A business lesson in the power of engagement from a football team.
I am not that interested in football (soccer for non UK readers), but a recent result on the breakfast news caught my attention, or more precisely the circumstances that surrounded this particular result.
The club involved was a relatively minor player in the Scottish premier division called Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Now the team at the bottom of this division would not normally be that newsworthy on the main UK news channel, even though they had won their match the day before by 6 goals to 3. However the events which led up to this result were.
This team, having achieved promotion to the premier division the previous season, were struggling, and after 13 games were firmly anchored at the foot of the division. They had won only 2 games, drawn 3 and lost 8, and had scored only 13 goals while having 25 scored against them. Things were going from bad to worse and, according to the coach, on the Friday before the match they had the worst training session ever.
What seemed to have turned things around was that, in desperation, the coach got the team together, and they jointly agreed the strategy and tactics for the game. As the 6-3 win showed, this had a dramatic effect on performance. I believe that this was because it was now their strategy and tactics, not those imposed on them, and they moved heaven and earth to deliver.
Since this story had piqued my interest I have monitored their progress over several weeks just to see if this was a flash in the pan. Their first test came the following week when they played Glasgow Celtic, one of the two top teams in Scotland and one with huge financial resources and international class players. Predictably they lost but were not disgraced, and in subsequent games have slowly pulled away from the bottom of the league. As a club from a small city with limited resources, with the best will in the world they are not going to win the league when you compare them with the top teams. However they are certainly punching above their weight, having won four games since they first came to my attention and scoring 16 goals while only conceding 15. A significant improvement on their early season form!
This is just another example of how people respond when they are allowed to create their own solution, rather than having one imposed on them, and the power that taking ownership of the solution can release even in a poorly performing team, whether that be in football or in a business environment. Their challenge now is to make the change sustained, or now that things have begun to improve will the coach feel that it’s time to take charge again and destroy all the progress made? Only time will tell, but for the moment things seem to be looking up and I for one will be looking out for them when the match results are announced each week.
Tags: Breaking the Mould, employee engagement, employee ownership, Human Resources, motivation, performance improvement, workforce engagement, workforce ownership
