TOTAL GUARDIOLA

Translating a Football Philosophy Into a Commercial Culture

It is not hyperbole to say that Pep Guardiola has transformed the nature of football in the English Premier League. Since joining Manchester City he has introduced a brand of fluent, skillful and high energy football that has won both trophies aplenty and admirers across the world. Of course this has not happened by accident. Guardiola has developed over many years a “philosophy” of football which he refined and honed at Barcelona and Bayern Munich. That philosophy can only be translated onto the pitch by finding and attracting footballers who have the technique, athleticism and desire to be able to turn the theory into practice. And then by many hours of behind the scenes hard work, drills and practice so that the formations, processes, actions and reactions become second nature to the team. Given the success of Guardiola’s approach on the pitch it begs the question of whether it might be translated into an equally formidable strategy and culture off the pitch? How, for example, might the Manchester City commercial team operate if it embraced the “Guardiola Way”, which is rooted in the following four “Pillars”; 1) Attacking Football 2) Effective Ball Possession 3) High Defensive Line 4) Pressure to Recover How might the pillars of that philosophy be turned into actionable business strategies, and in turn begin to develop a common language and culture that stretches across an entire organisation? I begin to explore that question below. Taking each of the 4 Pillars in turn, and then suggesting what it might equate to in a business context. 1) Attacking Football = Relentless Pursuit of our Chosen Targets Breaking this pillar down into its key elements; Chosen Targets - do not adopt a scattergun approach, chasing after any potential client may have a sponsorship or communications budget. Rather develop a deep understanding of the CFG and Manchester City business strategy, brand vision, history and organisational values. Armed with that knowledge then go through a rigorous analytical approach to identify those companies that have the potential to be true long-term Partners for CFG. Partners whose business strategies and consumers are complementary. Partners with whom experiences, services and products could be co-created that will generate sustainable and measurable value and IP for both parties. And Partners who authentically share CFG values. Relentless Pursuit - once targets are selected then commit to doing whatever it takes to bringing them on board. To borrow terminology from basketball, adopt a “full court press”, identifying all key stakeholders and decision makers within the target company. Then “man mark” them, being creative about how any relevant connection might be used to begin to build a relationship. In the context of CFG, assets in this regard might include executives at CFG companies or Man City, external investors and partners such as Silver Lake, Endeavor, Sapphire Sport, the CFG supplier base. Find a way in! Nurture the relationship. Build shared understanding. And create ideas, experiences and value together. 2) Effective Ball Possession = Treasured Client Relationships There can be a natural tendency in the sales arena to place too much emphasis on new clients, which can be to the detriment of our existing partner relationships. This is a mistake. With existing partners we have already begun to build the shared understanding and trust which is fundamental to the creation of new ideas - which in turn leads to new revenue streams. It is of course critical to have a strong pipeline of potential new clients and active conversations with them. However, this must never be at the expense of making sure that our existing partners feel valued and important. We must spend as much time speaking with them, spending time with them and creating new ideas as we would with any new business prospect. This also makes good business sense - if you never lose a client then any new business is always incremental. Whereas lost client revenues always leave a hole to fill to get back to the previous position. 3) High Defensive Line = Culture of Innovation A high defensive line is designed to keep the pressure on the opposition, to quickly regain the ball and, with it, the attacking initiative. It is not without risk; it can leave gaps in defence for the opposition to exploit. However, the alternative is to sit back, wait for the opponents to make their move and then react to it. In today’s business environment such a reactive strategy would be doomed to failure. Technology and culture are moving too quickly. The commercial equivalent of the “high press” is to have the team and processes in place that can deliver a constant stream of innovative thinking and new ideas. To overwhelm the opposition not with scale of resources, but with creativity, agility and speed of execution. 4) Pressure to Recover = Resilience in Adversity At some point any organisation will encounter challenging times. The football team may lose a string of matches. The commercial group may lose key clients. These events are inevitable. How we react to them is critical. A mediocre commercial group will resort to the blame game - “it’s the market, the client, colleague X messed up, our competitors have got more resources…….”. Essentially the problems are all “out there”. The high-performance team will take ownership of the situation and their responsibility in creating it - and then commit to changing it. One mantra I find invaluable in this context is “There is no such thing as failure, only feedback”. This immediately gets us out of the defensive mindset of trying to justify why we have “failed”. And into a much more creative, generative frame of mind. “OK this has happened, and we can’t turn the clock back. What can we learn from it? What do we need to do differently next time? Are there certain skills or capabilities that we lack in the group? How can we invest in them? Are there savings we can make elsewhere to fund this? Who else is world class in this area - what can we learn from them? Who can we partner with?” etc. This approach does not imply that poor performance is simply accepted. Responsibility and accountability are always a factor in ongoing performance measurement. Rather this pillar sets out the type of mental approach that will deliver swift recovery from setbacks rather than allowing negativity to fester and a “learning organisation” to develop, Every organisation presents its own different context, and therefore requires its own solutions. The above is an illustration of an approach, it doesn’t purport to be the “right” answer, if indeed such an answer exists. The power of this approach would lie in bringing the commercial team together with different parts of the CFG organisation and to then explore and their own ideas as to what a “One Team” strategy and culture would look like. In doing so the entire team then creates a shared philosophy that they own and can then begin the process of developing the values, capabilities, skills, systems, metrics that can turn that philosophy into winning performance in the market.