Two mysteries from this World Cup and what they mean for building high-performing teams

This weekend’s World Cup final between Argentina and France is predicted to break the record for the most-watched sporting event in history. How could it not? The greatest player to ever play, Leo Messi, fighting at 35 to finally win it all in his final World Cup. And after all these years, this is the wiliest, cleverest version of him we’ve ever seen. It’s clear how much he’s learned from every successive tournament.?

Just as he’s learned from each of these tournaments, so can we.?

Not just which teams sparkled, which teams collapsed, or what stars have been born (preview: many of them play for Morocco), but at least a few lessons that are equally applicable off the field. In particular, there are two ways in which this World Cup has been different from previous ones, and they contain an essential lesson for any team, whether you manage Bayern Munich or a marketing team.

Secret #1: The teams this year aren’t playing very well, and the reason why is likely the same thing plaguing organizations all over the world

One of the common themes in analysis of this World Cup has been that the quality of play seems lower than at previous tournaments. There’s a generic quality to much of it, with an erasure of national styles, and in general serious weaknesses to all of the supposed powerhouses. Even my beloved Argentina has seemed wildly inconsistent for a team that could win it all, while France, the other finalist, allowed opponents to score on them in every single game until the semifinal.

Why have so many national teams played as shadows of their former selves? Why have there been no majestically dominant teams, like Spain in 2010 or Germany in 2014??

Is it the heat? Not exactly, though strangely enough, it is related to the weather.?

The World Cup is always held in the depths of summer, but this one couldn't. If held in July, highs in Qatar would have been well above 100°. So it was held in December: a necessary decision with an unintended consequence. Teams had to cram their practices into the short window before the tournament started, rather than having a long summer break to prepare together and gel. That’s compounded by the fact that club soccer has become more fractured, so players for most teams play for different clubs all around the world.

By contrast, Spain’s 2010 team, one of the most dominant national teams of the modern era, was almost entirely comprised of players from Barcelona or Real Madrid. Italy’s World Cup-winning team in 2006 almost entirely played for Juventus or AC Milan. And on Germany’s 2014 team, nearly every single star played for Bayern Munich. They were attached to each other for years, so there was a fluidity and sixth sense for where their teammates were going to be, what their next move would be. You simply couldn’t find that at this World Cup.?

It makes sense that if you were managing a World Cup team, you’d want your players playing together at the club level and you’d want more time pre-tournament to practice together.?

But what can any of us take away from that insight in our day-to-day lives??

What’s true in this World Cup is true of every team I’ve ever seen in my career. No amount of talent or individual experience can make up for the magic of a team that has been together for a long time, and has as many reps as possible working together.?

Long-term teams are in short supply these days. The majority of white-collar workers in the US have switched employers since the beginning of the pandemic. Industrious , the company I run, has certainly had more turnover than we did pre-pandemic, and while we’ve mostly been able to manage through it, I certainly see the impact on our own teams. You can be very good, like Argentina or France this year, with a variety of tenures and teammates. But to be like the legendary World Cup teams, the teams that played the game to perfection, there’s no substitute for time spent together.

Secret #2: One of the classic soccer stats simply stopped being meaningful in this World Cup. It’s true for most organizations as well.

In soccer, there’s not a ton of stats for the average fan. It’s not baseball, with “Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched” or “Fielding Independent Pitching Percentage.” In soccer, the closest thing would be tracking which team possesses the ball more. But this year, mystifyingly, the team that loses, oftentimes demonstrably and quite lopsidedly, has the higher percentage of possession. In their semifinal match, Croatia possessed the ball 60.8% of the time to Argentina’s 39.2%. Yet Argentina dominated the game and won 3-0. How could that be? If you have the ball more, that probably means you’re able to dictate the pace of the game, and you’re making crisper passes and losing the ball less. All good things! Right?

The reason is all about acting with purpose and intent. Oftentimes in this World Cup, the team with more possession has made hundreds of lateral passes, slowing down the game to set up their possession perfectly, only to have it sputter out eventually without a shot on goal. In Spain’s loss to Morocco, they had a thousand passes to Morocco’s 250. On the other hand, the teams that have tended to outperform play more directly, more “vertically” and less “horizontally” in the current parlance of the game. They get the ball, and immediately they’re laser focused on moving it quickly to the one place they truly want it: in their opponent’s net.

This is a lesson for organizations.?

A team or a company can spend an infinite amount of time passing the ball left and right. They can add new products, new initiatives, and in the end do a tremendous, impressive amount of things. But the question is whether those things actually move the business forward. Like the most successful teams in this World Cup, the best teams do a smaller number of things with extreme intent. They do what moves them toward the goal, or they don’t do it at all.?

No matter who wins Sunday (Argentina ??), these two lessons are worth taking beyond the final whistle: do what you can to keep your best talent together for as long as possible, and make sure they move with intent, doing the essential things that truly move the business forward.?