Can’t Buy Me Success

As Manchester City changes hands again, from a very wealthy owner to a stupendously wealthy one, fans and impartial observers alike are thinking ahead to a Premier League that will be just a little different over the next few years. Manchester City has always had to look across the city to their more successful neighbours in red and wonder why it wasn’t happening for them.

Money has been cited as the reason in recent years with the spending power of Sir Alex Ferguson at key rivals Manchester United only rivalled at Chelsea. Yet as Chelsea have found, money doesn’t always buy success. Whatever the reasons behind Andrei Shevchenko’s lack of form at Chelsea, his term of employment was a spectacularly expensive failure.

Building a team of superstars only works if you can truly build a team rather than a group of people who are all hugely talented, but want their own opportunity to shine individually more than team success. The same holds true in the business world, mavericks that bring in successes at the expense of values, best practice and decent inter-personal behaviours may be attractive in the short term, but can leave a lasting negative impression on a team and organisation which takes a long time to heal.

When thinking through how you are going to build and manage your teams, it pays to think about balancing real-world team dynamics: how to develop and grow talent through coaching, how to recruit a balanced team, and how to motivate them.