Building high performance teams

Leadership lessons from the ‘Special One’

SCIENCE OF BUILDING LEADERS
By ROSHAN THIRAN

“Ferguson is right. Money does not guarantee success. I showed that last season when my Porto team beat Manchester United. It’s all about leadership.” – Jose Mourinho

DURING the recent World Cup, I studied the work of leadership guru cum hostage negotiator George Kohlrieser on high performance teams.

As the new football season kicked off, I started to think about high performance sports teams. And immediately, one name comes to mind – José Mário dos Santos Félix Mourinho.

Jose Mourinho has built three high performance teams in the past few years. The moment he takes over the team, they quickly gel, start to perform and win trophies. How does Mourinho do it?

When Mourinho was asked what the secret to his success was, he humbly responded: “I pray a lot. I believe in God. I try to be a good man so He can have a bit of time to give me a hand when I need it.”

Mourinho may pray a lot but so do other coaches. Mourinho is probably the only coach who has a PhD, earning it from Lisbon’s Technical University.

But praying or having a PhD does not explain how he seamlessly builds high performance teams?
Let’s explore this paradoxical man. Mourinho, with his trademark Armani suit, is called crazy by some and genius by others. Despot and kind. Godly and arrogant. Loved and hated.

Yet, regardless of which team one supports, everyone, including women, has high respect for “The Special One”.

 In fact, when Mourinho left his old club Chelsea, his archrivals Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger moaned his departure.

Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was sad.
In a recent AOS survey, Mourinho topped a poll of celebrities that most office workers would want as their boss.

He won the poll convincingly beating Richard Branson, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Oliver and others.

For corporate employees, Mourinho is the “Chosen One”, someone they secretly wish would transform their workplace.

So how does Mourinho keep creating these high performance teams?
According to Kohlrieser in his book Hostage at the Table, there are eight key pillars to high performance leadership:

1) Leading from the mind’s eye – the power of focus;
2) Cycle of bonding – motivation, inspiration, resilience;
3) Leader as secure base – creating trust to drive change;
4) Conflict resolution – resolving differences;
5) Power of dialogue – building bridges with common understandings;
6) High impact negotiation – influencing and persuading;
7) Leveraging strengths – team self-awareness; and
8) Managing emotions – creating high energy.

Leading from the mind’s eye

Mourinho wanted to be a professional football player like his father Felix. But he was so untalented that it ended in embarrassing failure when he was not even allowed on the field.

Mourinho quit football and went to business school. But after just a day, he quit and enrolled in a sports science course, deciding to become the world’s greatest coach instead. And since that day he has kept his mind’s eye focused on being the best coach in the world.

At Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and now Real Madrid, Mourinho’s mind’s eye keeps him focused on winning. Even in defeat, he refuses to take the role of loser.

Every team he has managed quickly bounces back from losses because their leader has his mind’s eye fixated on nothing but success.

“It’s no fluke that after a defeat, Inter gets straight back on its feet. That’s all thanks to Mourinho,” claims Diego Milito, an Inter Milan star. In fact, winning is so engraved as Mourinho expresses: “I love players who love to win. They not only win in 90 minutes, but every day, every training session, in every moment of their lives”.

The entire team’s mind’s eye is focused on winning.

Cycle of bonding

Mourinho creates bonds with every single player in his team and personally knows each of them. Mourinho is known for his great “rapport” with his players.

He knows each player intimately and knows which button to press for each player. Some say Mourinho is avuncular and caring, while others say he is an intimidating tyrant.

Neither is true. He simply worked out how to use differing training methods for each player. “His training sessions are spectacular,” says Ronaldo. “They have great intensity but we don’t feel tired because we are extremely motivated.”

Every team Mourinho coaches, bonds like a family. Mourinho adds: “You must create a positive atmosphere and make everyone feel part of the group. In this club, if you go to the barrier, the man at the door feels part of the group and success. The people who work in the kitchen feel part of this family. And I’m one of them.”

Leaders as secure base

Research shows that teams perform best when their leader is a secure base. Mourinho was a coach, friend and secure base to all his players wherever he went. Even with personal issues, he was highly visible and accessible to all players.

The day Mourinho bid farewell to his Chelsea players, there was tears everywhere. He knew them all including their wives and kids and mentioned each one during his three hour farewell.

Inter’s Milito says: “There is no coach like him when it comes to sticking his neck out and defending everyone, that way reducing the tension within the team when things aren’t going well.”

Mourinho is the players’ secure base. Frank Lampard attests of Mourinho: “I love him as a man and as a manager.”

Conflict resolution

All high performance teams are faced with conflict. According to Kohlrieser, high performance teams “put the fish on the table”. By putting the “smelly fish”, or conflict on the table, there is opportunity for everyone to see these issues and work to its resolution.

Mourinho does similarly by constantly delivering feedback and performance assessments to each player. Some players may not like having the “fish on the table”. Joe Cole once received some stinging feedback but took it under his chin and started performing.

Power of dialogue and language

When Mourinho went to Italy, he said: “I studied Italian five hours a day for many months to ensure I could communicate with the players, media and fans.”

It is said that Mourinho speaks 17 languages. He uses the power of dialogue and language to build common understanding of the clear goals he has set for his team.

A self-confessed fan of Ferguson, Mourinho not only became Ferguson’s close friend but great rival. Their bond and dialogue enabled two strong-willed men to build a friendship in spite of their rivalry. Mourinho uses dialogue and language to ensure every single player on his team has similar friendships with him and clear understanding of the end goal.

High impact negotiation

In March 2007, Chelsea was being outclassed in the first half of a Champion League game losing 1-0. A few minutes before half-time, Mourinho angrily storms out.

Chelsea came out of the dressing room a completely new team, winning the game. This happened numerous times throughout Mourinho’s career. Why does his half-time talk always work? He does not yell, he does not scream but he negotiates and influences his players to change.

“I asked the players to enjoy the situation,” Mourinho said of one of his half-time talks. “We had 45 minutes to change things, and I asked them ‘are you scared of it or are you going to enjoy it?’ Psychologically, I just made the players think a little bit.”

According to sports psychologist Andy Barton: “Mourinho will always look to turn a negative into a positive. If a team is 3-0 down at half time and the manager starts screaming about all the mistakes made, it doesn’t help. Instead he’ll focus on things they are doing right, and then tell them how they can turn the game around.”

Mourinho is very specific about what is required to win and influences his players to build a mental image of what is needed.

He spends significant amount of time preparing each player differently for games. He influences and persuades big stars to train and conform to his team patterns.

He treats them all as equals.

Leveraging strengths

Mourinho is a man who knows his strengths and limitations. He once said: “If Roman Abramovich helped me out in training we would be bottom of the league and if I had to work in his world of big business, we would be bankrupt!”

Mourinho understood what he was good at and what each member of his team was capable off. He worked within the strengths of his team and gets the best of each individual. Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, talks about how great leaders build great teams by “getting the right people on the bus.”

Mourinho has trusted lieutenants that he brings into every team he manages. One of them is fitness coach Rui Faria, who has been with him at every club.

When Faria was asked what Mourinho’s secret was, he responded: “Every other top coach says they work hard and they prepare better than anyone else, but they can’t make what Mourinho does. Everything he does is better. He works harder than anyone else. He knows everything about every player and every game.”

Mourinho knows every single player’s strengths and weaknesses. He knows how to leverage their strengths fully as a team and minimise their weaknesses. And every single player knows each other’s strengths and this team self-awareness is the difference between Mourinho and other top coaches.

Mourinho himself displays great personal self-awareness when he quit football to focus on coaching. This “quitting” is termed the hedgehog principle by Collins.

It is simply to be very clear about what drives you and what you can be genuinely great at, and then relentlessly focus on that.

How many of us persist with things we know deep down, are not going to lead us to success? How many organisations persist on doing things the same way?

Insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results. Once, Mourinho was termed insane for making three substitutions in the first half of a game he was losing. Mourinho was just addressing the brutal reality of a situation.

Mourinho learnt quickly that there is no relationship whatsoever between functional expertise and managerial ability.

Managing emotions

“Players don’t win you trophies, teams win trophies, squads win trophies,” rants Mourinho daily. But Mourinho does much more than build teams. He builds leaders in each team he manages. At Chelsea, more than half his first team became captains of their national team.

To ensure you build high performance teams, you need to grow leaders. Leadership is needed in every part of your team. You cannot be a giant surrounded by midgets.

When Mourinho arrived at Chelsea there were no stars – he fashioned them. John Terry and Frank Lampard were good players he turned into world class.

He says: “You must work hard and work well. Many people work hard, but not well. You must create good leadership with the players, which is an accepted leadership, not leadership by power or status.”

If we look at back at our careers, most will admit that the period we developed the most was when a manager pushed us to our limit.

Mourinho, more than anyone else, believes in pushing a person to their limits, enabling his team to constantly move out of their comfort zone and into a courage zone.

Final thoughts

That is the lesson of Mourinho. We need special ones. We need leaders like Mourinho who have their mind’s eye focused. “The thing about Mourinho is that you don’t know what he’s going to do next but whatever it is, it will be because he thinks it is beneficial to the team,” says Barton.

Mourinho built numerous high performance teams being an authentic leader through the power of bonding. He worked hard and had thorough forensic preparation for each match but his unique relationship with his players, and his relentless focus made the difference. What are you doing to build high performance teams?

Roshan Thiran is CEO of Leaderonomics, a social enterprise passionate about creating a few Jose Mourinhos’ in Malaysia. For more information on how your organisation can build leaders, call +60123291968 or login to
www.leaderonomics.com.

It’s easier to get into debt than out of debt

THINK ASIAN
By ANDREW SHENG

THE G20 has agreed at the Toronto Summit in June that their government deficits would be halved by 2013 and that their total debt levels would stabilise by 2016.

The position between the G20 advanced and emerging members could not have been more telling. In terms of growth, the emerging countries are averaging more than 6% per annum, whilst advanced countries are lucky to achieve more than 2%.

In terms of deficits, advanced G20 countries are running deficits at just under 9% of GDP, whilst emerging markets are running under 4%.

In terms of debt overhang, advanced countries have debt over 100% of GDP, whereas the emerging markets have debt less than 40% of GDP. There are two major reasons why the deficits and debt have run out of control for the advanced countries.

The first is the huge amount the advanced countries spent on bailing out their banking systems.

The second is the rising level of health care as their population ages. The emerging markets did not have the large banking crisis costs and their health care costs are lower due to their younger population.

What should the advanced markets do to get out of the debt? The Japanese again demonstrate how difficult it is to get back to fiscal rectitude.

In 1996, the Nakasone Government decided to try and rein in the fiscal deficits and raised the Valued Added Tax.

This plunged the Japanese economy back into a recession and the first failures of Japanese banks were the precursors to the Asian financial crisis of July 1997.

So, it is so much easier to print money and get into fiscal deficits than it is to reduce the debt. I must take my hat off to the new UK government for being brave.

In one of the most drastic spending squeezes of any country in recent memory, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (British Minister of Finance) cut spending up to 25% for most government departments by 2014-15. He increased the VAT to 20% and imposed a US$3bil levy on the banking system. The area he did not dare to touch was cuts in the health expenditure.

Of course, the new Chancellor could easily blame the large deficits on his predecessor and hope that the spending cuts would restore market confidence in the UK and sterling.

He knows that if the markets lose confidence and the yield on UK government bonds increase, the rise in debt servicing would make the recovery even more slow, with stagflation as the most likely outcome.

Sterling could also suffer more devaluation, which could hurt inflation and also investor confidence in London as the premier global financial centre.

With a bold approach, private sector would invest and the UK economic recovery would come sooner than the other (less brave) advanced economies.

Unlike the Euro-zone countries, the UK can devalue its way out of a recession, since sterling has already depreciated nearly 25% from its peak.

Of course, if the UK economy is much more dependent on fiscal spending than previously thought, then the £40bil cuts would cause the economy to slow further, causing rising unemployment and in turn worsen the government finances.

No one knows how tough it could be to turn around a slowing economy. The G20 Summit papered over major differences between the key countries.

There was no mention of any agreement on specific bank capital increases, other than the language that bank capital should be kept at a level sufficient without further government intervention.

Furthermore, the US, Germany, UK and France back levies on the banks to pay for the crisis, whereas Canada, Brazil and India which did not suffer from bank losses, did not support any levies.

US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was right in that he pushed for growth to lift everyone out of further slowdown, as there is some fear that a double dip was in play. Germany, for example, is keen on austerity since it knows that as a major surplus country, it will have to bear the brunt of any adjustments in Europe and globally.

With almost all advanced countries having to deal with austerity, the only countries that have room to grow are the emerging markets. The emerging markets happen to have a different expenditure pattern from the advanced markets.

In the next two decades, the emerging markets will struggle with improving their infrastructure, because this was an area of gross neglect that the aid money and World Bank financing were cut back since the 1990s.

For example, in the last two decades, the World Bank switched resources out of infrastructure lending towards more lending for macro-economic and social spending.

This meant that project engineers were reduced in favour of macro-economists. Just when the emerging markets needed good advice on the viability and feasibility of infrastructure projects, the bank does not have enough project experts to advise them.

The real issue facing almost all emerging markets is where to put the scarce fiscal expenditure.
How do we get “more bang for the buck?”

It is very easy to increase non-growth generating expenditure, such as government debt interest servicing, military expenditure and more on bureaucracies.

In a time of scarcity, it is vital that governments spend money that will generate growth and employment.
This is exactly when spending on the rural infrastructure and raising rural income can change the mix of production from exports to domestic consumption.

Hence, it is only right that the recent World Bank capital increase accommodates more equity share by the emerging markets.

Given that most governments would be wary of cutting back the fiscal debt too quickly to hurt the growth recovery, one can be sure that a large fiscal debt overhang will be with us for quite a while yet.

The real fear is not too much debt, but that rising inflation and higher interest rates make the fiscal debt unsustainable.

The risk of that is not that high, but it is also not zero. The financial markets today are exactly reflecting the nervousness about the future.

Tan Sri Andrew Sheng is adjunct professor at Universiti Malaya and Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has served in key positions at Bank Negara, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, and is currently a member of Malaysia’s National Economic Advisory Council. He is the author of the book “From Asian to Global Financial Crisis”.

It's Gamers vs. Game Companies

Companies struggle to balance copyright technologies with players' interests.

By Erica Naone

Computer game companies use increasingly complicated software to protect against piracy. But these efforts can frustrate gamers, who protest that the protections restrict legitimate game play. Last week, Ubisoft, a company accused of using a draconian and convoluted protection scheme, backed down by announcing that its new game RUSE would use a less restrictive scheme.

Credit: Technology Review

The change highlights the tension between gamers and game companies regarding copy protection schemes. And it shows how companies struggle to balance fears over copyright infringement and the demands of their customers.

Legitimate copies of games, like other pieces of software, usually come with a unique code that unlocks it. But game companies are concerned about rampant sharing of pirated games online and the speed with which hackers can break ordinary "digital rights management" (DRM) schemes.

Earlier this year, Ubisoft launched a game called Assassin's Creed 2 with a controversial new "always-on" DRM scheme. The game required a player to be online so that it could check in with the company's servers to verify that the gamer had a genuine copy. Some players grumbled about the scheme before it even launched, and worried that the game would be unplayable if the company's servers went down, or if players didn't have a network connection. There was more trouble once the game went live--Ubisoft's servers couldn't handle the load of players, which meant that many people who had bought the game couldn't play it.

Richard Esguerra, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), says tensions tend to erupt when a DRM scheme violates customers' sense of ownership. "Gamers have an idea that if you bought it, you own it, and that's what's being violated here," he says.

Esguerra says an "always-on" DRM scheme can unfairly affect those who live in rural areas and lack consistent connectivity. He adds that such DRM schemes can render a game worthless if the company behind it goes bust or decides to stop supporting that title. Some games, such as World of Warcraft, need a connection to provide integral features. But Esguerra thinks players are offended when the connection isn't essential to the game play.

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Russ Crupnick, vice president and senior industry analyst for NPD Group, says the intricacies of DRM technologies don't matter to most consumers unless the system gets in the way. The key for companies, he says, is to find a system that's unobtrusive.

Ferdinand Schober, a graduate student in computer science at Georgia Tech who previously worked at Microsoft on the popular games Gears of War and Halo, says some companies are pursuing ever more restrictive DRM. One possibility is "executable content"--forcing players to download new pieces of a game as they progress through it. He says that hints on forums and in game code have led him to believe that companies are experimenting with this technology.

Ultimately, Schober says, companies are moving toward a model where hackers wouldn't just have to break through protections on a game, they'd also have to crack company servers. The unfortunate consequence, he says, is that it's getting more difficult for legitimate gamers to use and keep the products they buy.

But there are alternatives to DRM in the works as well. The IEEE Standards Association, which develops industry standards for a variety of technologies, is working to define "digital personal property." The goal, says Paul Sweazey, who heads the organization's working group, is to restore some of the qualities of physical property--making it possible to lend or resell digital property.

Sweazey stresses that the group just started meeting, but he explains that the idea is to sell games and other pieces of software in two parts--an encrypted file and a "play key" that allows it to be used. The play key could be stored in an online bank run by any organization, and could be accessed through a URL. To share the product, the player would simply share the URL. Anyone with access to the URL could claim the play key for himself, Sweazey says, meaning that users would be unlikely to share the URL on the open Internet.

Game makers are exploring other ways to encourage players to buy legitimate copies of a game, or to make money without relying on selling legitimate copies. These include adding special features that can only be accessed through official versions, and providing downloadable content for legitimate copies that expands a game's story or adds additional side quests and characters. Some games, such as those that run through Facebook, like Zynga's Farmville, are free to play but earn revenue by selling virtual items within the game.

Some game companies use copy protection that experts agree protect content effectively without restricting players. Schober and Esguerra both point to the DRM used by Valve's Steam, a site that sells downloadable games and allows online play. Schober notes that Steam is designed to be simple to use--gamers can download files ahead of release, and when the game becomes available, they get the codes needed to unlock them. This avoids situations such as the pounding that Ubisoft's servers received at the release of Assassin's Creed.

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