutual respect along with football playing skills.
Some of key aspects of team spirit can be understood by looking at the way the Barcelona plays.
1) Creating space for the team mate to move with the ball either by blocking opponents or by a faking run.
2) If your teammate is in trouble with the ball, making oneself available to receive the ball.
3) Appreciating a good pass from your teammate, recognizing a good save and celebrating a goal with the whole team.
4) Never shout at your teammate for missing a golden opportunity. Always believe that we can always create a new one.
5) Fighting together to win the ball possession back, even though, it was not you who lost the possession of the ball.
6) Running back to defend with all the energy accepting the mistake that you made by losing the possession of the ball. Also next time when you have the ball, playing with confidence that you will not lose the ball.
7) Accepting the role of a substitute and sitting on the bench with a smile. Understanding that every great team needs good bench strength. At the same time fighting with a healthy sportsman spirit by sharpening your skills and knowledge to be a regular starter in the team.
8) Always taking the training sessions and team discipline seriously. Playing and training as per the strategy and tactics decided by coaching staff and management. Respecting the Team Manager as he has done lot of ground work and has plenty of experience and competent enough to design the strategy.
It is a choice a leader will have to make. Either you invest your time and energy in team building and get a great result out of the synergy or continue to pump money into the club on regular basis and buy some good players and assemble a team and get a reasonable result. Some choose a hybrid of the two like Manchester United. Barcelona legends chose the first option. They have now a great team that the world whole respects.
Great teams are built on strong foundations based on long term vision by great leaders with a disciplined culture and high values. It may take years or even decades for some results to show but the team must have faith in the tradition and have patience to stick together.
The people in Barcelona appreciate football and humility. This does make the manager’s job a bit easy but still it is difficult. Especially when the backbone of the team is same as that of the Spain’s national team and they have won almost every tournament that they have played. (Please note Spain won 2008 & 2012 Euro Cup and 2010 World Cup) So to motivate the team and plan for every week that they keep winning week in week out – NEVER EASY. Some may argue that these players have attained the highest hierarchy level of self actualization as per the theory of motivation by A H Maslow, when they don’t want lose anything. But still to keep the hunger of winning every game alive and play with same level of telepathic passing, eye pleasing game of possession football –it is incredible. May be it is that there is no dearth of talent with players waiting in La Masia to get into Barcelona B team and from B team to get into A team that these top quality players are forced to still maintaining their game at really top level. At the same time be so humble and flexible to accept a new member in the team and at times even sitting on the bench to allow the new player get the real feel of the game. If he is not he is shown the doors, however great the player is-he can’t be greater than the club policy and culture. But the club also respects their loyalty to the club.
Say for example, Messi who has won the fourth Ballon Dor is so down to earth. Everyone knows he is not going to leave Barcelona, even if someone would approach him with a billion dollar contract. It may be because Barcelona had paid the medical bill for his growth hormone treatment when he was 13 years old. Or that is his integrity and loyalty for the club. But the club signed a new contract extending it to 2018 even though a contract was in place and still running till 2014. That is mutual respect. Similarly they extended the contract of Xavi and Puyol. New contract does imply a wage hike with contract extension.
Treat the team members with respect and dignity. Recognize and appreciate their contribution and never take them for granted.
Just imagine we managed to bring in Messi, Xavi and Puyol and ask them to play for India, do you think they will win the World Cup for India or even qualify for one?
Barcelona had won 14 of the possible 16 titles in last four years when Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid won La Liga from them title last year. This year they came back stronger with a record start to the season winning 55 points of the possible 57 and lead the La Liga table by 11 points.
Another example that comes to my mind is of Manchester United. This club was nowhere in world map when Sir Alex Ferguson took over some 26 years ago. They were very inferior in history when compared to Liverpool. They only drive SAF had in his mind were to have more trophies in his cabinet than that of Liverpool. Liverpool had won 18 premier league titles, and recently two years back Manchester United won the 19th premier league title.
So to build a great team you should have even a greater competitor who gives you a cut throat competition. A competitor that motivates you to go a step further.
Even national team management is difficult task as the players are not available all the time and clubs release them only on the FIFA regulated dates in the calendar. Here the managers and his support team needs to do ground work and some even visit the club games and interact and see whether the players will fit in the squad. One of the Netherlands’ managers Bert Van Marwik has said that the players in a team need not be great friends but should have mutual respect for each other. Vincent Del Bosque who has successfully managed Real Madrid Galaticos consisting of David Beckham and Zidane found no difficulty in handling the Spain squad of Real Madrid and Barcelona stars. Mind you, Real Madrid and Barcelona are fierce rivals in the La Liga, the Spanish football league. Still they won the 2010 World Cup and retained the 2012 Euro Cup.
So bottom line is – team building is all about managing egos and motivating the team to cultivate a habit of winning. At the same time replace a player who breaks the harmony of the dressing room.
I remember the news headlines of Sir Alex Ferguson throwing the boot on football star Beckham and asking him to leave, people said it was over for SAF and Man Utd. But SAF rebuild the team. They won many titles after that. Then, came the time for Cristiano Ronaldo to leave as he had grown bigger than the club. Now again SAF is rebuilding the team. During that time Rooney was growing through a bad phase in his personal life and wanted to leave. But SAF convinced him to stay. He is 71 and he still has got the same passion and fire to go on and rebuild a team to win another premier league title this year. He was called to Harvard business school to give a talk on his managerial career at Manchester United. He said it is difficult line between using fear and love that he has to travel to manage the team. Everyone knows the hard firing hairdyer treatment SAF gives to his players in the dressing room if they under perform. But players just love him and many respect him as many don't know his soft side.
It is very thin line that divides a good ego from bad ego. An individual is motivated to achieve more to satisfy his ego. The drive to go a step further or bring a complete paradigm shift is guided by skill, talent and ego. But too much ego can be devastating to a team’s atmosphere and the manager needs to make the right call at the right time.
So a good team means right people at the right places. Convincing the individuals about a dream and vision and the role he has to play to make it come true.
The one thing good and easy about football management is that everything is transparent and open to all. If one player underperforms or commits a mistake- he has to face the music as per the laid rules of the team management. Especially, when you are playing week in week out. You get a quick feedback. If you win you will be appreciated and applauded and criticized when you lose. The way many managers handle this situation is that they face the press after a loss and let the players hog the limelight when they win.
This has bad effect too. Like the case of Jose Mourinho at Chelsea. He was building a new team at Chelsea and winning too, a few of them. But owner was very ambitious not patient and wanted more and more trophies. He sacked Jose Mourinho. People easily forget that SAF took 5-10 years to build a team. The management was very patient with SAF as compared to Chelsea management. Not only that, the Management did not give José free hand to run his team. They were continuously interfering with his style of play. This left Jose frustrated many a times, which ultimately led to his sacking. Now it has become very common to see football managers and coaches being sacked in less than six months.
This thing of quick feedback on performence is at times is not very clearly visible or possible in an intellectual/ scientific/technical project/assignment/experiment till the project or an assignment or an experiment fails. This issue is even more crucial with strategic and classified projects. This make the feedback loop really long that it is too late to make corrections thereafter.
Divide the larger tasks into smaller ones evenly among smaller teams and evaluate each at shortest possible time with pre-defined goals and milestones and frozen design requirements. Allow Project/Team managers to choose his Project/team. Don’t interfere with the Project/team’s style of working. Appreciate the success and critically analyze the failures but never take knee jerk reactions.
Another aspect regarding football that I like is raising the bar every year with the concept of promotion and relegation of teams in the league. The league in each country is divided into different leagues namely first division-where the best quality clubs in the country play, the second division and third division and so on - with each division having some twenty clubs playing each other -on home and away basis every week. In the end of the each season, top 3 clubs in third division is promoted to second division, and bottom 3 clubs in second division is relegated to third division. Similarly top 3 clubs in second division is promoted to first division, and bottom 3 clubs in first division is relegated to second division. The top three in first division go on to play next season with best three of other countries in big money Champions League. Going up the ladder the prize money increases and so is the quality of the game and players.
Classify projects as tier I and tier II. Have more challenging projects reserved for teams which successfully deliver second tier projects. Relegate the teams to handle second tier projects which don’t deliver first tier projects successfully. Always have at least two teams handling a tier I project which are supposed to be very critical and challenging.
Another incident that I want point out is - not related to teamwork but still is useful in project management. It is regarding Arsenal management sticking with Arsene Wenger even though he hasn’t won anything since 2004. This was a result of the management decision was to move from 30000 seats Highbury stadium to 65000 seats emeritus Stadium. This transition phase has led to small bad patch in Arsenal’s football glory and revenue. This lead to a situation of big names leaving the club as the club could not afford to pay their wages. The club also could not manage to sign good players. Arsene Wenger had to manage with the home grown players. They slowly moved into the new stadium and reached a break even situation. But till date they have finished in top four and always qualified for UEFA Champions’ league Group 16- keeping the gate registers ticking and TV broadcast revenue coming. This financial prudence lesson is for everyone. At the time when whole world was going through recession, clubs were going bankrupt after having continuously spent more than they earn, Arsenal is one of the few football clubs who have a significant profit to show on their balance sheet.
Always appreciate financial prudence even if there are no visible results to show the project success. This may be as technologies transferred or royalties earned or even wise reuse of items declared surplus. Or may be proving a costly dream project is not technically or financially viable.
Then I end with a final word on referees and FIFA structure. The backbone of the complete world of football is football governing body FIFA and its group of highly competent impartial referees. The FIFA handles the laws of the game and makes necessary amendments as and when needed.
Always have a set of highly qualified competent neutral unbiased set of reviewer and council of intellectuals, people with integrity, which reviews the project, its team members and rules of the management based on the preamble of organization values and mandate as and when required. The people who are supposed to be saviors become destroyers than nobody can help.
Acknowledgement:The source of inspiration FC Barcelona is gratefully acknowledged.
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