Business Game Time

Spain again. For the first time in a row, a soccer national team won three major tournaments in a row: Euro 2008, World Cup 2010 and Euro 2012. Congratulations to coach Del Bosque and his team.

Prior to the tournament and even in its early stages, many expected Spain to fail this time, expecting the team to be saturated and not as greedy as their challengers. Spain proved them all wrong.

In business and in sports, many say that becoming number one is easier than staying on top. So how did the Spanish team manage to stay focused and what can we learn from them for our endeavors and businesses?

A short video that captured during the dying minutes of Spain’s 4-0 thrashing of Italy is going viral and teaches the lesson: Click here.

It’s the referee’s decision how much stoppage time to add and in most cases they add two, three or even four minutes, depending on if any injuries occurred during the match, how many substitutions took place, etc. However, with a score line of 4-0 for Spain, it was obvious after 90 minutes that Italy had lost the match. In similar situations in tournament finals (where goal differences doesn’t matter at all), some referees have not added any stoppage time at all. Pedro Proença however did add quite a lot and every minute must have felt like a year to the hammered Italian players.

The video shows that during stoppage time, Spanish keeper Iker Casillas approached one of the referees with the following words:

“Ref! Ref! Respect for the rival! Respect for Italia! 4-0” – asking the referees to stop the game immediately to respect the losing team. And when after 93 minutes and three seconds Proença finally ended the game, Casillas went to the Italian players to shake hands first, before joining the celebrations.

Respect is a word that does not always have the best reputation in the business world. Often it seems as if those that show no respect are the most successful ones. But the Casillas example exhibits  that the opposite is true. If you respect a competitor, if you respect a rival, you will never take things too easy.

No matter how successful you are, if you want to stay on top never lose respect for your challengers and  competitors. A great lesson from a great soccer player.

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Filed under: soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on July 3, 2012 at 10:13 pm CET
Tagged with: competitor • fifa world cup 2010 • final • iker casillas • italy • pedro proenca • referee • respect • rival • soccer (football) • spain • stoppage time • top • uefa euro 2008 • uefa euro 2012 • vicente del bosque

This year’s UEFA Champions League Final between Bayern Munich and Chelsea FC ignited a lot of discussion on whether or not Chelsea’s ultra defensive approach in the final (as well as in the semi-finals against Barcelona) was a clever and effective strategy or simply the death of soccer.

An interview of Chelsea manager Roberto Di Matteo on the pitch right after the end of the game with an obviously disappointed German TV interviewer summed it up pretty well:

Di Matteo: “We worked very hard to reach this goal. I have to say that Bayern played very good tonight and had more scoring opportunities, but when it comes to a penalty shoot-out you also need luck, and we were that little bit luckier tonight.”

Interviewer:  “You said you were luckier – do you also agree Bayern played better than your team?”

Di Matteo: “They play a different style. We play this way with the players we have and we were successful doing so.”

Interviewer:  “Your style is successful, but is it beautiful, too?”

Di Matteo smiles, turns around and walks away.

Despite the fact that it is not quite great journalism to ask a coach who just one probably the biggest trophy in club soccer such a silly question, Di Matteo knew well that both Barcelona and Munich had the better players in an one-on-one comparison, but he found a way to still take home the trophy and obviously chose the right strategy.

I will use this opportunity to apply one of the most prominent tools in strategy and strategic marketing to Chelsea in the Champions League final: The Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats Analysis – in short “SWOT” analysis.

Not only is it one of the most prominent, but also one of the best and most comprehensive strategy tools when applied the right way. It’s just a pity that it is rarely applied well. How often have I seen single Powerpoints slides with the headline “SWOT analysis” that just consisted of a few bullet points that seemed randomly discovered.

Obviously this tool wasn’t designed with soccer coaches in mind, but I’ll try to apply it anyway, being a little tongue-in-cheek doing so.

A SWOT analysis consists of three parts: The internal analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses – SW), the external analysis (Opportunities, Threats – OT) and the strategy identification/ choice.

Let’s start with the external analysis. It looks at customers, competition, industry and environment and tries to identify areas in which you see opportunities for creating a competitive advantage or vulnerability to threats.

This is tough to translate to the soccer context, but Di Matteo might have started looking at the bottom line and how value is actually created. The above mentioned interview sums up his findings: It is not important how “beautiful” your team plays, but if it wins or not. This simple looking thought is not only worth looking at in sports. There are so many companies that will never end up on the cover of Fast Company as they are in seemingly unspectacular industries with seemingly unspectacular business models, but create and capture value consistently. The coolness factor is not being paid for in most industries.

He might have looked at market trends: Most of the big clubs play in a 4-2-3-1 formation these days: four defenders, two holding midfielders, three offensive midfielders and a striker. This approach seems well suited for pressing and trying to destroy the opponents’ build-up play. Or, like Michael Cox at zonalmarking.com discovered (heads up): Recently, the more reactive teams won the big matches (see the Europa League final, the FA Cup final and the German Cup final). Ultimately, there’s always the classic rule: Offense wins games, defense wins championships.

He may have also seen that over the last roughly ten years, German teams (including the national team) have not been as clinical as they used to be in big finals (World Cup Final 2002, Euro Final 2008, Champions League Finals 2002 and 2010, UEFA Cup Finals 2002 and 2009) and that English teams in Champions League Finals did fairly well in penalty shoot-outs (Liverpool FC 2005, Manchester United 2008 – against Chelsea though).

Analyzing the competition, Di Matteo may have found that Bayern was under more pressure to attack, given that they were favorites and played at home in front of a euphoric crowd that was expecting nothing less than a victory. He may have also seen that their competitor Bayern Munich usually plays a style of “position play”, trying to have a high share of possession and reach domination in midfield. Or going more into details, that Bayern’s strength is on the outsides in midfield with world-class players Franck Ribéry and Arjen Robben; that Thomas Müller, when playing in the central offensive midfielder position (#10) tends to move more towards the right side, and usually doesn’t show the creativity of world class playmakers, essentially forcing Bayern to play via the outside positions. And just like Chelsea (we will get to this later), Bayern also had to deal with a couple of critical suspensions, e.g. the one of Holger Badstuber, leaving only one central defender (Boateng) with a lot of strengths in aerial duels. Also, Bayern did not show any efficiently in converting corner kicks this year (they only scored once from a corner throughout the whole Champions League season).

Now let’s move on  to the internal analysis, trying to identify the own strengths and weaknesses.

On the weakness side, Di Matteo could have analyzed that position by position, Bayern probably has the better players. He could have also seen Chelsea’s weakness in creating possession against 4-2-3-1 teams. The suspensions, especially those of John Terry and Branislav Ivanovic, were limiting the ability of supporting the outside defenders from the center to fight against the strong outside midfielders Robben and Ribéry , while the loss of Ramires was not helpful for establishing an offensive play via the outsides. The age structure of the team also disallowed to play ninety minutes of defensive pressing, as stamina might have become an issue in that case.

The team’s strengths are experience and efficiency, the great ability of Didier Drogba to successfully occupy a complete opponent’s defense and still finish, and a strong selection of bench players like Cahill and Luis who replaced Terry and Ivanovic or Fernando Torres who came in later in the game. On a tactical side, Chelsea is strong in transition play – capturing the ball in defense and quickly moving it up the pitch, not giving the opponent a lot of time to organize their defense. Also, their moral was good after beating Barcelona in the semis, the team has the coolness and discipline to follow a tactical approach throughout the whole match like the defensive performance at the Camp Nou has shown and they have the ability to block/defend their own box effectively.

Translated into business terms, they don’t need to have a high market share (possession) as they can live with a high return on investment in their niche (winning without running too much in a rather static defensive style), a rather limited product portfolio (strategic variability) that still has proven to satisfy market needs (see Barcelona), an intact organizational setup, and a big broadness on the human resources side (bench players).

Fine, but what to make out of all this? The next and final step is to identify strategic approaches and chose the right one. I don’t know how the Chelsea coaching staff came up with their game plan, but let’s try to analyze it with respect to the findings above.

Chelsea decided to position themselves in their niche of playing defensively, fully oriented towards the result, not the beauty of the game. Therefore they did not try to fight Bayern with their own weapons, but went for the more unusual 4-4-1-1 formation which later developed towards a 4-5-1 when Mata dropped back more and more (only late in the second half, they got more into a 4-2-3-1 style themselves, though still quite defense oriented until Bayern score the 1-0).

Based on the competitive analysis they expected Bayern to play quite offensively, so they had three major ideas (for more on tactical analysis of this game, I recommend the above mentioned Zonal Marking and in case you speak German, spielverlagerung.de:

1) Not compete with Bayern in midfield and defend extremely deep

This strategy is quite rare. It may be based on the findings mentioned above that Bayern would gain control in midfield anyway with their position play and calculated that by playing deep, Bayerns midfield would move more upfront, enabling Chelsea to play long passes to Drogba (and if possible Mata) after capturing the ball, quickly passing by the Bayern defensive midfielders and creating scoring opportunities from ultra-quick fast breaks.

2) Neutralize Robben, Ribéry and Müller

Chelsea tried to get Robben and Ribéry out of the game by moving the game away from their positions and stranding them on the outside. That’s why they fully concentrated on the center of the pitch. Another unusual approach, but an effective one, too. As Müller tends to move towards the right, Di Matteo replaced a left midfielder by effectively a second outside defender on that side of the pitch by bringing in Bertrand instead of the expected Malouda. And throughout the game, Bertrand played deeper than Kalou on the right side. Müller still scored the goal for Bayern, but that was when Bertrand had already been substituted.

3) Be patient

Chelsea was not afraid of a penalty shoot-out. Given the individual strength of Bayern they knew that a 50:50 chance (penalties) would be more than what people thought they had at the beginning of the match. They tried to slacken the speed of the match instead of going into a high speed open duel, neutralizing Bayern’s advantages and waited for opportunities from counter attacks or set pieces. Unsurprisingly, they scored from their only corner kick, while Bayern did not convert any of their 20 corners.

The bottom line:

Not everything worked as planned by Chelsea. The idea to launch effective fast breaks via Mata and Drogba only looked promising at the beginning of the game, later Mata played more defensively and Boateng and Tymoshchuk controlled Drogba well in most transition situations. Müller wasn’t too effective from the right side, but created some good situations through the center. Also, Bayern did create more opportunities than Chelsea would have wished and were unlucky in some situations.

However, the fine analysis of their strengths and weaknesses, of potential opportunities and threats led to a strategy that resulted in Chelsea lifting the cup, not the seemingly “better” team.

Better?

That brings us back to the Di Matteo interview mentioned at the beginning: The better team in soccer and the better company is business is the one that is more successful. Teams whining after a match that they would have played more beautiful are as pointless as companies complaining they have the better products and the customers just don’t understand it.

So if you did the right analysis and chose the right strategy, do it like Di Matteo: Enjoy your success, smile, turn around and walk away from the critics.

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Filed under: soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on May 21, 2012 at 11:16 pm CET
Tagged with: allianz-arena • analysis • anatoliy tymoshchuk • arjen robben • barcelona fc • bayern münchen • bayern munich • branislav ivanovic • camp nou • chelsea fc • competition • customers • david luiz • defense • dfb pokal • didier drogba • england • environment • europa league • external analysis • fa cup • fast breaks • fernando torres • florent malouda • formation • franck ribéry • gary cahill • german cup • germany • holger badstuber • industry • internal analysis • jan henkel • jerome boateng • john terry • juan mata • liverpool fc • london • manchester united • market share • münchen • munich • niche • offense • opportunities • organization • penalty shoot out • ramires • roberto di matteo • ryan bertrand • salomon kalou • sky • soccer (football) • strategy • strategy definition • strengths • swot • swot analysis • thomas müller • threats • transition play • uefa • uefa champions league • uefa champions league final • weaknesses

Dynamo Dresden is a soccer team in the second division (2. Bundesliga) in Germany. They are currently ninth in a league of 18, without any chances of qualifying for the first league or danger of being relegated to the third league. In the domestic cup, they dropped out against Bundesliga powerhouse Borussia Dortmund. Basically not quite a thrilling season one might think, if that cup loss wouldn’t have had created a negative by-product:

Some Dynamo supporters were going too far, started rioting and fired pyrotechnics inside the Dortmund stadium. German soccer association DFB reacted with banning Dresden from next year’s cup – a huge blow for the team given their financial struggles (the cup can generate significant income for lower class clubs when playing against Bundesliga top teams). After an appeal, the verdict was reduced to forcing Dynamo to play one league home game in an empty stadium without any spectators – a “ghost game”.

That match finally took place last weekend, when Dresden played Ingolstadt in front of a crowd of officially exactly 0 (they even had the humor to announce it on the scoreboard during the second half).

Dynamo’s fans however were not quite happy with the ban. They felt like being collectively punished for what only very few of them did, and with Dresden being a club from the former eastern part of Germany, many of them also believe they lack a lobby at might DFB.

This lead to an unbelievable reaction: Fans started to buy tickets for the Ingolstadt game despite knowing they wouldn’t be allowed into the stadium. The word spread and more and more tickets were sold. When the game kicked off, Dynamo sold exactly 34.638 tickets – more than the capacity of their stadium (32.066). This earned the club 250.000€ (ca. 330.000$).

While the match went on inside the stadium (both teams scored as many goals as there were spectators – a 0-0 draw), thousands of fans demonstrated against DFB outside. And next week they will meet again, this time inside of the stadium, to watch their team’s away game at Frankfurt on a giant screen.

What a remarkable development: When the Dortmund incident happened, it looked as if club officials and fans would not be on a common ground when the club announced official excuses for the behavior of their supporters, criticizing them harshly. Now, just a few months later, club and fans are like one unit and a strong dynamic has been created.

Whenever we do teambuilding efforts in our companies and whenever you read books about how to build and develop teams, it’s all about being positive. Creating a joint positive mission, knowing what we all want to achieve, tell others what you like about them, about the group, about the company, etc.

The Dresden example shows something seldom found in a text book: The power of having a joint opponent. This is a strong power and despite being a forbidden fruit, it can, if used wisely, create extremely strong bonds within groups.

Groups grow together by discovering what they have in common. While it may be tough to find very specific positive commonalities, negative ones are often easier.

Just look at many of the protest movements: They feel a strong sense of community which often is based on what they fight against together. If you ask “Occupy Wall Street” activists what their vision for the future is, you may hear very different answers from them. The picture will not be so diverse if you ask what they want to fight against.

Or have you been serving in military? Maybe you wondered why your superiors were treating you all so bad during your first days there. Ever thought it might have been to give the group a common enemy and by doing so grow the bonds within the group?

The challenge when using the “joint enemy” approach is that you have to manage channeling the bonds you created into positive energy. Dynamo Dresden fans do it by watching the next match together (and probably supporting the team like hell in the next home game), but many companies or organizations struggle. If we go back to the protest movement example, it seems like only those that – after building the group based on fighting against something – were able to create a positive target were here to stay for long.

So next time a coach asks you to invent a line dance choreography with your group: Don’t feel bad when you realize a certain aggressiveness against that coach brewing in you. That can be quite helpful – if the others feel the same way…

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Filed under: soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on March 12, 2012 at 10:42 pm CET
Tagged with: 2. bundesliga • ban • bonding • borussia dortmund • bundesliga • cup • dfb • dfb pokal • dynamo dresden • eintracht Frankfurt • enemy • fc ingolstadt • germany • ghost match • group dynamics • joint opponent • military service • mission • negative • occupy wall street • positive • protest movement • pyrotechnics • riots • soccer (football) • sold out • spectators • team building • vision

It’s four days now since the New York Giants won the Super Bowl, and those four days were filled with discussions on how the game and especially how the last seconds of the game went.

From a strategic perspective, the final touchdown of the game was extremely interesting: With 1:04 to play, the Giants, trailing 15-17, had a second down and goal on the six yard line with one New England time out remaining.

In this situation, both teams had a couple of strategic options:

Option 1: The Patriots could have tried forcing a turnover which would have won the game for them, however the probability was pretty low to achieve this.

Option 2: They could have tried stopping the Giants offense, limiting them to a field goal (and a 18-17 lead) with maybe 15 seconds and no time out remaining. Then they would have needed to hope for a good kickoff return, maybe one good pass and a long field goal attempt to win the game.

Option 3: They could have tried to allow the Giants to score a quick touchdown, leaving them with 57 seconds to play, one time out and trailing with a minimum 4 points, hoping to be able to produce a touchdown to win the game themselves (for those of you that have not seen the game – if there are any: This scenario actually happened, but the Patriots failed to score the touchdown on the final down of the game).

From a Giants perspective, the decisive question was: Go for the points or for taking seconds off the clock with first priority?

The threat of losing the game was probably bigger for them in option 3 than in option 2. However, taking a save lead in option two is tempting, compared to option three with having to kick a field goal, even if it is a short one, in the final seconds of the game, when snapper, holder and kicker are nervous and might blow it.

A pretty complex situation if you are on the pitch and have to decide in seconds in the midst of a heated up atmosphere in the biggest game of your career.

Under pressure, it is not easy to understand the game theoretical counter intuitive approach that the Patriots were better off if they allowed the Giants to score a touchdown against them. Also, it was not easy to find the right strategy to react to this finding.

Looking at the situation in a bit more detail it becomes obvious that both teams were not fully aware of all implications all the time:

The Patriots could have well followed the strategy of allowing the Giants to score earlier than they actually did.

One might discuss if it was a wise decision to challenge the long Mario Manningham reception with 3:46 to play, blowing a timeout that can be worth 40 seconds.

Also, in the play prior to the Giants touchdown, the Patriots stopped a run on first down with 1:04 to go, forcing them to use a time out. Or in the play before that, why push the receiver Hakeem Nicks out of bounds after he reached the first down instead of pushing him into the end zone?

On the Giants side, Ahmad Bradshaw could have stopped his run on the one yard line instead of entering the end zone. Actually, his quarterback Eli Manning screamed “Don’t score!” when he saw what was about to happen, and it remains unclear from watching the replays if Bradshaw really tried to stop; at least he seems to be wondering for a split second.

Then again, Manning can be blamed, too: Why run a play instead of taking a knee in that situation?

As a result of all this, the Giants were the luckier team, as the Patriots came pretty close to scoring on a Hail Mary pass, but both teams could have created a better position for themselves if they better understood all strategic implications or followed them in a more coordinated approach.

And that’s the point where we can all learn from the final minutes of Super Bowl 46: We often find ourselves in strategic situations that are extremely complex. It is important to understand the implications, take the right decisions and implement them in a stringent way.

What sounds so simple and like a no-brainer is a tough challenge when operating under pressure, as we all do every day.

Understanding all the implications in dynamic systems can be practically impossible. Just look at our example from the Super Bowl: You think we covered it all? Well, what if Bradshaw really would have tried to stop on the one yard line – would the Patriots defenders have been prepared to push him into the end zone before he could have gotten his knee down? And so on, and so on…

Taking the right decisions can also be a nearly impossible task, and the nature of decisions is that once you have taken and implemented one, it is tough to say if it was right / the optimum or not, as in the experiment called real life there is no control group. Did the Giants take the right decision by scoring the touchdown? Okay, they won the game, so they reached their ultimate goal, but maybe it got closer than it had to?

Finally one of the basic rules of game theory teaches is that a coordinated approaches often yields more reward than an uncoordinated one. If an approach is uncoordinated, people will either follow their instincts or implement what they were trained to do. Brandshaw’s instinct and what he is trained on is scoring touchdowns. So he did.

This leads to an interesting thought which is my final take away from Super Bowl 46: Training and instinct are important, as they lead us the way in complex situations and prevent us from apathy under pressure. Great strategic decisions are built on this and use training and instinct as a fallback position. The combination gives you the opportunity to explore strategic possibilities. This time the Giants’ exploration did not lead to a lot, so they went with the fallback. That’s the flexibility of a champion. Congratulations, New York Giants.

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Filed under: (american) football by Johannes Musseleck
on February 9, 2012 at 11:18 pm CET
Tagged with: (american) football • ahmad bradshaw • challenge • complexity • counter intuitive • decisions • eli manning • game theory • hail mary pass • hakeem nicks • mario manningham • new england patriots • new york giants • pressure • quarterback • reception • strategic options • strategy • stringent • super bowl • super bowl 46 • super bowl xlvi

Last Sunday, the Australian Open ended with one of the best Grand Slam finals in tennis history. The dramatic victory of Novak Djokovic once again showed why he is considered the best tennis player in the world today.
After the match I read a post in a fan forum saying that just a couple of years ago, it would have seemed as if Djokovic would never be able to reach the level of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, who were playing in a league of their own back then. And the author was spot on: Who would have put a bet on Djokovic becoming the best player in the world three years ago?
Obviously, very few did. One indicator: Even the marketing pros at Nike or Adidas didn’t, which is why he had to go with the small Sergio Tacchini brand as shirt sponsor (see my older post on this topic here). The development of Novak Djokovic during the last few years was impressive and unexpected for many. Whom would you have put your bet on three years ago?
In our companies, we also have to place our bets. We have to assess whom we want to cultivate, whom we want to sponsor, whom we put our bets on with respect to their ability to become future leaders.
And there are many tools in place for doing so. Internal Assessment Centers, standardized decision points after a defined number of years on who will be put on the career fast track and who won’t.
The issue with all these approaches: They only give a flashlight at a given point in time. As a result, they can only assess the situation at this point. But people develop differently, some take a leap forward at a later stage of their development than others. Today, Djokovic dominates tennis. Three years ago, he was far from there.
Two other examples, this time from soccer:
The best player in this sport is Lionel Messi. In his early teens, no club in his native Argentina showed enough interest in him to pay somewhat between $500 and $1000 per month for treating a hormonal deficiency in his bones. Luckily someone in Barcelona had a different view not too much later.
Or look at the most expensive deal in the German Bundesliga this winter: Borussia Dortmund agreed to pay Borussia Mönchengladbach roughly €17 million ($22.3 million) to bring talented Marco Reus to Dortmund as of next summer. Reus is a Dortmund native who played for his future club until five years ago, when a youth coach assessed that Reus wouldn’t have the potential to become an outstanding player and made him leave the club he loves. Quite an expensive misjudgment – and we are all but safe from making those misjudgments either.
So how to avoid them?
What I hear often as suggested solution is that the quality of those judging would be the decisive factor. After Dortmund re-hired Reus, German yellow press enjoyed jumping at the fact that the youth coach who expelled Reus is still with the club today. And for a good reason: He is an expert in this field.
Which brings us back to the problem: Potential is difficult to judge. Development is a highly dynamic process, and the development path is not uniform.
Therefore, companies that want to be successful in identifying and promoting future talents must leave the single chance / in or out / point in time type of judgment processes. They need to come up with a process that gives multiple chances over and over again. If the basic potential is there – and it probably is, otherwise the candidates companies look at wouldn’t be there in the first place – a leap in development can come at any time.
Don’t put people on tracks. Create a recurring process instead. What has changed since the last year? Has the candidate obtained new skills, experiences and capabilities? Are we sure she has great potential now? And even more important: What if not? Great companies won’t close the track at this point. They will keep it open and come back to check again. Every day in the interaction with the candidate, or maybe once a month, once a year, whatever, for a recurring assessment of whether the development rocket has taken off.
Djokovic’s countdown took four years which he spent in the top ten without any realistic chance to reach Nadal or Federer. That’s a long time – in tennis and in business. And only those with stamina will see the most beautiful lift-offs.

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Filed under: soccer (football), tennis by Johannes Musseleck
on January 31, 2012 at 11:16 pm CET
Tagged with: adidas • argentina • assessment center • australian open • barcelona • borussia dortmund • borussia moenchengladbach • borussia mönchengladbach • bundesliga • career track • development • development process • endorsement • human resources • lionel messi • marco reus • melbourne • misjudgment • nike • novak djokovic • personnel • potential • rafael nadal • recruiting • roger federer • sergio tacchini • soccer (football) • tennis

Thanksgiving weekend in the US – that traditionally means lots of turkey and lots of football.

While watching the Thanksgiving Classics I caught myself thinking about all those flags thrown by the officials. In business there obviously aren’t any flags to throw for indicating a foul.  Even worse, there aren’t a lot of rules on what foul play would be.  So I compiled my top five football fouls I would like to see called in business, too. Here’s the list:

5) Unsportsmanlike conduct

There is no rule in the NFL that disallows playing hard in general. But when it comes to taunting or verbally abusing others, fouls are strictly enforced.

Bullying coworkers, talking negative about them and trying to build oppositions against others is not playing hard. It’s simply unsportsmanlike and unfair. That’s not the right spirit, neither on the pitch nor in the office.

4) Delay of game

That’s a classic: Not getting things done in time, not trying to move, watching left, right, left, right, etc., thinking what to do best and meanwhile forgetting to get anything done in the first place.

In football, that’s just a five yard penalty. Not one of the big ones, but one that wakes up and gets everyone focused again. That would be a useful one in other areas, too.

3) Intentional grounding

Intentional grounding is the desperate try of the quarterback to avoid being sacked. It is not trying to be productive at all, as the quarterback isn’t trying to throw towards a receiver, all he does is trying to destroy the well-earned reward for the defensive player.

Trying to avoid a negative impact for oneself even if it may kill the reward of the hard working coworkers is a rather common pattern (many say it’s generally the more common the higher you look in hierarchies). Not being able to accept a mistake and trying to soft-pedal  it by playing tricks would be well worth being penalized .

2) Illegal formation

An illegal formation is called in football when players are not lined-up in accordance with the rules. In companies the formations are also well defined. There are clear hierarchies of how people are lined-up. Yet, many try to bypass these defined formations, trying to gain a personal advantage. Even though others realize it and even though it is not considered correct behavior in companies either, this is nearly never called, i.e. sanctioned.

1) Unnecessary roughness

The name of this foul speaks for itself. It is a sign of missing respect for others, a sign that a player values his own aggression higher than feeling and state of others.  If this foul would exist in business, I’m sure it would be among those called the most often.

So what fouls would you love to see penalized in your office? Throw the flag or simply leave a comment!

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Filed under: (american) football by Johannes Musseleck
on November 25, 2011 at 10:38 pm CET
Tagged with: (american) football • behavior • bullying • delay of game • flags • fouls • hard • hierarchy • illegal formation • intentional grounding • nfl • organization • penalties • respect • reward • taunting • thanksgiving classics • unnecessary roughness • unsportsmanlike conduct

On Sunday, the final of the Rugby World Cup will be played in Auckland, New Zealand. The tournament in this rugby crazy nation has been a great success so far, and the climax is yet to come as the “All Blacks” from the host country made it to the final where they are the favorites to win the title.

Their opponents from France have not been expected to be there by most experts prior to the tournament and they even lost two games on their road to the final, one against Tonga (14-19), the other being a heavy 17-37 defeat against, guess what, New Zealand. And even in their semi final against Wales, they played not quite convincing: Wales took the lead early and looked like the stronger team when their captain Sam Warburton saw a red card not even 20 minutes into the game. Despite being one player more for the remaining three quarters of the game, France did not manage to score a try and only won narrowly by 9 points to 8, with Wales kicking one kick just inches short and another on hitting the bar.

Obviously, the red card was decisive. And for those of you that haven’t seen the match last weekend or maybe aren’t too much into Rugby anyway: It was heavily controversial. Warburton received it for a dangerous dip tackle on Vincent Clerc, but other similar tackles during the tournament did not lead to red cards. However, if you go strictly by the rule book, a red card can be shown for the kind of foul Warburton committed.

This leads to a discussion that can be heard in nearly all kinds of sports involving a referee: The sensitivity of the refs. Up to the red card situation, the match had been hard but fair and Warburton is all but an unfair player. It was early in the game and no one would have complained about a yellow card. So go by the rule book or take a decision that everybody would agree on and that would allow for a high quality rest of the match with the stronger team winning?

Referee Alain Rolland decided to go by the rule book.

Wait a minute, what was his name? Alain Rolland? That sounds pretty French for a referee in a match involving France! And for a good reason: Rolland, a mortgage broker from Ireland, has a French father, parts of family still live in France and he speaks French fluently.

Honestly, I cannot imagine seeing a referee with a French father to call a soccer World Cup semi final involving France. In rugby it’s possible. It’s a hard game, but one where respect and fairness are highly valued. Also, the rugby world is a lot smaller than e.g.  soccer, so for finding top quality referees you don’t have too much choice of countries. And Rolland is clearly one of the best refs in the world – even though nowadays there are some different opinions in Wales (Rolland even received death threats).

So was it wrong to nominate Rolland for this game? That’s an interesting question which I will try to answer in a way that not only refers to rugby:

Rolland has not done any mistake. By the rule book he did the right call. The International Rugby Board (IRB) referee manager Paddy O’Brien even stated they were “delighted” with Rolland’s performances in the semi final.

Still, other referees during the tournament did not hide behind the rule book. I believe there’s a reason why Rolland did. Just imagine you were in his shoes. When the game starts you would believe that all Wales was expecting you to favor France with your decisions. However, if a controversial decision would be called against France, everybody in France would complain that you made this call against France only to explicitly demonstrate that you were not favoring France. Whatever you do, it will be used against you.

These kinds of situations do not allow for any sensitivity, they lead to people trying to protect themselves by sticking strictly to the rule book. In sports as well as in business.

Alain Rolland is an expert. He speaks the language of both teams in that semi final fluently. He has both a Celtic and a French influence. He has been a rugby player himself (three caps for Ireland). Who could have been better suited?

Anyone could have.

In situations in which sensitivity and creativity are vital to mediate between two sides, it doesn’t always pay to have someone in place who has strong links to both sides and/or a lot of knowledge of all details. Mediators or moderators can quickly get caught up in a sandwich position. Each side will always believe that the ties with the other side would be stronger, mistrust and trying to take influence result from it. In this climate, the mediator can’t move and sticks to the book to play it safe and avoid any suspicion. Just like Rolland did.

The problem is that playing it safe often does not yield the best possible results.

When mediating between two sides, it doesn’t take an expert. There are enough experts on both sides to get the facts straight. It takes someone who is free to suggest untapped approaches, someone who is free to be sensitive, someone who is by no means suspicious. If you look for this someone, don’t look on either of the two sides or even close to them. Find someone who has room to move.

On Sunday, the referee in the final will come from South Africa. And Rolland? He will be one of the two touch judges. The other one is from … Wales.

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Filed under: rugby by Johannes Musseleck
on October 20, 2011 at 11:30 pm CET
Tagged with: alain rolland • all blacks • auckland • bias • creativity freedom • dip tackle • expert • france • influence • international rugby board • irb • mediator • mistrust • moderator • new zealand • paddy o'brien • red card • rugby • rugby union • rugby world cup • sam warburton • sandwich position • sensitivity • soccer • south africa • suspicion • tonga • vincent clerc • wales

When Dick Forsbury created the high jump technique of the flop, it seemed like a crazy idea to cross the bar with the face looking into the opposite direction.

When Jan Boklöv invented the V-style in ski jumping, it seemed like an inferior approach because of the low style points to be earned with it.

Today, no one can imagine a high jumper using the straddle technique or a ski jumper keeping the skis in parallel.

Like many radical innovations, when they came up they seemed to have less potential than the established techniques, approaches and products.

I remember the discussions I had with developers at some of the leading mobile phone companies back when the first smart phones were created. They were all discussing technical capabilities and features for “the high end users” – some weird imaginary people they didn’t really understand.

Then a company came with a smart phone that was technically inferior, but understood the users, and that company also came up with a solid use case to match it.

Today, the Forsbury flop looks elegant and is performed in a perfect flow. But at its core it helped to jump higher.

Today, even the V-style yields high marks in ski jumping. But at its core it helped to jump further.

Steve Jobs wasn’t afraid of bad marks or coming up with products that were technologically less sound than those already on the market. If they helped to jump higher or further, i.e. if they helped the user and built a great user experience. He knew the products could and would develop further technically over time.

The enormous amount of reactions to his passing shows how Apple excelled in reaching the customers’ emotions, lead by their visionary founder.

I never owned an Apple product, but I profit from their developments, too, as they changed the whole market. And just like in high- and ski jumping we cannot imagine smart phone without touch screens or digital music without well-structured download shops anymore (and there are a lot more examples I could give here).

Looking at Forsbury, Boklöv and Jobs I am thankful they taught me that a great radical innovation must not only aim at developing a successful product or service within one’s own company, but to have the potential to change the whole category, the whole market – to change the game.

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Filed under: skiing, track and field by Johannes Musseleck
on October 6, 2011 at 11:02 pm CET
Tagged with: apple • athletics • development • dick forsbury • flop • game changer • high jump • innovation • iphone • itunes • jan boklöv • radical innovation • ski jumping • smart phone • steve jobs • straddle • style points • track and field • use case • user needs • v-style

I wasn’t able to watch two of the last three games of my club live on TV, so I taped them to be able to watch them after coming back home later the same day. That felt awful.

During the time the game was played, I knew it was on and was imagining what could have happened, which made me unhappy with the task I was actually doing at that moment because it kept me from watching my team.

After the match I was curious to know the result, yet trying everything to not get aware of it, trying to save the tension for watching the tape later on. Whenever someone called me I either didn’t answer the phone at all or started the conversation with “don’t tell my anything about the game”. On the way back home I kept the radio off to make sure no radio announcer would destroy my evening.

Back home, finally watching the game, it felt wrong. I knew it wasn’t live and I knew the game was already decided. I knew I couldn’t change a thing about the game. Not that I could when watching it live, but the feeling was different. I even had to keep myself from forwarding the tape in some phase of the game, which destroyed the experience even more.

At that moment I asked myself if it would have been any different if it wasn’t my team’s game, but any other two teams. I’m pretty sure it would have. If I would have gotten to know the result before watching, I would have been disappointed, but  it would have been easier to get over it. And even during the game I would surely have forwarded the tape a couple of times and cared less about the different experience. So the personal involvement seems to be an important factor.

Then I wondered what it would have been like watching the Super Bowl or the World Cup final on tape. My answer was: Why would that happen? No one schedules a meeting during a major sports event and as a fan you would try all you can to avoid e.g. travelling at that time.

This is a powerful finding. There are hundreds of games going on somewhere every day. Most of them I don’t care about anyway (no, I don’t watch the Chilean soccer league even though the games are live on cable TV and some of them probably are quite good games). For some of them, I’m curious to pick up the result, but that’s pretty much it. For some, I want to know instantly how it went and what the outcome was – even a slight delay gives me a bad feeling. And some I just can’t afford to miss.

Interestingly, my social media usage and my uptake and processing of information follow the same rules.

There are millions of blogs and users of Twitter, Facebook, etc. out there. They broadcast anytime in incredible volumes. Some of the posts for sure are very good and it’s a pity I miss them. But like the Chilean soccer league example mentioned above, in most cases I’m not even aware they exist.

For some, I’m kind of interested in what goes on, but if I miss it it’s not much of a problem. Lady Gaga has more than 14 million followers on Twitter. I’m pretty sure the majority of them could still sleep well even if they missed one of her tweets.

Then there is “my team”. Those sources that I don’t want to miss. Those that I want to know instantly about whenever they come up with something new. And just like I only have one favorite team in sports, these are very, very few.

And finally, there are Super Bowl/ World Cup final types of sources. Whenever they update, I try to make sure I’m available to check them at that very moment.

My team only plays once a week, the Super Bowl takes place only once a year, the World Cup Final only once in four years. If I missed one of those it would feel very bad. But if you’re a baseball fan and your team plays nearly every day for half a year, that bad feeling is probably less intense.

But: That perception seems not to be in line with the rules of the media. It seems that mass of information and especially frequency seem to be the most important success factors in social media.

Just a couple of weeks ago, URL shortening service bit.ly release some statistics showing that the half life of a Tweet or a Facebook status update is just three hours. Three hours!

This means that just a few hours after content has been published, no one cares about it anymore. As a result, people raise the frequency of publishing content. And while newspaper editors 20 years ago complained about the pressure of having to come up with a new paper every day, a day is a luxury many can only dream of today.

On April 6, 2008, the New York Times published an alarming article entitled “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop”, which described the pressure professional loggers are subject to. It quoted blogger Michael Arrington saying that he “gained 30 pounds in the last three years” and “developed a severe sleeping disorder”, just to continue saying that “at some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen”. He finished with “This is not sustainable”. No it’s not. But nothing has happened since the article was published more than three years ago.

I believe it will change. And I believe it has to change.

Social media channels are designed in a way that they strongly privilege recency. However, a thought that has been published today is not any better than the same thought published one or two years ago.

Two things need to happen (and will happen):

1) Redesign of the channels in a way that values content and quality of content over recency.

This doesn’t mean tagging tweets (although it might be a starting point), but e.g. relating them to content that has been previously published or promoting it based on who forwarded it to whom and what relation that group has to your social context.

Facebook Timeline is probably the most interesting experiment into this direction today, but probably not on the most interesting channel from a quality of information point of view. I also believe that Facebook’s intention was a slightly different one, so it remains to be seen where this will develop.

I strongly believe that this will be the field for the next killer-app in social media. Who will build it?

2) Change user behavior

This is a tricky one as it happens on both sides. Let’s start with the “reader” side: By now we are all a lot more experienced in using social media than a few years back. We know better where to look for quality information that is relevant for us. However, our usage of the tools doesn’t always reflect this. How many people do you follow on Facebook or Twitter? Most probably too many, like most of us.

As long as we don’t start to use the channels in a way that concentrates on relevance, as long as we are afraid to unfollow someone and as long as our bookmarks go into a nirvana of thousands of other bookmarks that are unsorted and thus not retrievable in the moment they could be useful, we simply won’t be as efficient and effective as we could be.

On the “publisher” side, it’s even more complicated. As described above, the existing systems favor quantity and high frequency. It takes a lot of guts to slow down – to concentrate on producing quality output, new ideas, stuff that matters instead of just publishing something quickly to fight the three hour half life threat.

As you may have realized, I have reduced the frequency of my posts. Also, they don’t come in a regular pattern like they used to (this is actually only my fourth post in one and a half months). I’m actually doing everything wrong I can, according to the advise you can find all over the web on how to blog successfully.

The result so far: The bad news is, that less people read my blog. If I was a professional blogger who has to earn his living from it, I have to admit this would make me quite nervous. But there’s also good news. The feedback I get is mostly from people that are really interested and have a lot to say. I had some very interesting exchanges on the topics I posted and it was a joy to discuss with my ideas with those great people – like you reading this right now.

Redesigning the channels and changing user behavior are interconnected. User behavior drives channel development and vice verse, so in a way this is a chicken and egg problem. However, chicken and eggs both exist, so a chicken and egg problem often does not impact if a development will take place, it only impacts when it will happen. Our channels and behaviors will change. And I will be as interested to see this change happen as I am to see my team’s matches live.

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Filed under: (american) football, soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on October 4, 2011 at 8:50 am CET
Tagged with: (american) football • bit.ly • blogger • cable tv • chile • dvr • facebook • feeling • fifa world cup final • frequency • half life • information • intensity • involvement • killer-app • lady gaga • michael arrington • new york times • recency • redesign • relevance • soccer (football) • social media • super bowl • tape • tech crunch • twitter • unfollow • usage

Swiss soccer club Neuchâtel Xamax is the stage for what is probably one of the most remarkable takeovers in sports in recent years: Xamax, one of the Swiss clubs with the longest history, was acquired by Bulat Chagaev, a billionaire from Chechnya. And since then, nothing stayed the same in Neuchâtel.

Chagaev, son-in-law of the last Soviet Communist Party leader in Chechnya, is not quite known for his patience and humble management style:

On May 11, just one day after taking over the club, he fired coach Didier Ollé-Nicolle. Just 19 days later, after losing the Swiss cup final, Ollé-Nicolle’s successor Bernard Challendes was fired by Chagaev, too. The rumor goes that at half time of that match, Chagaev would have entered the dressing room shouting at the players: “I will kill you all”. He then brought in former Barca player Sonny Anderson as new coach. Anderson prepared the team for the next season during the summer break. However, after losing the first two league games of the new season, yes, you guessed right, Anderson was fired on July 24. To put the icing on the cake, Chagaev also accused Anderson to have brought in players in which he had financial interest (ironically, last week Ramzan Kadyrov, the controversial president of Chechnya, accused Chagaev to have “eaten up” his money, while he was vice president of soccer club Terek Grozny under Kadyrov).

Also, the rest of the coaching staff and players Binya and Carlao had to leave together with Anderson. Speaking of players: One of them didn’t even last as long as Anderson this season: After the first league match, a 0-3 defeat against Lucerne, keeper Rodrigo Galetto was dismissed.

And the wheel keeps turning: The next coach, Joaquin Caparros, also only stayed for 39 days before being fired. And during this time, another dressing room encounter took place when Chagaev intimidated the players again – but this time joined by armed bodyguards.

The result of all the activity: Xamax is currently 8^th in the league which only is 10 teams strong, having only two wins from nine matches.

Supporters in Switzerland are far from the typical Swiss neutrality in this case: Xamax fan clubs promote a fan boycott of home matches, while e.g. fans of opponents Young Boys Berne presented banners such as “Love Football – Hate Bulat” or “Bulat – toys for grownups can be found in an adult store” during their match against Xamax.

Xamax is obviously a special situation, but not a singular one: Ramzan Kadyrov, whom I already mentioned above, brought in Dutch coach and former star player Ruud Gullit to Grozny, just to fire him after only 13 weeks. Meanwhile, at his league rival Anzhi Makhachkala, Suleiman Kerimov, number 118 on Forbes’ list of the World’s Billionaires, bought super star Samuel Eto’o from Inter Milan for a salary of nearly $30 million per year, an incredibly sum even in soccer. Kerimov also stormed the dressing room at half time a couple of weeks ago, but not the players’ – that of the referee.

These are maybe rather extreme cases, but the pattern is not limited to soccer: There is no more patience!

The business world has, just like soccer, become faster and faster. Decision are taken quicker, communication takes places at the speed of light. Information is everywhere, pressure is high and investors are looking for short term paybacks and results. The rule seems to be: “If it doesn’t work out in the short term, move on”. Be that by investing your money elsewhere (financial investors) or by hiring a new coach (billionaire owners of soccer teams).

Two weeks ago, Yahoo fired their coach.

The interview Carol Bartz gave in Fortune magazine after her dismissal as Yahoo CEO was remarkable:

She stated that the board fired her because they were looking for quick revenue growth, “even though they were told that we would not have revenue growth until 2012”. She spoke about the cooperation deal with Microsoft she set up, which would help the company long-term. Bartz then went on by critizing the impatience of the Yahoo board: “The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country, (…) now they’re trying to show that they’re not the doofuses that they are.” Wow.

When asked whom the board should bring in long-term as CEO, she shows not only great humor, but also her perspective on patience: “They should bring me in. I knew what to do.”

I’m with Carol Bartz here. I truly believe that patience will be one of the most important success factors for companies in coming years. Not letting capital markets and shortening reporting cycles define your strategy, but defining it yourself based on what is best for the development of the company. This is a tough challenge, and only the strongest managers will be able to withstand the pressure.

If Bulat Chagaev will ever agree? I don’t know. But while he is mainly trying to improve a club in Switzerland domestically, his “colleagues” Kadyrov and Kerimov have bigger plans: They want to build the best team in the world.

Let’s have a look at those that are already there: The last Champions League final featured FC Barcelona and Manchester United.

Barcelona’s coach Josep “Pep” Guardiola is with the club since 1990 (except for a couple of years at the end of his career as a player), while Sir Alex Ferguson is coaching United since 1986.

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Filed under: soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on September 23, 2011 at 9:00 am CET
Tagged with: anzhi makhachkala • barca • bernard challendes • binya • board • bodyguards • bulat chagaev • capital markets • carlao • carol bartz • chechnya • coach • communication • didier ollé-nicolle • dismissal • dressing room • fc barcelona • financial investors • financial markets • fire • fortune magazine • intimidation • joaquin caparros • josep guardiola • manchester united • microsoft • neuchâtel xamax • patience • pep guardiola • pressure • quci • ramzan kadyrov • reporting cycles • ruud gullit • samuel eto’o • sir alex ferguson • soccer (football) • sonny anderson • speed • switzerland • terek grozny • xamax • yahoo • young boys berne