Building to win
Professional sports have one common objective: winning. Participation award certificates don’t exist, and if they did would count for little. Winning trophies and doing well compared to the competition is what matters; livelihoods usually depend on it. As brutal and cut throat as this is, there are valuable lessons to learn for non-sporting businesses. Diversity plays a key role in this, but it’s an output of something else.
Using the English Football Premier League (EPL) as an example (bias consciously noted…), the statistics point firmly at the main ingredient for success.
For those unfamiliar with the EPL, it is a competition that generates revenues that exceed those of many nations’ GDP. There are 20 teams and over 550 registered players. Each team selects a squad of 25 players and has a manager or head coach. Since the league was formed in May 1993, their ages have ranged from 37 to over 70 years. The average tenure of a manager in this league is less than two years. No English born manager has ever won the EPL, though many have attempted (notably those originating from Scotland, Italy, France and Portugal have fared particularly well). In most cases, managers are ‘moved on’ if the results of the team do not meet the expectations of the Governing Board of Directors (often influenced by the club’s supporters……a very similar group to investors in business), or, in rarer cases, high-performing managers are poached by other clubs aspiring for success. For football managers, the need to deliver results is their only priority. They know the writing is on the wall if they don’t deliver. To do this, clubs are driven to scour all corners of the world to find the best talent. Many clubs have extensive scout and agent networks that search for the rough diamonds – tomorrow’s Pele, Maradona or Zidane (all were formidable talents in their day). The results? 113 different player nationalities have featured in the league since it began. The squad of last season’s league title winners had players from 12 different nations (probably this would be even higher without the ‘homegrown’ rule). Because of this process, teams have become composed of players originating from a whole host of different backgrounds, beliefs, cultures and languages. The only elements players do have in common is exceptional footballing ability and dedication to excel at what they have chosen to do. Nothing else. Though it is widely accepted that on and off the field of play much work is needed on the inclusivity front, certainly on the field, meritocracy has produced impressive diversity results. It is from this foundation, and order, that strategies to promote inclusivity can be developed.
The lessons for other businesses? Meritocracy is what enables diversity to flourish. Greater creativity – the well-known benefit that diverse teams can bring – is as relevant to success in the corporate world as it is in football. In fact, businesses have even greater pools of opportunity to bolster diversity than same-sex sports teams do – at least twice the size. The process must be enduring and one that is sufficiently invested in, but the prize is a worthy one. Leaders of businesses that fail to search deeply for talent, or hide behind self-imposed barriers to find the best will, just like EPL managers, end up looking for new opportunities soon.