This summer the way people work has been in the media spotlight. Look at the England football squad. Many people saw the paralell to their own lives and took the view that if we went to work and under performed on a regular basis we would expect to be disciplined by way of warning or performance review. If we didn’t fulfill our objectives we would be trained and if it was evident we would never be able to fullfill the job requirements and there was someone better who could, we would be sacked and replaced.
Would we ever expect our manager to be sacked because we weren’t performing?
Being a member of the England football squad is like being part of a project team. It’s not your day job and you have two bosses. You are bringing together a group of talented individuals that are going to work together towards a common goal… like winning the World Cup (we wish). The components that have to come together to succeed are complicated. It is not as straight forward as an employee having the fear of losing their job, or even that different people are motivated by different things… money, recognition and sense of achievement. The key to successfully managing a team of this nature is more about building a community than traditional managerial motivators.
Community Management what does that mean?
It has more to do with understanding the bigger picture, seeing the vision and getting people to buy into their part in that vision. This is not in the traditional corporate mission, vision, values context but in a more pragmatic, holistic way that exposes the fact that you do not have control over all the decisions you would like to make and because of that you put more accountability and ownership on those indiviuals who have the skills you require to deliver the end goal.
When Fabio’s management style was being scrutinised by the media, my contribution was “I wonder what would happen if Fabio asked the players “who is up for it today?” “where would you like to play?” and the ownership was on the players themselves to say for the good of our end goal this is what should happen! This may sound like nonsense but when you strip all the crap away these are guys that love nothing better than to kick a ball around a field and win – sometimes we add so much more to these situations than there should be and the simplicity is lost.
Why have a Manager then?
Someone has to pick the members of the community and getting that right is essential. Here there needs to be the courage and strength to pick the stars but also pick the players with potential who are hungry to show what they can do. Then there is the huge task of managing and motivating the individuals. Teams who do not work together on a daily basis have different needs to those that do and the motivation to succeed is different. This is not about money, it is more about how the world see you and may be even an opportunity for you to give something back, develop in a different way. There has to be much more focus on what an individual will get out of this so that the team bond can be formed and developed.
