Many people will be glued to their TV screens this Saturday to watch the final of the champions league between Barcelona and Manchester United. Both teams are deserving of reaching the final but it's Barcelona that I want to focus on. Weirdly enough, it's from a business management and consulting point of view. Below are some of the reasons why not only football clubs should be interested in what Barcelona are doing.
The club has a philosophy on how they play football. All staff at the club understand what it is and how it works. This philosophy singly guides the club in all the decisions that it makes and covers all aspects of both their professional and development set-ups. It affects the players they buy, the players they welcome into their Academy, the coaches they use in the academy. Everyone, thinks, breathes and then acts this philosophy out. If any actions of elements of the set-up do not further the cause of the philosophy then they/it are removed. Nothing is bigger than the philosophy and by implication the club. As valuable an asset as Samuel Eto was, when he went against the grain of the philosophy he was asked to leave. Companies need to aspire to developing this kind of philosophy or culture.
The philosophy comes first, the style second and everything else is not really important. I recently found out that Barca junior teams don't actually do very well in the leagues that they play in. At first glance this would appear weird but on further inspection it should be obvious. The coaches and the teams are really interested in winning the leagues they play in. They are more interested in honing their skills and living the philosophy so that they can fit seamlessly into the first team and play on the biggest stage in both a world and Spanish football, the Camp Nu. Think about the seamless way that players fit into the first team, if this is not a perfect example of talent management and succession planning then I don't know what is.
Their current team at any time features about 11 players from the Academy system, so there is very little need to make big purchases on the transfer scene. If they do, then they go out and buy its the corporate version of head hunting, they see a talent that they know they can't produce or don't have internally and then buy. Even then, the person being bough will fit into the philosophy easily. Zlatan is a rare example of when the system failed.
Accenture employ and up or out policy, where if people are not showing the correct rate of development then the are managed out of the company. Barca do the same thing, look Giovanni Do Santos, his development was slower than Bojan, Messi and even Pedro (a little bit of a late bloomer). Rijkaard promoted him to the first team, maybe a bit prematurely but he was given an opportunity. He's ultimate demise was due to slow development and behavior not in line with the philosophy (he made unrealistic salary demands). Barca also use this very well, because players start young its easier for them to see whether or not they will 'make the grade' so to speak.
The topic holds so much more that I think I will definitely return for Part Two but in closing I want to point out that since there is only one philosophy, set of values and style of play there is never any conflict about how a team should be playing and hardly ever inteference with team selections and decision the coach makes. You can leave people to manage themselves and deliver because they live the philosophy.
Good luck to both teams...
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