adminhis players. Though I am not much of a soccer fan I could not help but follow his work over the years and I have penned a few lessons we could learn from his legacy.
1. Passion. The importance of identifying your passion and pursuing it with tunnel vision is evident is his career. Finding your passion and investing all our emotions and energy into being brilliant at it will not only enhance your life experiences, but will also bring happiness and satisfaction to many others.
Sir Alex found the thing he was born to do, to manage Manchester United. The opportunity came when he was aged 46 and it kept him enthralled for 27 years. Managing Manchester United was never a job or a way of making money for him. It was his passion, a 30-hour day and nine-day week. In one sense, he never worked a day in his life and would have performed the work for free, a trait common in all great people.
2. Loyalty, patience, faith and vision. It took him seven years before his team won the Premiership. Can you imagine our local coaches getting even half that time to prove themselves? Or a corporate board giving a CEO seven years to hit his targets? There are many trustees who could learn from this, that you don’t sack a CEO after one poor year if you’ve followed a rigorous selection process. The credit here goes as much to the United board as to Sir Alex. He was also a visionary, investing in youth teams and proper scouting efforts, rather than just buying the star players of the day.
3. Take control. In any United game there was no doubt who was in charge. Sir Alex never tolerated any player becoming bigger than the team, and even when stars like David Beckham and Ruud van Nistelrooy were still at the top of their game, he moved them on when their attitude was not right. Sir Alex never lost control of the dressing room, in the same way a corporate CEO cannot lose control of his executives.
4. Resilience and discipline. Even at the age of 71 and after 26 years in charge, Sir Alex was one of the first at Old Trafford at 0700 each morning. He was very strict with his players. In his autobiography, he says: “A footballer who does not distance himself from the drinking and the late hours is asking for trouble.”
5. Decisiveness and self-belief. Sir Alex once said he believes he gets seven out of 10 decisions correct, and this is enough to win most games. It allowed him to trust his instincts and be decisive without worrying about making mistakes, which is why he always looked in control as circumstances changed throughout a game and season. His career shows incredible resilience in the face of adversity, and a single-minded determination to follow a course and rebuild the club in spite of almost universal criticism.
6. The art of regeneration. Many leaders are hostage to their past victories, they stick with investments (their star players) and methods (team formations and strategies), and sooner or later they are eclipsed by competitors with newer and innovative ideas. Sir Alex was a master of self-renewal. His thinking was innovative, energetic and ahead of time. He rebuilt United many times, often at great expense but also by fostering youth. He knew a diversity of skills and ages was required. The United youth team of 1992 contained the baby faced images of David Beckham, Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt, all future England internationals who were part of the mighty treble winning team of 1999.
7. Loyalty and support. To get buy in you have to imbibe the culture of the organisation. At his arrival in 1986, the club was a bit of a drunken mess. It had not won a league title in 19 years and its players enjoyed long, liquid pub “lunches”. Being a teetotaller he was appalled.
After his managerial triumphs in Scotland, he could have decided that the club culture was rotten and in need of an overhaul. He could have stormed in like a bullying egomaniac chief executive. Instead he spent his early days at Old Trafford interviewing people, from window cleaners and supporters to legendary former players, trying to understand the club’s values. He then set out to personify those values, such as, “United plays attacking football”, and “The world is against United”. Sir Alex always managed with the grain of a football club’s culture.
8. Stay grounded, relax and switch off. After a game when he’d seen to his players and fulfilled his media obligations, he went straight up to his den to chat with his friends. Manchester United games are watched by over 500 million people. It is one of the world’s leading brands, in every corner of the planet. Everyone wanted a piece of Sir Alex. Yet an hour after the game, he’ would be having a friendly beer with his lifelong friends as if he did not have a care in the world.
9. Knowledge is power. Despite his reputation as an irascible dictator, Sir Alex never kidded himself that he knew everything. He always kept learning. From the French player Eric Cantona, who joined the club in 1992, Sir Alex says he learnt that British footballers did not take their jobs seriously enough. From Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 900-page biography of Abraham Lincoln, “Team of Rivals”, he learnt how to manage clashing personalities within an organisation.
It is said he spent hours on the phone, sucking information from ex-players, pundits, fan leaders and fellow managers. His enormous network extended far beyond football. Each contact was nurtured till death. (Possibly nobody attended more funerals, wrote his biographer Patrick Barclay.) For Sir Alex, knowledge was power. Nothing moved inside Old Trafford without his knowing it. He knew his players’ pre-match toilet habits (and checked if they were going more than usual).
10. Succession planning and smart exit. Sir Alex presumably played a big part in the choice of his successor, David Moyes. By choosing Moyes, they have gone for someone cut from the same cloth as him, and someone young enough to potentially enjoy 10-15 year tenure himself. Similar in many ways to GE’s handover from Jack Welch to Jeff Immelt. Many leaders stay in post well after their best before date. This creates anxiety and disillusionment in the ranks, and it often leads to stagnation and decay. He has left the organisation in good shape as well, with a good crop of younger players coming through. Exiting in top form is smart, but it’s even smarter to do it in a way that sets up the next guy for success.
11. Mistakes? Well, anyone who has been around as long as Sir Alex has made his share of mistakes. Fans around the world all have views on bad signings and star players he fell out with. But my biggest worry is that he seems to be sticking around on the United board. There is nothing that makes the new guy’s job hard than having the former boss lurking in the background, second guessing your decisions. Jorma Olilla at Nokia and Stelios at Easyjet, for example, made life difficult for their successors.
Nyaradzo Mavindidze, a motivational speaker, is the Managing Consultant at Avodah Consultants, which specialises in soft skills training and coaching. For feedback email [email protected]
Online Reporter