What made Leicester City so Great? Hint…It Starts with the WHY!
START WITH THE WHY!
Leicester City are still celebrating their Premier league win and to be honest, rightfully so since it has been their first win in their 132 year history. The question on everyone’s lips is, how in the world did they achieve the impossible? They didn’t have the best players, nor the best coach or even the a massive budget.
Manchester City on the other hand has one of the biggest spending budgets in the Premier League and house some of the most talents players on earth. Manchester United have one of the best structures and Liverpool have the most loyal and crazy supporting fans by their side.
If club investors learnt one value lesson this year is that, money alone cannot guarantee you success.
I relative terms let’s take Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Microsoft and Lenovo. They are the top 5 computer companies in the world behind Apple yet Apple is one of the most desired products on earth. These other four companies have the same if not better technology, creative minds and capital yet they battle to overthrow the Apple Giant. What makes them so special if the playing fields is literally even?
The answer to apples success and Leisters Cities success lie in the WHY; and the ability of great leaders to inspire action according to Simon Sinek in his book, “Start with the why” Simon believes that there is simple codex and he calls this the golden circle. WHY? Which is the inner circle, then you have the HOW?
And lastly the out ring of WHAT? The golden circle is the difference according to Simon between leaders that can inspire and leaders than can’t.
You need to Simon’s brilliant 27+million views TED talk because in there he explains that everyone on the planet knows WHAT they do, some will even know HOW they do it but very few people know WHY they do it.
In football terms everyone in the premier league knows they are a professional footballer, everyone should know how to perform in their position but I can guarantee you not all 22 players don’t know what their purpose is, what their cause or belief is or why their organisation exists.
In Leicester City case and much of the teams that are bottom half of the log, their purpose might be just to survive in the Premier league with second rate players the top half didn’t want. Their purpose is to survive and not to win titles. Ask the bottom 4 teams of the PSL what their purpose is right now?
I truly believe coach Claudio Ranieri of Leicester City gave Leister and I will coin the phrase, “the apple effect”. Ranieri and by a sequence of events throughout the year gave the players a WHY to believe in and subscribe to. Total buy in allowed the coaches vision to become a reality. His vision was not to just stay in the Premier, his visions is bigger and greater than the teams.
Are you beginning to see a pattern here, remember a little while back I wrote an article about a Harvard study of what made Sir Alex Ferguson so great?
He knew his WHY and he made sure that everyone including his youth academy sides knew his WHY and people who stepped out of line, no matter what their status or football royalty, they were put on transfer. It is probably making more sense to you knowing now, why Man United aren’t as successful today as they were under Sir Alex’s reign.
Success comes to those who know the WHY and their Ranieri’s why was so powerful that everyone around him wanted to be a part of it, just like Apple Klout today. Ranieri has also earned the title of being good leader and it is going to be exciting to see if he can maintain his success moving forward.
Citizen Newspaper Article by Sean Van Staden
Sports Scientist
BA Sports Psychology | Honours Sports Science
Owner and Founder of Advanced Sports Performance
www.advancedsp.co.za
Below is Simon Sinek Ted Talk – an absolute must see ( 27 million Views )
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