Who Belongs in Your Starting XI?

I conclude my book, The Soccer of Success, with a chapter on building teams. The advice is simple: “Your success is not just about having a team; it’s about building the best team.”

I’m not coming up with this out of nowhere. McKinsey backs this up, while also pointing out just how difficult this can be.

That’s no reason to give up. I’ve discovered a clear roadmap to building better teams.

First, you have to get rid of the bad apples. As I like to put it, “a team is only as good as its worst attitude.” Carrick has been able to shine because United has done a very good job over the past year getting rid of the whole bushel of bad apples on the squad. Once the bad attitudes and lazy excuses were kicked out of the locker room, everyone improved.

That created potential for success. All they needed was a good leader to inspire them.

Moving Everyone Toward the Goal

If you have the right “players” on your team, I’ve found there are four keys to improving performance.

1) You have to create a common goal for everyone to aim for

This can often be so obvious that business leaders miss it completely. After all, doesn’t your team know the goal? Often, the answer is no. What is your top priority for them? Is it developing that new product offering? Is it increasing efficiency in the order process? Is it opening that new store location? If everything’s a priority, nothing is.

Carrick has told his players that the goal he wants them to shoot for is expressing themselves: playing fast and free soccer. The difference that goal has made is immense.

2) You must take action on what best moves your team toward that goal

For Carrick, that might be changing the shape and starting XI of the team. For you, it might be retraining everyone on AI so you can ideate more effectively on that new product.

3) To track your progress, you need to use scoreboards

There are scoreboards everywhere you look in soccer. There’s the score of an individual game, the league table, and all the individual stats that allow a manager like Carrick to track progress. Business teams need these scoreboards as well, whether it’s customer reviews or monthly sales numbers at the new store.

4) You need accountability

When United let the opposition get a late game-winning goal—like in a recent game against Newcastle—the next day, they review what went wrong and figure out how to avoid it happening again. A business can do the same thing by monitoring its scoreboards. When you see you’re falling short, you can work as a team to find the solution.

It can all seem so easy on paper, but if it were, Carrick wouldn’t be receiving the plaudits he is in the press, and every business would be a huge success. Still, these are the starting points, and if you get them right, you can build a team that can eventually win you a championship.