I WAS very taken this week with an article that suggested that the approach of Leicester City football club manager Claudio Ranieri might become a kind of byword for modern management methodology. And — to bring it to a local context — how that might apply to the predicament of President Jacob Zuma.
The website Quartz, itself a kind of modern icon of digital media, suggested that Ranieri, the 64-year-old Italian who coached the 5,000-to-1 underdogs to the unlikeliest of championships in the English Premier League this season, offers a back-story and style perfectly pitched to the modern management zeitgeist.
This is because, apparently, failure is in fashion. The idea of focusing not on success but on failure has a kind of contrarian allure, but if you think about it, there is a strand of sense running through the notion. It’s applicable to everything from hiring staff to managing companies to investing.
The idea is rooted in the proposition that it’s not success that necessarily defines brilliance; it could have been caused by luck or happenstance. What is truly defining is how people respond to setbacks and failure. The quintessential hero of this approach is, of course, Steve Jobs, who was fired from Apple, the tech company he co-founded, only to return to build it into the world’s largest.
Hence, it has become fashionable to speak in everything for sales pitches to job interviews, not about your successes, which are visible for all to see, but your failures and, critically, how you respond. What CEOs are looking for, Quartz says, is a combination of self-awareness, vulnerability and fortitude that comes from being knocked down and hauling yourself back up.
This ability is critical in running football clubs, because it’s such a brutal business. Fans are ridiculously hopeful, much more so than mere customers, and the whole system is designed to winnow out only one winner in any given tournament.
Ranieri was sacked from seven of the 12 clubs he has coached, including a disastrous spell leading the Greek national team. The team, in a moment reminiscent of Bafana Bafana’s performance, lost to the Faroe Islands, and Ranieri was sacked. He did once coach Chelsea, where he became known as "the tinkerman" for frequently changing the lineups in a way that commentators and the team found inexplicable.
But on arriving at Leicester, he "pivoted", to use another phrase out of the tech-jargon handbook. He played the same players in the same formation more than any other team in the Premier League. He committed the team to a single, focused "core competency": fast-paced counterattacks.
The strategy allowed a squad of players with unremarkable careers to devastate star-studded opposition.
This is all very interesting, but how does it apply to SA today? Consider President Zuma’s current position, and walk in his shoes for a moment.
I think it’s fair to say his presidency has been a disaster. His popularity by all objective measures is abysmal; he has presided over the splintering of the governing party and its labour federation ally, as well as an economic crisis; he has been chastised by the highest courts in the land, not once, but repeatedly. One can go on.
It seems to me he has two choices at this point: change strategy, or double down on the existing strategy. The temptation is always to double-down, because it has the satisfying underpin that you were right in the first place.
And, judging by what happened last week, it seems this is Zuma’s choice. In Parliament, he effectively laid the blame for the chaos in SA’s premier institution this year at the feet of the speaker, Baleka Mbete, despite the fact that she forms part of the "top six", the governing party’s effective decision-making team.
He then visited South African Airways, where one of his "loyal" appointments is the hapless chairwoman, notionally castigating this ally for closing the routes that were bankrupting the organisation. And he said SAA would never be sold, which to me is a kind of constructive dismissal of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.
He has decided, in effect, to double-down, take charge, and haul out the stick, sparing nobody, even his closest allies. No more the giggling president. No more Mr Nice Guy.
But in doing so, he has ignored the Lesson of Leicester, and trust me, it’s going to cost him.
President Jacob Zuma gives a speech at South African Airways's office in Johannesburg, on Friday. Picture: BLOOMBERG/WALDO SWIEGERS
I WAS very taken this week with an article that suggested that the approach of Leicester City football club manager Claudio Ranieri might become a kind of byword for modern management methodology. And — to bring it to a local context — how that might apply to the predicament of President Jacob Zuma.
The website Quartz, itself a kind of modern icon of digital media, suggested that Ranieri, the 64-year-old Italian who coached the 5,000-to-1 underdogs to the unlikeliest of championships in the English Premier League this season, offers a back-story and style perfectly pitched to the modern management zeitgeist.
This is because, apparently, failure is in fashion. The idea of focusing not on success but on failure has a kind of contrarian allure, but if you think about it, there is a strand of sense running through the notion. It’s applicable to everything from hiring staff to managing companies to investing.
The idea is rooted in the proposition that it’s not success that necessarily defines brilliance; it could have been caused by luck or happenstance. What is truly defining is how people respond to setbacks and failure. The quintessential hero of this approach is, of course, Steve Jobs, who was fired from Apple, the tech company he co-founded, only to return to build it into the world’s largest.
Hence, it has become fashionable to speak in everything for sales pitches to job interviews, not about your successes, which are visible for all to see, but your failures and, critically, how you respond. What CEOs are looking for, Quartz says, is a combination of self-awareness, vulnerability and fortitude that comes from being knocked down and hauling yourself back up.
This ability is critical in running football clubs, because it’s such a brutal business. Fans are ridiculously hopeful, much more so than mere customers, and the whole system is designed to winnow out only one winner in any given tournament.
Ranieri was sacked from seven of the 12 clubs he has coached, including a disastrous spell leading the Greek national team. The team, in a moment reminiscent of Bafana Bafana’s performance, lost to the Faroe Islands, and Ranieri was sacked. He did once coach Chelsea, where he became known as "the tinkerman" for frequently changing the lineups in a way that commentators and the team found inexplicable.
But on arriving at Leicester, he "pivoted", to use another phrase out of the tech-jargon handbook. He played the same players in the same formation more than any other team in the Premier League. He committed the team to a single, focused "core competency": fast-paced counterattacks.
The strategy allowed a squad of players with unremarkable careers to devastate star-studded opposition.
This is all very interesting, but how does it apply to SA today? Consider President Zuma’s current position, and walk in his shoes for a moment.
I think it’s fair to say his presidency has been a disaster. His popularity by all objective measures is abysmal; he has presided over the splintering of the governing party and its labour federation ally, as well as an economic crisis; he has been chastised by the highest courts in the land, not once, but repeatedly. One can go on.
It seems to me he has two choices at this point: change strategy, or double down on the existing strategy. The temptation is always to double-down, because it has the satisfying underpin that you were right in the first place.
And, judging by what happened last week, it seems this is Zuma’s choice. In Parliament, he effectively laid the blame for the chaos in SA’s premier institution this year at the feet of the speaker, Baleka Mbete, despite the fact that she forms part of the "top six", the governing party’s effective decision-making team.
He then visited South African Airways, where one of his "loyal" appointments is the hapless chairwoman, notionally castigating this ally for closing the routes that were bankrupting the organisation. And he said SAA would never be sold, which to me is a kind of constructive dismissal of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.
He has decided, in effect, to double-down, take charge, and haul out the stick, sparing nobody, even his closest allies. No more the giggling president. No more Mr Nice Guy.
But in doing so, he has ignored the Lesson of Leicester, and trust me, it’s going to cost him.
