Can businesses learn from the Premier League?

If you're a football fan (that's soccer if you're American) you know that in the last football season in England we witnessed two teams totally dominate the Premier League in England and although my team Liverpool lost the race to Manchester City by one point, both teams were far ahead of the competition.

Now I know some of you are probably thinking what does this have to do with business and the answer to that question is: A lot!

To give you a bit more perspective, from the early 90s to 2013, one team dominated English football more than any other and that team was Manchester United. While they were challenged by the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea, they maintained their supremacy for the most of that period to become one of the most successful teams in English football history.

Click here to view a video version of this article

A lot of that credit goes to Sir Alex Ferguson who managed United from 1986 until 2013.  Most of us might have forgotten that it took him a good three of four years before he made some progress with the team which was floundering before he took over. In fact it took 6 full years at the club before Man United won their first Premier League title under his managerial leadership.

Of course what followed was almost three decades of dominance with them winning 13 league titles in a space of 23 seasons and 2 UEFA Championships, 5 FA cups and the list goes on. The problem was when Sir Alex retired from his role, the club's owners behaved like most corporate entities out there and started looking for his replacement.

When I mean replacement I mean they literally looked for someone to carry on Sir Alex's management style because they thought that was the winning formula.

So instead of appointing a talented manager and giving him time and letting him create his own footprint within the team, they pushed him to emulate Sir Alex, not just in his winning ways but the style of play, the type of talent to bring on and most other major decisions.

Eventually the team lost its footing on top of the league, they changed four managers in six years and had little success to show for it.

Most businesses out there can be compared to the Man United's of the world. When a talented manager leaves, most of them hurry to find a replacement, give him or her a spiel of how their predecessor was so successful and tell you they want you to do exactly what he did to carry on the success.

Basking in their past glory and not really giving the successors any time to build a true relationship with their teams or get comfortable in their job, they push them for quick results and when they don't get them, they get rid of them only to repeat the cycle all over again.

I've been a victim of this myself.

In more than one of my previous jobs as head of marketing, I was often compared to my predecessors. I was often told about their successes (not so much their failures) in the hopes that I would be able to replicate their success..

What many of the executives in the top management failed to realize was, the people before me operated in different conditions. The market had changed.... In fact it had evolved and in some cases matured.

They didn't realize that people have their own philosophy, their own skills and strengths, their own style of management.

And it took me a while to show them that I had my own way of getting things done and that I could be successful in my own way, doing my own thing.

The best thing the C Suite and the board can do when a talented manager leaves is give their replacement the guidance, the time and the opportunity to stamp his or her own style and personality to the role much like what Liverpool did with letting Jurgen Klopp put his own stamp on the team. He was given his budget to buy players, he was given space to make changes and he was given time to prove himself. And after four solid years at the Liverpool, he's put the club on the club on its way to becoming a dominant team for the next few years.

And that is exactly what corporations should do.

Put it this way, you're hiring managers because of their talent, the skill, their experience and their ability to lead.....so let them lead.

But let them lead the way they want to, not the way you want them to.

If you show them trust, they in turn get the confidence to manager their team better and get the best out of them.

So they won't be emulating the success of their predecessors, they will actually be creating their own success.

Have any of you have been in this predicament before? What did you do to overcome the situation. Do let me know in the comments below.

Click here to watch a video version of this article