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| The New Home Grown Messi? |
No-one who saw Barca's demolition of Manchester United last Saturday could fail to admire the fluent football that was played by that team. I know from Junior football in the UK that the temptation is to have a big strong lad up front who can kick the ball with force and a goalie who can kick the ball far and high. If you roll the ball out to the full back to play it through midfield then the coaches criticise you for not getting the ball up field fast enough. This track and field type football does work at certain levels but not at the very highest levels unfortunately. In the UK we still have to learn that fact.
What about Barca themselves? According to a recent article in the Economist
" .... Barça plays as a team in a sport that has far too many prima donnas. It keeps the ball moving, dominates possession and keeps its opponents under constant pressure. But there is a less obvious answer, too, and one that has implications beyond the football pitch. Barça has provided a distinctive solution to some of the most contentious problems in management theory. What is the right balance between stars and the rest of mankind? Should you buy talent or grow your own? How can you harness the enthusiasm of consumers to promote your brand? And how do you combine the advantages of local roots and global reach?"
Barça puts more emphasis than any other major team on growing its own players. Eight of the team’s leading players are products of its football school, La Masia. The students are relentlessly instructed in the importance of team spirit, self-sacrifice and perseverance. They are also taught that Barça is “more than a club”: it is the embodiment of Catalan pride.
Boris Groysberg, of Harvard Business School, has warned that companies are too obsessed with hiring stars rather than developing teams. He conducted a fascinating study of successful Wall Street analysts who moved from one firm to another. He discovered that company-switching analysts saw an immediate decline in their performance. For all their swagger, it seems that their success depended as much on their co-workers as their innate talents. Jim Collins, the author of “Good to Great”, argues that the secret of long-term corporate success lies in cultivating a distinctive set of values. For all the talk of diversity and globalisation, this usually means promoting from within and putting down deep local roots.
So there you have it -- Do you build from within or buy in superstars to make a difference?
Is there really any substitute for mining and developing your own business and management talent?
How many times has the external superstar come into a business only to find that he is not used to its culture and values and that he cannot replicate his earlier success.
Lets look at what we can develop ourselves before we go elsewhere.
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