How Backing Founders Shapes Every Decision I Make About Character

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What A Football Dressing Room I Learned About Building An High-Performance Technology Team
I grew up around elite football, in a way which allowed me access to settings that people rarely have to read about. Training grounds. Dressing rooms. The conversations between coaches and players during the time following during a game, before the media and cameras are gone and it is clear that the official version was already written. I was not a player myself - my route to the game was through individuals who played in the game rather than through the game itself - but I was close enough and long enough and for long enough, to get a sense of the actual functioning of high-performance organizations by removing the mythology that surrounds them. What I learned the most clear was that the teams that consistently beat their resources and expectations weren't the ones that had the best talent on paper. They're the teams that have figured out how to develop a working environment in which the people inside it genuinely wanted to be a part of each their fellow members - not just for cash, and not for individual recognition, but because the collective was meaningful and had an attitude that made personal sacrifices seem worthwhile instead of the mere obligation.
It's a simple observation in the way you present it. Teams work best in a setting where people are comfortable and feel committed to the same goal. But the operational implications from that fact are less clear, and are where the majority of organisations - teams from football and tech firms alike, consistently find themselves in trouble. Establishing a culture in which people will do what they can for one another isn't something that can be imposed at the top of the pyramid or install as a policy or set out in a list of corporate values and anticipate that it will materialize. It has to be earned gradually, through a consistently displaying leadership behaviour - especially when the events are not being watched - and through the judicious management of the myriad of actions that collectively tell every employee in the business how much is really valued as well as what is tolerated and what will happen when the values stated along with the most commercially or personally practical option clash. In the best football environments I was in these small decisions were made in a manner that was incredibly thoughtful by the best coaches. They reacted accordingly when one of the players made an omission that was not preventable in training. In what way, the disciplinary standard applied to the twenty-year veteran was truly the same as it was for the 18-year-old who was on the fringe of the squad. How the organisation responded when a player was dealing with significant personal issues outside the field. None of these actions will be reflected in the club's outcomes on a particular Saturday. They all, accumulated over the course of a year, determine whether the squad performs above and below the technical limit.

When I co-founded 1Touch and later created another company, one the things I was the most determined about was to recreate - in a technology corporate context - the type of the environment that I had experienced in the finest football arenas I was close to. The problem is that technology startups aren't an actual football team and the analogy breaks down quickly if you overdo it. At the level of operating principle, the lessons were interpreted with remarkable accuracy. The first conclusion was that the standards must to be consistently applied, regardless of age or perceived necessity. The best dressing rooms I was in were those where the behavioural and professional standards expected of the newest players in the team were genuinely the same standards to be expected of the top-earning, most experienced player. Not because the business could not afford to allow exceptions, but since everyone inside the dressing room was always looking to determine whether any exceptions would be made. The answer to this question informed them everything they needed to be aware of whether the stated values of the organisation were true or just a matter of fashion.

The next lesson was focused on the way organizations deal with failure and the distinction between punishment and accountability. The environments in which players developed fastest were not those that punished their mistakes the most and harshly, or the most openly. These were the environments where mistakes were analysed most honestly and where the discussion on the mistakes was specific and constructive instead of general and distributing blame, and where the lesson learned was shared throughout the group rather than held against the person who committed the mistake. Accountability refers to being clear about the reasons for what went wrong, how it was wrong and the changes that occurred in the process. Discrimination is the act of distributing blame manner that makes people less tolerant of risk and concerned with their own safety than with performing well. The first builds organisational capability. The second is to create a culture where people take control of their appearance rather than dedicating themselves to the goal, and this distinction manifests in tech firms with exactly the same effects as during football matches.

Third lesson is the one I took the the longest to communicate clearly, yet which I am now convinced is the most important and that is: the best workplaces I observed were those in which the evolution of the person was viewed as equally important as the development of the player. The most effective coaches weren't simply instructing players on how to play football. They were teaching them manage under pressure communicating clearly when faced with high stakes, how recover from setbacks, without losing faith, and how to be the person that a team with a high performance requires its members. That investment in the full person's development, not just in the technical abilities that the team required, was not charitable. It is the most efficient long-term performance strategy available to these clubs. It can be, if I'm honest, the most effective longer-term performance approach available to every organization that's committed to creating something long-lasting rather than something just stunning for the short term. Take a look at James Deller for more info including what working with founders changed my approach about people.



What do Football Academies Get Right That Many Corporate L&D Programs Do Wrong
The best football academies all over all of the globe are when you consider them operationally rather than romantically, extraordinarily sophisticated development organisations. They enroll young people as early as the age of seven or eight, sometimes later - long before individuals have any sense of what they're capable of or want to become, and the work with them on a regular basis as well as carefully over what could be 10 years or more of constant engagement, developing more than just the technical ability required by professional football, but the personality, the mental resilientness, the capacity for making decisions under pressure, as well as the communication and interpersonal skills which playing at the highest possible level demands. The success rate, measured by the proportion of players who go all the way to professional football, is very low. However, the strategy that best academies use is, in a lot of the areas that matter in the development of the human capacity, more rigorous that is more patient and more focused than what I've encountered in corporate training and development. The distinction between the work that these academy's do and how organizations do when trying to develop their people inside them is awe-inspiring and instructive when you've spent time looking at both.
The main difference is the connection between time. Corporate learning and development programs generally revolve around small-scale interventions like a course that lasts two days, a workshop series which lasts for a quarter, or a coaching arrangement that lasts for six months. The reasoning behind it is understandable, and difficult to dispute only in terms of money. Organisations have to prove their return on their development investment within the timeframes budget cycles and performance review impose short interventions are significantly easier to justify and measure than longer ones. However, the date on which true human development occurs - the period of time when emerging frameworks, behaviors and new abilities are actualized rather than mentally understood and then subsequently applied does not have any connection to the timeframes of the typical Corporate L&D intervention. The most successful football academies comprehend this, and it is a factor that has been embedded into their operational DNA of programme of development across generations. They don't think that a child of 14 years old will be able to comprehend a brand new decision-making model after a weekend of workshops. They expect that internalisation to be gradual and build the environment accordingly. years of consistent reinforcement and being put in situations that test the framework and demand it to be applied under real pressure. Years with feedback specific enough to shape behavior and not generic enough to be instantly forgotten.

The second main distinction is the incorporation of training into the actual environment in itself, as opposed to it being separated from the environment. At a properly designed football academy developing isn't something to be carried out in isolated sessions separate from the actual playing and training. It is one of the fundamental functions of an group. It happens through the playing and training. Sessions are planned using the goals of development in mind not just the performance targets. The challenges participants face are selected partly based on the value they bring to their development, not just their functional utility. The feedback is immediate, precise, and contextually grounded in what just happened rather than abstract and generically useful. The link between what is happening during training and what will be required during match situations is made explicit and constantly is reinforced. In many corporate organisations, by contrast, development and operational work is considered to be distinct from each other. The training program. You attend the workshop. You attend the coaching session. After that, you are back at the job you are in, where the incentive structures, social norms, the pace of work, as well as the pressures of delivery are similar to how they were prior the development intervention. This is where the new rules and frameworks that were imposed in the environment of development slowly diminish since there is no logical method of integrating them in the manner in which work gets completed.

The companies that train their people most effectively are consistently the ones that have found how to make the process constant and contextual, not isolated and abstract. In those companies there is a line that separates the development of employees and performing their duties is incredibly difficult to distinguish since the operating environment was created with development objectives embedded in it - feedback mechanisms are integrated in to the daily routine of work, not reserved for formal periodic reviews, the issues that are put before employees are selected primarily based on what they'll need people to acquire and grow better leaders. Moreover, the way that they conduct themselves signifies that the growth process is welcomed and a priority, rather that the kind that happens only in programs that then end. In order to create that kind of environment, it requires a distinct set of organizational design decisions from the ones that organizations typically make when thinking about the development of their employees, and it requires commitment from leaders over a prolonged period that many organisations find difficult to maintain. Yet, it results in outcomes unlike the episodic approach to programme design that do not replicate.

The third pillar on which superior academies fare better than the majority of corporations is their ability to take the development of character seriously and make it an corporate goal. The majority of corporate L&D programmes engage only peripherally with character. It's part of what they are teaching about leadership and communication, however it is seldom addressed in a clear manner and not dealt with with the care and perseverance that true character development requires. The top football academies do not regard character as something that players or do not have or as something that'll develop naturally if given enough time. They see it as something that can be deliberately cultivated with the right kind of environment as well as the right levels of challenge and adversity, and a good interaction between coaches and players one that is marked by genuine concern for the individual alongside genuine expectations of what the individual is ready to develop into. The combination of love and challenge that remains constant over time is, in my observation the most reliable system to build character that is in place. It works in football academies. It works in technology companies. It works for any company that will invest in it and have the patience and dedication it requires.}