Keeping a healthy perspective

Grant Leboff: Damian, of course one of the important things for a business person is to maintain a healthy perspective. People are under pressure, they’ve got figures to hit, they’ve got staff to manage and all those kind of things, and Ferguson had a particular take on this. You talk about, in the book, about the fact that he saw the post match interview as a kind of second game and I really like that idea. Can you expand and explain a bit more that?

Damian Hughes: Yeah, definitely. Ferguson talks about the most important five minutes in any coach’s week is the interview that he gives after a game because he felt that that was the moment where you knew that everybody’s attention was going to be focused, so what you said in that period would dictate what would happen in the club the week after. If you were to come out, for example, and lambaste a referee, you were creating an excuse for the players if they’d been beaten so that they could point the finger at somebody else rather than do any kind of analysis themselves.

What he would also do was, he was very good at using that to prepare for the next game. He’d often sow seeds. You’d hear him talk, for example, on the occasion when he sent Kevin Keeghan into his famous rant back in 1996. That was in response to Ferguson suggesting that the effort that Leads United had put in was obscene against his own team. The reason he made that comment is because Newcastle United, Keeghan’s team were due to play Leads in their very next game and he wanted to rile the Leads players to really make life difficult for Keeghan.

Any of Ferguson’s comments that he would make, and similarly, Jose Moreno is a huge advocate of the same approach now, needs to be taken in the context that his message is very and infrequently for his fans to hear. It’s often directed for both his players and his opponents to consider.

Grant Leboff: That’s really, really interesting isn’t it? As a football fan, you listen to the manager and you’re thinking yeah, we’re getting sort of moments of truth from the manager and reflections on the game, and Ferguson must’ve been way ahead of his time in many ways to be using the media actually to be sowing seeds in his players minds and those kind of things. I think as business people perhaps we’re not always aware of the impact that we have in a client meeting or something else on the staff that are around us.

Damian Hughes: Yeah. Well, again I often encourage business leaders to say this and say to them to think about what are the most important minutes of your day? If you were to walk into your offices, for example, looking dour or stressed, the impact of that, they often use the phrase the shadow of the leader that it casts is huge on people. You know, I often challenge leaders to say, think about it from the eyes of your clients. The most important people in any business are the people that greet you on the reception area. If you have a customer coming in and you put out your disenfranchised staff, or even worse, you’ve outsourced it to a third party, what do they care about representing your business with the same passion and vigor that you might do as the head of the organization? Yeah, thinking about it through those critical first four or five minutes in both your day as a leader, and through the eyes of your customers or your staff, is essential.

Grant Leboff: Also, it was interesting about the example of Sir Alex’s, is that actually his most significant moments on the players was not when he was talking to the players, it was when he was talking to the media. It is interesting as a business leader, the impact that some of the other things that you did because obviously I suppose most business leaders are aware when they walk in and talk to the receptionist they’re going to have an impact on the receptionist, or when they walk in and talk to the sales manager they have an impact on the sales manager, but actually thinking about the impact you can have on staff when you’re doing something that’s perhaps seemingly indirect, I think that was the brilliance of what Ferguson understood, isn’t it?

Damian Hughes: He’d often pick a fight with the media. Very much to create a siege mentality so that he could take that fight and the way it was being reported back into the dressing room and remind the players that these guys hate you. These guys want to see you fail so don’t be seduced by any high paw, any cameras or make about you. The reality is they’re setting you up for a failure. He would go and pick a fight deliberately to reinforce that message at key moments as well with the players.

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