MBA Delusions of Grandeur......

5 January 2008

(see below post for explanation for strange chronology)

As part of my ongoing research (and my tendency to over analyse), I was drifting around the FT.com and found the below.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7ed1600a-b174-11dc-9777-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=02e16f4a-46f9-11da-b8e5-00000e2511c8.html

I do find this amusing and I like its honesty; but what else would you expect from an INSEAD alum (ah....the reflected glory of being at INSEAD).

I suspect the sections about people not believing that they are the Global business leaders of tomorrow is very accurate. Most of us have healthy egos (although perhaps what makes INSEAD special is that most people realise this and are willing to laugh at themselves) and believe that business school will help mould us into what we aspire to be. However, based on meetings with my class over the past few months, another factor that unites us is uncertainty as to where we are going in our careers and the need to make a change. Nevertheless, part of the make-up of a graduating from a top MBA is to believe that you can succeed and that is a very dangerous assumption if not allied to a a healthy dose of private cynicism and self-awareness.

Of course, when applying to the MBA make sure that your career essay says the exact opposite of the above and instead lays out a credible, achievable and reasonable career plan. They are not testing your honesty, more your ability to put a credible career plan together so that they have the raw materials to work with. Call it the "bluster successfully" test (acronym "BS").

Only by much searching and mining are gold and diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul.

James Allen from As a Man Thinketh

Leadership and Sport - Part Deux

Seeing as I am presently in a "sports" kind of mindset, another potential case study would be the recent handling of the management change at an English football club.

Before we continue, I can confirm that I have no interest in this team (other than abusing close friends who support the team for the team's lack of success) and have no particular axe to grind. Its just reading about this recently, it did lead me to wonder whether this is classic material for a case study on how not to manage change.

For those of you not interested in football (i.e. 260 million North Americans (I am talking about the continent and, so that this is very clear, not bracketing Canadians with Americans in order to avoid a diplomatic faux pas) and some Australasians) the most commercially successful football (soccer) league is the English Premier League. Its watched by millions in the UK and ridiculous numbers in the rest of the world. The aim in this League (apart from winning) is to finish in the top 4 positions in the League, thereby qualifying for very a lucrative intra-Europe competition. Hopefully, the above makes sense.

One of the major clubs is Tottenham Hotspurs (aka Spurs). Spurs are an old established club who have not had success in years - think Miami Dolphins (for the last 20 years) or Boston Red Sox (for about 70 years). Spurs regularly change managers (head coach) (6 in 12 years?) unlike more successful clubs (Manchester United same coach for 21 years (?), Arsenal same coach for 11 years (?). However, in the last 2 years their coach got them to 5th in the League twice in a row, way better than they have done for about 15 years - and had they not had some very bad luck they may have finished 4th. So this summer they spend GBP£40 million (approx €60m or $80m) and look ready to become a really powerful club. Looking good, things progressing on an upwards trajectory, right?

Fat chance.

A couple of days before the season kick- senior Spurs directors are seen in Spain having dinner with a very successful coach. The directors say its a coincidence, the Spanish coach says he has been offered a job (but then back tracks), the club administration "leaks like a sieve" with all leaks agreeing the Spanish coach was offered a job and the press have a field day.

The incumbent coach, behaving with admirable dignity, says that the directors are behind him, while the Chairman of the Directors initially gives the coach very little backing, followed by "total support". Surprisingly enough the club makes a very poor start to the season and any chance of a top 4 position is out of the window. Could it get better?

Well the club continues to leak like a sieve that the coach is on "borrowed" time and will be sacked. The players perform even more badly. Then prior to an important game last week, the radio/tv press report the manager is to be sacked at the end of the game - or in fact has been sacked but is still in charge for this game. the players are even more rubbish, the crowd support the manager by chanting songs for him and abusing the directors. After the match it is confirmed that (despite, I believe, their being a requirement for the UK Stock Exchange to be notified first) that the coach has been sacked. A few days later, the Spanish coach mentioned above is appointed head coach. If it was a soap opera you would not believe it.

This is surely brilliant management in operation? You wait until the last moment and then undermine/humiliate your manager/coach. Then you support him and finally sack him. All the while, the team tipped to do well, are losing lots of games and so have lost any chance of achieving the stated goal.

If you think this all seems pretty incompetent management by a board of directors, well........you join a lot of people.

It is irrelevant whether you think the original coach was good or bad. Its all about how you manage the situation. If the directors thought they wanted someone else, why not do it in May/June when the season is over? Why wait until days before the season begins to approach a new coach? By changing coaches in the summer, the new coach has time to settle in. Also by handling it so badly, you undermine the coach's authority, in effect, making him a lame duck, such that the players could ignore him. Not surprising that the players do not perform, thereby ensuring the main aim for the season cannot be achieved.

This an example that, I think, can be applied to any business on how not change senior management. If you do not show public support for the the Chairman/CEO/director/manager you might as well fire her/him. Also timing and confidentiality are key points.

As for Spurs, who knows if the new coach will meet the directors' aim? What we do know is that the directors look less credible and that the team has "failed". Oh, and they allegedly paid GBP£4m to the sacked manager (his remaining contract for 2 years), compensation to the new managers club and have increased the salary proposition to the new manager (allegedly GBP£4m per year). *

Genius.


*Please note that these numbers are as alleged in the UK papers and I cannot confirm the veracity of these figures.

Leadership and Sport

Over the last few weeks I've been in Europe a lot and been exposed to a lot of sport.

The biggest event has been the Rugby World Cup. For those of you wondering what Rugby is, imagine American football, with less stoppages, less padding, more creativity and less ferocious "hitting" of each other (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/default.stm). It is a game that is both fun and mental, and can be amazing on television.

The final was played in Paris last week between England and South Africa. SA won a very tight game 6:15.

But, what was more interesting was the England team's "Lazarus" like recovery. Before the knockout games SA had destroyed England 36:0 and no-one thought England had a chance. Then they go win 4 (or 5?) on the trot, including beating more highly regarded teams Australia and France (in Paris). So what happened?

Well, we do know that the entire squad (coaches, players et al) sat down after the first SA thrashing and cleared the air.

However, on one side the story says that senior players took control and said this is what we are going to do, you the coaches will follow this and there we are. The other side is that the English coach was strong enough to ask for the player's opinions and adapted the game plan to what they said. So which version is correct?

As with all these things the truth probably lies in a mixture of the two. The coach is known as a believer in getting players to think for themselves, so perhaps this was just the coach getting buy-in and commitment from a hard core of committed, experienced veterans. Having said that, there probably is truth in the assertion that the SA hammering was because of the players not fully understanding what the coach wanted and hence the need to speak out.

For me this illustrates how leadership can be learnt from all manner of fields e.g. business, sport, politics, charity. You could move this example to any other industry/field and the lessons /issues for analysing a "leader's" actions/responses would fundamentally still be the same. For example, a question raised from this example is when does delegation of responsibly by a leader go from empowerment of subordinates to the abdication of his/her duties?

Is this what makes INSEAD so committed in its push for diversity - so that you can learn from so many unexpected experiences and transfer that learning to almost all other fields? That is certainly one of my reasons for choosing INSEAD.

So if anyone from INSEAD is reading this I look forward to a case study on the Rugby World Cup and the performances of various teams (England, Fiji, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal and South Africa) and why they were successful or unsuccessful.


The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born -- that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

Warren G. Bennis


The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

Peter Drucker