Edge: Leadership Secrets from Footballs’s Top Thinkers. Ben Lyttleton
can be very useful for the business world,’ Amorrortu tells me. He is a regular at business conferences and says, with typical Basque understatement, that there is ‘some curiosity’ about how Athletic develops its sense of belonging among the players.
HOW TO GET AN EDGE – by JOSE MARIA AMORRORTU
1 Have an objective and make your ideas clear. What is your success?
2 Surround yourself with great professionals and behave in accordance with what you want to achieve.
3 Leave a legacy for society and create value in your surroundings. All companies need to make a profit but the benefits of social purpose are for the whole society.
Amorrortu also talks about the importance of showing patience and building for the long term. Businesses want to replicate a sentimiento Athletic but are less interested in emotional development, improving behaviours (not just knowledge) and instilling confidence in employees. ‘People think so much about short-term performance that sometimes we lack patience and we need to remember that.’ We will see later in this chapter that the effects of short-term decisions can have long-term implications. But Athletic shows patience: in the ten years before my visit, the club has had only three different head coaches, the fewest of any team in La Liga. This is not the case elsewhere: across the 92 Premier League and Football League clubs in England, 36 made a total of 51 managerial changes during the 2016–17 season (Leyton Orient boosted those numbers by getting through five different coaches).
Stability enhances the sense of belonging. An environment that threatens belonging can produce uncooperative behaviour, information hoarding and, according to a study by psychologists at UCLA,2 an experience equivalent to physical pain. ‘When our social needs are being satisfied, the brain responds in much the same way as it responds to other rewards that are more tangible. Being treated with respect and as a valued member of an organisation may activate reward systems in the brain that promote stronger learning of behaviours that predict more of these social rewards in the future.’
There are 13 men’s teams in the Athletic structure: behind the first team are Bilbao Athletic (Segunda Division B), Baskonia (division three) – in Spain, youth teams play in the lower divisions – two Juvenil teams (17 to 19 years old), two Cadetes (15 and 16), two Infantiles (13 and 14) and four Alevines (11 and 12). There are also two women’s teams.
At the end of one recent season, the coach of Bilbao Athletic’s second team, José Ziganda, addressed the board about his team’s progress. Their results had improved. The average age had dropped. Things were going well. But Ziganda was still not happy. ‘I want to develop players here and then see them stay,’ he said. ‘But I’ve not yet heard a player say to me, “I won’t leave this club until you kick me out.”’ His comments earned a round of applause.
At the end of the 2016–17 season, Athletic did make a coaching change. Valverde was appointed Barcelona coach and Athletic promoted Ziganda to head coach.3 Historians pointed out that Ziganda had replaced Valverde before, during a La Liga match at Real Valladolid in June 1995, when Ziganda came off the bench to take the place of Valverde. Both men, of course, were playing for Athletic at the time.
‘It’s logical that we also see players staying as success,’ says Amorrortu. ‘To maintain our competitive level, to play in Europe, and to have the most players from our own cantera in the first team.’ According to a CIES study, only two clubs in Europe’s top five leagues had more internally produced players in their first-team squad in season 2016–17 than Athletic.4 The average length of time a first-team debutant has spent at the club is 7.2 years, more than any other team in Spain.
Talent retention is an increasing problem for business today. A study by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that in 2016, the average tenure of a job for 18- to 35-year-olds was 1.6 years. In a few years, millennials will make up half the workforce, and expect to stay in that job for under two years. The term millennials refers to the generation born after 1984 who are often accused of being hard to manage. How to get the best out of millennials will crop up throughout this book, as most footballers still playing these days fall into this generation.
The stigma of changing jobs every few years is a thing of the past: millennials who switch jobs are believed to have a higher learning curve, to be higher performers and even to be more loyal, as they care about making a good impression in their short time at each job.
Building a culture helps you keep your talent. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for a recruitment company, looks for the driving forces behind why people choose their jobs and what matters to them at work. Using a data-sample based on performance reviews and salary surveys of over 615,000 candidates between 2014 and 2017, he identified the factors that drive professional happiness. His finding: the top predictor of workplace satisfaction is not pay but the culture and values of the organisation, followed by the quality of senior leadership and the career opportunities available.5
LinkedIn’s Talent Trends survey backed up these findings. Forty-one per cent of professionals saw themselves staying at their current company for under two years. Those who wanted to stay long term, it reported, were purpose oriented and had bought into their company’s culture and long-term mission.
The one-club man, who spends his whole career at the same club, is rare in today’s football. Urrutia, the Athletic president, was one. A former midfielder, he spent 26 years at the club, playing 348 times. He even rejected an offer from Real Madrid in order to remain with Athletic. He has said that Athletic’s policy is about pride in its values, particularly in a world that he calls ‘dehumanised’ and lacking in values. His career was the inspiration for Athletic to instigate its One-Club Man award, recognising loyalty in other professionals. The first three recipients were Matt Le Tissier (thus further developing the Southampton connection), Paolo Maldini and Sepp Maier. The club thought that affiliating one-club icons as Athletic ambassadors was also a smart way to teach youngsters the value of sometimes resisting the temptation, whether it’s a bigger salary or a bigger club, to move on.
The Spanish phrase I hear repeated to me in Bilbao is: ‘What do you want to be in life, the lion’s tail or the mouse’s face?’ In English, the equivalent would be the small fish in a big pond or the big fish in a small pond. The business that keeps the ‘mouse’s face’ is the business that retains its talent. The lesson? The grass is not necessarily always greener on the other side.
In each summer after Athletic reached the 2012 Europa League final (which it lost 3–0 to Atlético Madrid), it lost part of the team’s spine. Javi Martinez was first to go, moving to Bayern Munich for €40 million. His spell in Germany was decimated by injuries.
Next to go was Fernando Llorente, the forward, who moved to Juventus on a free transfer. He scored 16 goals in his first season in Serie A, helping his team win the Scudetto. His next two seasons (seven goals, zero goals) were less effective, and after three years in Turin he moved to Sevilla (four goals). Ander Herrera moved to Manchester United for €36 million, and survived two seasons of upheaval at Old Trafford before being able to show his best form, and winning United’s Player of the Season for 2016–17. Llorente’s name is still mentioned often in Bilbao. That season saw him embroiled in a relegation fight with Swansea, which was ultimately successful, but there’s a strong sense he might regret having ever left Lezama.
Often players only know what they are losing once it’s gone. Santi Urquiaga understands this better than most. He was part of the original intake of players when Lezama first opened its doors in 1971. A right-back, he progressed through the Bilbao Athletic ranks and made his first-team debut at 19. He played in the Athletic team that won back-to-back league titles in 1983 and 1984 (that was the last title the team won until the 2015 Super Cup). We meet at Lezama, where he is Facilities Manager. He points to one pitch and says that back in his day it was the only training pitch there. Where a women’s team is now training was one of two sand pitches. A tennis court used to be where the main gym now is.
‘It