Barcelona FC’s Amazing Turnaround: What Business can Learn from this….

Yesterday evening, I watched, what is probably the most incredible football (soccer for my American friends), in the history of the game.

 Barcelona had lost 4-0 to Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) on their first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals and the odds were stacked heavily against them.  I had a feeling we were in for a great game and that Barcelona would press and give it all they had to turn things around and get through to the next round of the tournament.

Barcelona not only won the game 6-1 and qualified for the next round, but the way they did it is absolutely remarkable and there is a lot we can learn from this. They clinched their astonishing 6-1 victory with three goals in a crazy last seven minutes!

This is what happened:

The Barcelona team started the match pressing PSG, every-time a PSG  player touched the ball a Barcelona player would be right at them. After a handful of minutes, they get their first goal to eventually close the first half of the match 2-0. At this point PSG are still qualified for the next round but you could clearly see the energy and determination in the eyes of the Barcelona players.

Barcelona went 3-0 up in second half and their hopes were really getting-up when suddenly PSG’s ace striker, Edison Cavani's away goal snatched their hope away … Barcelona’s energy and determination started to falter. The TV commentators lost their faith in Barcelon when suddenly at 88th minute of the match, Barcelona’s Neymar kicked in the after-burner, transforming himself from a mere world class footballer to a superhuman, extra-terrestrial super -footballer.

Neymar was unstoppable. In the space of a magical seven minutes, he scored twice AND set up the vital winning goal.

The 6-1 (6-5 on aggregate) winning goal came from a free-kick won just inside PSG's half… by Barcelona's goalkeeper. How many times does a keeper get fouled inside the opposition's half?

What Can We Learn from this Incredible Story?

There is no doubt Barcelona have some of the most talented football players in the world on their team, but managing to come back from a 4-0 loss and score 3 goals in 7 minutes takes more than talent. They deserved to win because they were determined from the start of the match and kept hustling. As in sports, the same in business, having great talent is a good start but the way you execute is key. After all, in Paris PSG had won 4-0, they had the talent to win but they lacked the execution on the return leg and I think the game was won because of Barcelona's mind-set. When Barcelona had the ball the PSG players let them play, they never thought in a million years they would score 6 goals. Barcelona were quick at pinching the ball off PSG and moving down the pitch at an incredible pace, speed was their mind-set!

We are living in a world dominated by speed, thanks to technology and innovation. As world renowned social media marketer, Gary Vaynerchuk puts it: “Today your TV has become your radio and your phone your TV”. In the last 12 years we have seen new companies cause major disruption in the way we live and do business:

• Facebook started in 2004
• Youtube started in 2005
• Twitter started in 2006
• Netflix started streaming in 2007
• Apple launched the iPhone in 2007
• Android phones in 2008
• Airbnb started in 2008
• Instagram started in 2008
• Uber started in 2009

In 1996 Kodak was the largest photo business in the world and turning over USD$16bn. In 2012, when they went bankrupt laying-off thousands of employees. Kodak was a linear organization and was disrupted by exponential organizations. 

Peter Diamandis, Singularity University co-founder and creator of the X-prize, illustrates the difference between linear and exponential in many of his talks: 

“If you were to take 30 linear steps, it would be one, two, three, four, five. After 30 linear steps you’d end up 30 paces or 30 meters away and all of us could pretty much point to where 30 paces away would be. But if I said to you take 30 exponential steps, one, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two and said where would you end up? Very few people would say a billion meters away, which is twenty-six times around the planet.”

Former head of innovation at Yahoo, Salim Ismail defines an Exponential Organization as one whose impact (or output)-because of its use of networks or automation and/or its leveraging of the crowd-is disproportionally large compared to its number of employees. 

Kodak was the opposite having a large number of employees and lots of physical process and facilities.

In late 2010 two Stanford University grads, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, founded a company that would very much take on Kodak, enter Instagram.

Instagram is an exponential organization taking advantage of high-resolution cameras in smart phones and the social media boom. By early 2012 they already had 30 million users and just 13 employees. Facebook knocked on their door and Instagram was sold for USD$1bn! So here we are in 2012 where an 18 month old compant created and run by a team of under 25s takes on Kodak with new technology and wins. It's all about speed: it takes seconds to take a photo with your smart phone, post on instagram and instantaneously share with the world; compared to the slow long process of using a conventional camera, having a photo developed and mailed-out to your great aunt in Australia...

Instagram beat Kodak, just like Barcelona beat PSG thanks to a speedy execution and speed is really the new currency of the 21st century...and ther is no better way to gain speed in business today than to travel by private jet...more about that in my other blogs!

Fabrizio Poli is Managing Partner of Aircraft Trading Company Tyrus Wings. He is also an accomplished Airline Transport Pilot having flown both private Jets and for the airlines. Fabrizio is also a bestselling author and inspirational speaker & has been featured on Russia Today (RT), TRT World, Social Media Examiner, Bloomberg, Channel 5, Chicago Tribune, Daily Telegraph, City Wealth Magazine, Billionaire.com, Wealth X, Financial Times, El Financiero and many other Media offering insight on the aviation world. Fabrizio is also regularly featured as an Aviation Analyst on Russia Today (RT) and TRT World. Fabrizio is also aviation special correspondent for luxury magazine, Most Fabullous Magazine. Fabrizio is also considered one of the world's top 30 experts in using Linkedin for business. You can tune in weekly to Fabrizio's business Podcast Living Outside the Cube available both in video & audio. You can also follow Fabrizio's aviation videos on Tyrus Wings TV. Fabrizio's latest book "Health4Flyers", the first natural-health book for pilots, flights attendants and frequent flyers is now available worldwide.

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