He's got your back

Football fans know that value of a good manager. Ask Manchester United fans, who found out to their cost last season – and who will undoubtedly find out again (to their pleasure) next season when Louis Van Gaal takes over, and they start winning once more.

Indeed, I can think of no other industry where the value of a good manager is so obvious – and this explains why so many managers lose their jobs, or get offered better ones, at such a high frequency. The parallels between football and the business world are obvious, but only in football do managerial problems (and successes) seem to be taken seriously.

The value of experience

One of the many reasons David Moyes didn’t succeed at Manchester United was experience. He had no experience of managing players with massive egos, no experience of managing a global brand, and no experience of taking on a club with such levels of recent success. When he joined my club, Everton, he was taking over from the hapless Walter Smith. Quickly, he turned the club around and over time, built solid foundations on very little money.

That was his experience – but it wasn’t the experience United needed.

Therefore – the value of experience is relative. David Moyes would be a key asset to a club similar to Everton – one that needs foundations built, one that needs to turn around poor results. When recruiting managers, we sift through their CV and we analyse their past, but do we ever ask ourselves: is this experience relative to our position now – and where we want to be? This takes it up a level – and if we’re asking about where we want to be, are we providing these managers with the relevant training?

The value of respect

David Moyes didn’t have the backing of his team. Nor did his backroom staff, one of whom was nicknamed **** off – because that’s all the team ever said to him.

Our managers need to command respect, and that’s never an easy skill to learn. Very often, it’s innate, and we have to discern it ourselves. Very often, it’s learned on the job, but when respect isn’t being earned, performance suffers.

Look further into the past, and the case of Brian Clough at Leeds further highlights the respect issue. A winning team, who loved their previous manager, turned into a losing team because they hated their new one (who had shown them, in turn, very little respect).

There are parallels between Leeds’ old manager, Don Revie, and Uruguay’s manager Oscar Tabarez (above). Tabarez defended the biter Luis Suarez – and helped create a siege mentality.

Now, we don’t want siege mentalities in our offices up and down the land. However, this is something that even David Moyes succeeded in doing at Everton – building a strong team that works together by saying “I’ve got your back.”

I believe that this phrase is one of the most important you can ever use as a manager. It implies trust and respect, and tells your employee that whatever they do, you’re going to back them. You won’t let them down.

That’s the key here – a manager should not just have the experience, but they should have the resolve to back up their team at all times. More than that, they should take responsibility for success and failure, and not blame individuals, at least publicly.

The value of setting expectations

One of the great things about David Moyes’ Everton sides – and to a greater extent – Brian Clough’s teams, is that everyone knew what was expected of them.

It seemed so different at Manchester United, when Moyes was chopping and changing all the time, experimenting with different defensive formations and players.

If you go back to the 1990s, you’ll find plenty of teams such as Wimbledon, and even Ireland, who played ugly yet effective football. They played to their strengths, and every player on the pitch knew exactly what was expected of them.

Managers fail when they fail to set expectations. Clarity of communication, or rather the lack of it, is often the cause here. When employees don’t know what their manager expects of them, success is harder to achieve.

There are a number of company-wide initiatives to solve this, starting with top-down performance management. When the MD has objectives that are cascaded down, everyone works to the same goals, as well as individual objectives that help reach those goals. Without that cohesive performance structure in place, it’s hard to set expectations.

That’s one way we can support our managers. We can see from sport that management is the difference between success and failure, yet we invest so little time in our managers, and ensuring that they have the tools for success. My old colleague Jeremy Levene (an ardent Man Utd fan) underlined the importance of supporting bosses – and even supporting David Moyes.

It’s up to you to get the right managers in place (i.e. do you need a Moyes or a Van Gaal?), it’s up to them to earn respect, and it’s up to you to help them set expectations.

Work with them, and you’ll find productivity and performance levels rise significantly.

Ignore them, and you’ll end up like Manchester United – losing money, not competing, and having to invest even more trying to catch up with the competition.

About the author

Gareth Cartman