Business secrets of the perennial failures
"Oh god, he's about to draw comparisons between Leeds United and the general business world, isn't he?"
Sunday before last, the bunch of perennial losers that I’ve recently decided to no longer rely on for emotional catharsis lost again. And next season, they’ll be losing again in a lower division.
Don’t worry. This isn’t going to be me dissecting the on the pitch failures of Leeds United (basically, they’re shite again). This is a broader point about business. Consider it a warning from recent history.
In July 2020, Leeds United were promoted to the Premier League as Champions. I don’t remember much of it. I was on a three day mid-lockdown1 celebratory bender which involved drinking champagne in my dad’s kitchen.
They got promoted for three main reasons:
They hired, retained and financially backed the best possible team manager, who instilled the right culture.
They hired and retained the best possible playing staff (on their limited budget), who bought into that culture.
They built and maintained the best possible facilities to support manager and players alike.
Pretty obvious, isn’t it? If you want your business to succeed, you need the right management, the right staff, and the right facilities.
Then the wheels started coming off.
The board, who are good at board level things like setting budgets, seeking investment and writing inflammatory programme notes saying that not selling community assets to oil barons is “Maoism, basically2” started getting involved in football things. They left their areas of expertise to muscle in on the work they should’ve trusted the experts to handle.
When they didn’t like what the effective team manager had to say (ie “you need to keep investing and upgrading”), they replaced him with a motivational speaker who abandoned a gruelling, yet effective fitness regime in favour of pizza parties and swapped a culture of diligent, humble hard work for good vibes.
Then they let experienced playing staff leave, to be replaced by inexperienced young prospects, before selling off the most talented players to fund even more inexperienced or unsuitable replacements who “might be worth something in the future.”
They no longer had the right management. They no longer had the right staff. And then the new manager closed part of the training ground to convert it into a media centre so he could brag about the good vibes to a wider audience.
So long to the right facilities.
Everything after that - sacking the first bad manager to replace him with a second bad manager and then a third manager from the Paleozoic era, having to sack a board member to prevent a riot, and horrendous performances on the pitch - followed naturally.
It all stems from people at the board level believing they’re solely responsible for any success, and that people lower down the chain with very specific expertise aren’t worth the outlay.
I’ve seen it happen in all kinds of businesses. Directors will spend big on hiring talent with a very specific niche - in my industry that’s typically coding, design, copywriting - and things will start to go well. But niche talent is expensive.
When leaders recognise that it’s valuable, and they pay for talent, things keep going well.
But when they put success down to nothing more than their own visionary leadership, when they replace expensive graphic designers with kids from Fiverr, when they cancel the copywriting retainer because Donna’s neice has an English A-level and is available on an apprentice’s wage, when they sacrifice an unfashionable yet effective corporate culture for glorified LinkedIn influencers with nothing more than good vibes, it all goes to shit.
And when the rot sets in, sooner or later, when there’s nobody left to sack, nobody left to blame, suddenly it’s their livelihoods on the line…
Maybe it’s worth shelving the ego and letting the experts get on with it?
Something mint - this Nationwide ad
What can I say? I saw this advert twice today. Once on the back cover of the latest Private Eye, once when I was walking the dog.
It’s a dead simple message - banks make profit for bankers, building societies spread the wealth - and it’s delivered in a matter-of-fact way that verges on the neutraliser tone.
Not everything needs to be bells and whistles. Sometimes simplicity has a beauty all its own.
PS: Continuing the Leeds United theme, as you read this over 100 Leeds fans will be walking from Goodison Park to Elland Road in honour of the late, great Gary Speed and to raise money for men’s mental health charity Andy’s Man Club. It’s 92 miles. And it’s the second year they’ve done it.
Last year, the money they raised helped the charity bring on new staff and open new clubs around the UK. They’ve already rocketed past their goal, but if you can spare them a few quid, it’s for a great cause. Speaking as someone who’s had his own mental health ups and downs3, and who once had to intervene with a mate in a very dark place, support like this really does save lives.
Donate to the Gary Speed Charity Walk.
I know. Yet another way I’ve ruled myself out of being PM.
This isn’t a joke, by the way. He genuinely said this:
"Enforcing upon football a philosophy akin to Maoist collective agriculturalism - which students of 'The Great Leap Forward' will know culminated in the greatest famine in history - will not make the English game fairer, it will kill the competition which is its very lifeblood.”
Leeds chief exec Angus Kinnear, ladies and gentlemen. What an absolute fucking whopper.
It’s not something I’d ever write about, so don’t ask. But do read this by ex-copywriter and PCN co-founder Ben Locker.