Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling

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A popular leadership fable trawled out time and time again is the domino effect that Roger Banister had in the field of distance running.
In 1954, Roger Banister did the impossible and was the first person EVER to run a mile in under four minutes in competition conditions.
The so-called ‘experts’ said it couldn’t be done. They said, “the human body was simply not capable of a four-minute mile”. But Banister – and twenty other runners in the following six years – completed that four-minute mile.
As soon as the fiction became the fact, the glass ceiling was broken.
David vs. Goliath
Last month, we witnessed the shattering of another glass ceiling. Another example of someone doing the impossible.
On Monday 2nd May 2016 the world witnessed a miraculous sporting outcome that makes David beating Goliath pale into insignificance…
Leicester Football Club winning the ‘elite’ trophy of the English Premiership.
I say ‘elite’ as all experts once again said it could never happen. Even the bookies had Leicester down as the biggest outsiders at 5000-1. We actually know of someone who put £100 on them to win. Happy days…
You may ask why this was such a monumental achievement and what does it have to do with business?
Here are some facts to show you why it was impossible.

  • Leicester had spent less on player’s wages in their TOTAL existence (founded in 1884 – that’s 132 years ago) than Manchester United have in the last few seasons (sorry JT, had to get that in).
  • Leicester were rock bottom of the Premier League last year, 7 points adrift with 9 games to go. They went on to win 7 out of the 9 remaining games – 22 points out of 27! Championship winning form as one punter joked.

Simon Cowell for Prime Minister?
You can see why the so-called ‘experts’ were not even entertaining a Premiership win for Leicester. Most pundits actually thought they’d be relegated this year with their manager Claudio Ranieri first to be sacked.
To put it into context, you can get better odds for Dean Gaffney (that dog-loving spotty EastEnders actor) winning an Oscar, or HRH being top of the UK music charts this Christmas, or even Simon Cowell becoming the next UK Prime Minister – just think about that.
Anyway, enough of the comparisons. The Leicester success and the breaking of the football glass ceiling that will forever remain in history, and reinforces the opportunity we all have in our businesses.
Based on every improbability above, the reality is they did win and with two games to play.
The lessons we should study for our business is HOW?!?!?
 Knick the Ball, Make it Count
Well here are some clues that I have observed over the year (I told you it was all business research, Jacki)…
Leicester played to THEIR strengths. Most teams are in search of the pass and move style of football, where they look to have maximum possession. Not Leicester, they let all the other teams have the possession and then, when they nicked the ball they made it count, playing a counter attacking game.
FACTS tell you this as they had the lowest possession of the top 5 teams (42%), the lowest passes (12,500) and the lowest accuracy of around 70%.
Despite their manager being dubbed the Tinker Man, they mostly stuck with the same team and made just twenty-seven changes to the starting 11. The average for the rest of the Premiership clubs was 95.4. Think about the consistency and routine this created.
They were humble in their approach; no mind games played out with opponents over the remaining games. In reality, they had very simple goals:

  • Goal 1: Survival in the league (40 points)
  • Goal 2: Get into Europe
  • Goal 3: Get into Champions League
  • Goal 4: WIN the title

The Winning Routine
With each small but significant goal, their confidence grew as the team performed and achieved their target.
Of course, it helps massively that everybody else fully expected them to drop lots of points and lose. What was really happening is that they were getting used to the routine of winning; it had become a habit.
Team Spirit. I’m sure that sticking with the same squad and not rotating it helped massively, but the key was that everybody worked for each other. Leicester did not have any world-class players in their side (some would say differently now) they all worked together in unity to achieve their single simple aims.
I’m sure that over the next few days, weeks and months, more will emerge from inside the club about what they did and how they did it. But for me it reinforces a lot of what scaling a business is about:

  1. Having a clear, simple and easily communicated goal that EVERYBODY is focused on.
  1. Complete alignment from top to bottom with a clear structure of roles, what to do and how to do it.
  1. A consistent strategy playing to the strengths of the team and not trying to be something that they were not. The ‘conventional’ stats show they were the worst performers. But there is only one real true stat and that is Premiership Champions!
  1. Execution, Execution and more Execution on the basics. I personally believe this is one of the biggest ‘magic bullets’ for entrepreneurs out there. But most of you ignore it.

Define the Rules of Your Game
You can have the top/fancy players, the big stadium, the most expensive sponsorship deal, but if you don’t execute on the basics it doesn’t matter.
Leicester defined their rules of the game (counter attack) and executed it at an expert level and the traditionally focused teams just could not cope. Ranieri looked at the rest and decided there was a better way more matched for his team and just executed on that.
He didn’t do what everybody else was doing.
So there you have it; a small (in comparison) football club with an impossible chance of winning the league doing that and proving EVERYBODY wrong
Now it is your turn.  
Somewhere out there is the next Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey with a glass ceiling that was stopping them from changing people’s lives. Leicester FC has proved that glass ceilings can be broken, so break yours and claim that space.
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