Harvard’s ‘Fergie Project’ hailed as blueprint for success in business

It has long been fashionable for businesses to invite leading football managers, of any code, to address conferences, internal motivational meetings or off-site workshops with a view to learning the lessons of their accumulated management wisdom.

I’ve always been doubtful of the benefits of these encounters except for the novelty value of actually seeing these great men (it is invariably a man) in the flesh. In a celebrity obsessed age there may be benefit here but the universally banal interviews given by managers to the media after a game would suggest there is no evidence that any of them have the ability to contextualise their methods into a format that businesses would find useful.

However, the recently-retired Sir Alex Ferguson has gone some way to finding a solution to this conundrum by joining forces with another legendary brand; the Harvard Business School, where his management style is now the subject of one of their trademark case studies.

The instigator of this unlikely marriage appears to have been Anita Elbrese, an associate professor at Harvard specialising in strategic marketing in the creative industries. She created some waves back in 2008 when she challenged Chris Anderson's 'Long Tale' thesis which claimed that the digital age would dilute the power of blockbusters in popular culture in favour of niche films, books, music, TV programmes, appealing to increasingly specialised individual tastes, thus creating a 'long tale' in creative industry markets.

Elbrese examined the sales results in all of these markets and came to the opposite conclusion; that we are seeing even more blockbuster domination in a winner-takes-all era. That would certainly be the case in the English Premier League which has long been dominated by Ferguson’s Manchester United with only a handful of other clubs remotely in contention.

Elbrese’s “Fergie Project” involved visiting the club, carrying out extensive interviews with him, key staff, a selection of current and former players and of course watching the great man in action.

This resulted in a teaching case study which identified eight critical lessons from Ferguson’s management style.

These lessons are as follows: start with the foundations; dare to re-build your team; set high standards and hold everyone to them; never, ever cede control; match the message to the moment; prepare to win; rely on the power of observation; and never stop adapting.

Set out like that you may be having the same doubts I alluded to above about the banality of much of the analysis of sporting success but although there is an element of predictability and ‘sowhatisms’, there is enough meat in the explanations to justify further study.

The first is obvious: successful businesses need good foundations and the basics need to be renewed on a regular basis. But the second point about re-building your team is revealing. Ferguson believes that successful teams have a life of only three to four years so you must continually anticipate the next product mix, while retaining long running “brands” such as Giggs.

Fanatical desire to win
There is a certain amount of overlap between the third, "high standards", and sixth, "prepare to win", where both cover the internal culture of the organisation.

This just happens to be a subject attracting increasing attention from management theorists who believe that in spite of its slippery nature it can often be the main difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses.

Ferguson instilled in his teams his own fanatical desire to win everything, every time. It sometimes created trouble for him but it created much more trouble for everyone else. There are some interesting lessons from his diligence in preparation. He dismisses the pre-kick-off huddle on the grounds that your desire to win and your plan for winning should be sorted out long before you set foot on the pitch.

He also provides some insight into the extraordinary number of times his teams snatched unlikely victories from the jaws of defeat in the closing minutes of a game. If his team was behind with 10 minutes to go the players were trained to switch strategy to all-out attack; "I'm a gambler, a risk-taker, if we're 1-2 down I'd prefer to lose 1-3 than not to have tried to equalise or win". He always set out to recruit "bad losers" and demanded they work hard at never giving in: "if you give in once you'll give in twice".

His fourth maxim about not ceding control will come as no surprise, especially to Roy Keane and David Beckham, but his frankness is interesting: "Before I came to United I resolved that no one was going to be stronger than I am, your personality has to be bigger than theirs, that is vital." So there!

That's one that could be dangerous if applied literally but he points out that he was in charge of a squad of about 30 talented youngsters, all of them millionaires, so any diminution of his authority would be dangerous.

The fifth point about matching the message to the moment shows an under- standing of the high level of emotional intelligence required by effective leaders and is at odds with his "hair dryer" reputation. He was acutely conscious of the balance between love and fear when dealing with his team and admitted to being, as the occasion demanded, a teacher, a doctor or a father.

Vitamin D booths
He was also keenly aware of the importance of observation. From an early stage he left coaching to specialist coaches to allow him time to study his players in an effort to understand their personalities as well as technical skills. Being aware of the strengths and weaknesses of both ability and personality enabled him to get the best out of people.

Finally, he advocates continuous adapting and improving. Making sure he had the best training and medical facilities enabled him to convince young talent to join. Given that recruitment is now a problem in many business sectors, more organisations could copy this technique by promising continuous high-level training in addition to monetary inducements. Ferguson's attention to detail in this respect went so far as installing Vitamin D booths in the dressing rooms to "compensate for the lack of sunshine in Manchester".

Reading over Ferguson’s eight maxims again, they do sound a little obvious but then maybe the principles of good management are always fairly obvious. The problem is they’re so obvious we don’t think about them often enough, which results in bad management. We’re on auto-pilot so often we forget the basics.

This case study is a timely reminder which deserves regular attention. When it was complete, Ferguson was invited to give two 40-minute sessions with Elbrese's class in Harvard. The response was enthusiastic, with many of the students arriving in United gear; I can understand why.