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the
manager
WINTER 2011
of companies which had spiralled
downwards. The interesting thing was
that the reasons for these downward
spirals all came from a common
list; loss of financial control, lack of
marketing focus and too wide a range
of projects or products. But almost
always at the top of the list was a lack
of capability in the management.
Building an organisation, on the
other hand, requires a plan. It's a
journey that the whole organisation
takes collectively, so the whole becomes
greater than the sum of its parts. This,
more often than not, requires a lot of
dialogue and a lot of robust debate
around the board table. Whenever you
take you place at a board table you
bring two hats with you; first you have
your functional hat – whether you're
a football club manager, a commercial
manager a chief executive or whatever
– which you wear in your everyday
job. When you sit down as part of a
management team, you have to remove
that hat and replace it with your
organisational hat.
AB: But surely when you go to the
board room, it's part of your job to get
the other people there to 'buy in' to
what you're doing?
ST: First of all, you have to accept
that everyone is motivated by self-
interest. This needn't be a bad thing,
as in business it's all about 'mutual
self-interest'. When you develop a
strategy for any organisation, you
have a far better chance of making it
work it if those people who are the
key implementers have been part of
the process of developing it. If you
can develop a sense of ownership,
commitment and understanding for
your organisation's strategy, then all
you have to do is add a time frame
and then you have the beginnings
of a workable plan.
AB: It’s often said that the most
important relationship in a football
club is the one between the manager
and the chairman and I assume that
it's similar in other organisations
outside football. How do you best
manage that relationship over the
short, medium and longer term?
ST: When I work with managers
– not just football managers, but
managers in any field – I always start
by asking them what their mandate
was when they came into the job.
➽
Stuart Timperley (left) passes on some of
the wisdom accumulated over a lifetime in
business and academia to Aidy Boothroyd