Manchester City just became the first team in history to win the Premier League championship four years in a row, with the chance to win the FA Cup this coming weekend. They are a dynasty, with 6 premiership wins in the last 7 seasons and many other trophies including the coveted Champions League.
I enjoy looking at sports as an analogy to business, and watching Pep Guardiola manage his team to success whilst making constant changes definitely hits home with what I have seen at my companies over the years (and what I haven’t seen!).
Long Term Success
I have seen two extremes when it comes to building a great team.
- Extreme 1: Hire the best people and let them do their thing
- Extreme 2: Build the right systems and the rest will follow
I have come to learn that the best long term results come from multiplying the two in certain ways.
When I look at what Manchester City have done for this long term success, it stems from a large number of ingredients, many of which are flywheels to each other.
Recruitment
They are constantly bringing in amazing talent into an already high quality and substantial squad. They never rest on their laurels here, with the example of Doku coming in right after Jack Grealish to have strong backup and competition on the left flank. Always Be Recruiting.
The Money Machine
Recruiting great players requires funds. The financial fair play system in the premier league is a joke, but requires that you are getting revenue in every possible way (sell those t-shirts!) as well as selling players wisely. Man City has the highest wage bill in the league, which means it has the best chance to have the best squad. How can you recruit top talent?
Setting The Bar
The culture has to drive everyone to be the best they can be, as individuals helping the overall team. Senior players need to show new players what good looks like, and how they need to work to reach it. Manchester City players work their arses off on the field. They don’t sit there with ego and think they can do anything else, which happens with some clubs and players who think they are the bees knees.
The right mix of senior and junior is critical, and the changing room is where a lot of things get worked out. The manager doesn’t do all of the work, a lot happens through the senior players!
How is the bar set on or across your team?
Style Of Play
Teams have a “style of play”, and clubs such as Man City and Liverpool do a fantastic job of driving this though out all levels. When you have your academy driving this style into the youngsters, they have the best chance to break through into the first team. We saw this when Liverpool won the league cup this year with many of their academy players starting due to a huge number of injuries.
How are you defining and driving a style of development throughout the company?
Individual vs. Team Tactics
Without a style of play framework you still need room for tactical tweaks depending on the individuals in the team and their strengths, as well as the opposition that you are up against.
The style of play is so strong, that many admire the fact that even when Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne were injured, Phil Foden and Julian Arvarez fit right in to continued success. They are very ers.different players, and Pep tweaked the system to make sure the overall team was setup with these players in those positions. This is where the art comes in.
How are you balancing a team that can flex as personnel come and go, and making sure that individuals bring their strengths?
Time to Peak
A season is long, and just as the best trainers have their horses peak for the big races, you need to think about keeping the team healthy over the long term, and knowing when you need to peak. For example, when I was at Walmart, we knew that Black Friday and the holiday period wasn’t going to move for anyone. ~80% of all revenue comes in that period, and thus we need to be ready for that time. Elsewhere, you may have Conference Driven Development or other deadlines that you feel you need to peak for. Manchester City famously makes sure that they are close enough to strike in April, and finish through the posts really strong. What is your cadence and how do you stay a healthy team?
Aligned to the goals
How do you stay hungry? After the third premier league how does the team get up for putting in all of the work that they know is required to start again? You need to align the purpose as much as possible. Does your team know why you are all gathered to do this work and why it is important?
Where I have seen things gone wrong
I have learned through mistakes and observations where one of the extremes has been ignored to ill effect.
All people, no systems
At Walmart, one of my regrets was how I didn’t make sure that certain systems were in place. This resulted in far too much hero culture, and when the heroes moved on, there wasn’t resiliency in place to be able to handle things. We hired great people, but didn’t have a system for the long term.
All systems, not thinking people
I am now seeing many mistakes when it comes to layoffs that are far too much about systems and ignoring the fact that the humans involved aren’t all equal.
I recently spoke to an engineering director who had 35% of their team laid off, but with the “good news” that they have the HC back but only for hiring L4s in India. They didn’t have a say in who was leg go, and shockingly it included some of the most productive members of the team with deep knowledge locked in their heads.
Instead of giving full ownership to a team in India, they now have to deal w/ managing with a team across many time zones. Penny wise, pound foolish. I am so curious why leadership is giving “Strat Ops” teams spreadsheets to normalize wrt HC.
I know of other leaders who play with config files that allow them to change the wingspan of a manager to reports ratio. No nuance allowed.
I am excited to make sure that at Augment we grow at the right pace, and work to have the talent density that allows smaller teams do more, and cut out communication costs and hierarchy that massive teams often cause. One of the reasons I am so excited for what we are building at Augment is that I really believe it can help keep teams small by allowing the conscious creatures the ability to do what works best for them, with help from our 24/7 available computer systems.
Durable Success = The Best Set Of People * The Right Evolving Systems