Leadership and Chaos; Liverpool FC and Entrepreneurship | Entrepreneur Solo

For my sins (this year at least) I am a Liverpool fan and I am seeing first hand what a lack of leadership, or just plain wrong leadership, can do to an organisation. I am seeing this along with millions of other Liverpool fans who are suffering both on and off the pitch as a cancer eats at the club and that cancer is leadership.

Spirit of Shankly Logo

Now you could say what has this got to do with Entrepreneurship and especially from a solo Entrepreneur but you cannot do everything alone and there will be a stage at some time when you need to lead and that leadership needs to be correct, not necessarily strong but pulling in the right direction, rather than tearing the fledgling organisation apart. Liverpool is not a fledgling organisation of course, it has a history of 118 years, but the chaos engulfing the club just shows what a lack of correct leadership can do in a short period of time.

So what are the issues at Liverpool and how can this be reflected in your decisions as an entrepreneur?

1) The Owners: They are trying to sell the club very publicly and at the same time asking for a huge profit on their investment (sic!!) when all they really have done is pile debt into the club. The credit crunch has hit them as they cannot refinance (Hopefully) meaning they are running out of time fast. As an owner of a business and therefore its leader you should always be doing what is best for the business rather than just trying to line your own pocket. Remember this for example when trying to outsource work. The cheapest is not necessarily the best.

2) The Manager: Is a self anointed “highly respected manager with 35 years of experience”. Erm right! If you keep telling everyone how good you are how many of them will believe you? As I have pointed out on this blog before you get others to install the perception that you are good (Third party installed perceptions) you do not do it yourself as you really shouldn’t need to. When you are in a business environment this means networking, doing a whole lot of brilliant jobs and getting people to refer you by word of mouth. Don’t go around shouting about how brilliant you are because you are just cruising for a fall.

3) The Players: Earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a week but unable to beat a fourth division team at home. Too fearful to do anything that may upset the apple cart or try anything creative due to the tensions from inside and outside the club. If you have a business you are a player in it, really it is up to you to provide the creative spark that will make that business stand out from others. If you are fearful of the consequences then you may well find yourself in a very stagnant business

4) The Plan: The last Liverpool boss, Rafael Benitez, always had a plan. Even when the plan didn’t work you could see what he was trying to do even if you didn’t agree with it. The club now doesn’t have a plan, the youth system is being destroyed, kids are being sent out to other clubs in part exchange for short term journeyman professionals and there doesn’t seem to be a coherent plan. Your business is the same in that it needs a strategy and a vision of where it is going. Without the strategy you are adrift on the whims of the market with no way to measure your success or otherwise and without measuring you cannot win because you don’t know where the goal is.

I could go on about the finance, the motivation and even some of the fans who wanted the last manager out, be careful what you wish for, but I don’t want to stretch the metaphor too far. Suffice to say if you get yourself into the hole that Liverpool have over the years since the American vipers Tom Hicks and George Gillett took over there comes a time when you have to stop digging. If your business is ever heading in the same direction then take a long, hard look at it and make a very quick turnaround after all if you carry on doing the same things you have been doing you shouldn’t really expect any different results.

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1) Third Party Installed perceptions

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