Musings on Moyes - leadership, culture and change management.

So it seems two great passions - football and Business Studies - can be combined for Unit 4...at least something good came out of Moyes' reign!

“With no disrespect to Moyes, it feels like Manchester United again.” – Goalkeeper Anders Lindegaard on Ryan Giggs’ appointment as interim manager of the club.

As an Everton fan I was conflicted waving goodbye to David Moyes this time last year, grateful for his service and delighted that one of the biggest clubs in the world would give someone like him an opportunity at the highest level, and yet his departure was soured by his refusal to sign a contract after being ‘tapped up’ by Fergie. One thing I never expected was that one year on he would become Unit 4 gold for looking at the topics of leadership, culture and change.

There was a Section B question a few years back that asked: ‘how easy is it for a new leader to change the culture of an organisation quickly?’ You can see how the Fergie-Moyes transition could be used for very effective application in this sort of question.

If we look at some of the key ‘depends upon’ factors that one might consider in this question, you can start to see where it all went wrong for the ‘chosen one’.

Style

Moyes and Ferguson are both fiery Glaswegians who undoubtedly have an autocratic style of leadership. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that Ferguson had a far for paternalistic approach, especially towards his younger players, than Moyes. In fact, one criticism of his time at Everton was his reluctance to back the young players like Ross Barkley, Seamus Coleman and Jack Rodwell with minutes on the pitch. Indeed his relationship with a then young Wayne Rooney was sour enough for Moyes to sue him for comments made in his biography shortly after the striker joined Manchester United. As for the senior players, leaks from the training ground talked of a ruthlessly regimented training regime - longer sessions, relentless drills and an unswerving focus on fitness. The joy was sucked out of training sessions and players felt that Moyes worried too much about stopping the opposition rather than setting up his own team - a hangover from his Everton days that sounds all to familiar to me. It was this change in approach that seemed to lead to such lacklustre performances and lead one Director to comment:

“The kind of performances that are the DNA of the club in terms of what the fans love about the way we play football is not there.”

Organisational culture is often referred to as the DNA of a company; any attempt by Moyes' to alter it was always likely to end in tears.

Succession

Much was made of the succession process and the fact that Sir Alex hand-picked Moyes for the job, supposedly seeing so much of himself in the Everton manager. On one hand one might have thought that backing would go some way to winning over fans and players, but in fact it held very little sway once the going got tough. Looking back though, was the succession well handled? Should a football manager choose his successor? It’s difficult to imagine that occurring in the corporate world. Should Manchester United have cast the net wider and made a more competitive process of it? Surely that would have resulted in a more successful appointment. Perhaps it would also have made more sense to follow Fergie with someone with a more contrasting leadership style to what the players must inevitably perceived as 'Diet Fergie'. Also, the 'chosen one' epithet was not something that should have emblazoned giant banners and merchandise - it merely served to underline to all that Moyes had been gifted the job, rather than earned it.

Other question marks surround the effectiveness of the succession process, such as should the shadow of Ferguson been allowed to loom so large over the pitch from his seat in the Directors’ Box at every Old Trafford home game? Surely some distance would have been appropriate to allow players, staff and fans to ‘move on’ and accept the changes Moyes wanted to put in place.

I still remember Fergie’s goodbye speech on the Old Trafford pitch, telling the crowd to back the new manager and that things would be tough. He knew what was coming and didn’t appear to help back the new manager in any way. What’s more, if you like your conspiracy theories - why would a man like Ferguson, with an ego the size of the Trafford Centre, choose a successor who could quickly consign him to the past as one might imagine a Guardiola-type might have done? Underhand and unlikely I know, but perhaps another good reason not to let a leader choose his successor if he is not financially invested in the business.

Internal or External Appointment

This is always an important consideration in the ability of a new manager to drive change. Is he a ‘company man’, steeped in the existing culture, or is he a fresh face full of new ideas from the outside? Both can be successful for different reasons, but I find the immediately sharp contrast of Giggs (the company man) with the external appointment of Moyes very interesting and it is really what lies behind the rather damning quote from Lindegaard that heads this piece.

One of Moyes’ big mistakes when he took over was changing too much, too quickly, which is always a risk as an external appointment as it was always going to unsettle the players and staff at the club. Perhaps his biggest mistake was discarding the services and experience of Fergie’s backroom staff, including Mike Phelan and Rene Meulensteen, highly respected coaches in the club. This was the beginning of Moyes’ biggest headache, losing the support of influential employees, always a key group in shaping organisational culture and accepting change. In this case it was the senior squad members.

The more senior members of the squad used to refer to Moyes (behind his back) as ‘Everton’. Arriving at Carrington and asking "is Everton in yet?" – seemingly never accepting his appointment and rejecting the idea that he could be a Manchester United man. Moyes compounded this when he sacked Phelan, Meulensteen etc. – who could have been a valuable bridge to the players and helped to smooth the path for change – and then replaced them with his Everton back room staff.

So, the evaluation point? What might have made this more/less of a problem? Moyes’ CV - he has won nothing. For Moyes to walk into that dressing room with his authoritarian style and tell a group of experienced winners, with multiple medals and international caps, what they are doing wrong and what they need to do differently was always going to be a struggle. The culture of the football dressing room is always one where your respect is measured in medals and trophies. Moyes has none of these as a player or a manager. His greatest achievement was a cup final losers’ medal and one fourth place finish in the league - it doesn’t really stack up against Champions League winner Rio Ferdinand’s six Premier League championships.

Recent performance of organisation

One of the key ‘depends upon’ factors we consider in how effectively and quickly a new leader can bring about any sort of change is how successful the organisation has been in recent times. Former Nokia boss Stephen Elop and current CEO of Thomas Cook, the turnaround specialist Harriet Green, both made much of how much easier it is to come in as the new leader of a company on a ‘burning platform’, i.e. one where the company is in a perilous position and its very survival is under threat. Moyes didn’t enjoy that luxury, taking over the league champions - whatever people may say about the true quality of the squad he inherited.

There is an expression about organisational culture, that it is the thing that keeps a ship sailing in the same direction long after the captain has left the bridge. After ten months of grappling unsuccessfully at the helm it would appear, with Giggs, that Manchester United have found a man who can steer the same cultural course as the great Sir Alex Ferguson. Dare United not appoint him?

[So there you go. If you love business and you love football, this is a great case study for these topics. Manchester United PLC is fair game for application, football clubs are businesses too! Just remember not to waffle on about it and tell stories (like I just did) but learn to pick out the killer evidence to support your analysis].

Phil

@triconomics