What the Postecoglou-Tottenham injury crisis teaches us about strategy and leadership

Trigger warning: the following contains football-related content. Reader discretion is advised ??

At risk of traumatising Spurs fans, I want to share some reflections on lessons we can draw from the remarkable injury crisis currently afflicting Tottenham Hotspur – lessons relevant to any leaders and managers out there.

As brief context for those unaware, Spurs (translation: Tottenham Hotspur Football Club ) are an English football (translation: soccer) team playing in the EPL (translation: English Premer League, the top division of English football). Their manager is an Australian by the name of Ange Postecoglou – a decorated manager, and first Australian to manage in the EPL. Australian non-football fans might know him also as the person who took the Socceroos to their only Asian Cup win in 2015.

At present, Spurs are suffering through an injury crisis that is truly once-in-a-few-generations type stuff. They have so many players absent through injury that at recent games they haven’t even been able to field a full substitutes bench. Last weekend, so few players were available that most players who were listed on the unfilled subs bench were academy-level teenagers who had never played a game of senior professional football, leading TV co-commentator, Jim Beglin, to quip: “looking at the Spurs bench – it’s like looking at a kindergarten”.

In a clutch European game last week they started an 18-year-old central midfielder at centre back, an 18-year-old Swede who before this season had never played top-flight football in midfield, and a 17-year-old unable to even legally drink a beer after the game at left wing (they performed admirably, by the way).

Things came to a head a few days ago when, with only 11 fit senior players at the club (the exact number of players needed to field a team!), out of sheer exhaustion Spurs surrendered a one goal lead and lost to a team who hadn’t won a game in their last seven matches. Spurs have sunk down the EPL table like a stone on the back of having so few players available, and there were angry confrontations between fans and Postecoglou after the game. Many are actively calling for him to lose his job.

Spurs are now in a position in the league – in the last 12 games having taken only four points from a possible 36 – where being relegated from the EPL is a realistic (though unlikely) possibility, which would be the first that’s happened time since 1977. I wasn’t even born then.

It’s proper ‘crisis’ stuff.

But I’m not a football analyst and I don’t want to talk more about football.* I want to talk about what this situation can teach us about strategy and leadership.

I’ve been watching Postecoglou closely over recent months, streaming his press conferences in full, and I think many CEOs and managers could learn a lot from watching the way he takes responsibility, tells the truth, and deals with tough situations. I think we can also learn something about problem solving.

Some problems are best solved by not creating them in the first place

It took a 24-year-old footballer, Dejan Kulesevski, in a press conference this week to finally say what I’ve been thinking for months: that this injury crisis really needed to be solved before it began, by building a squad big enough before the season started. It’s at a point now where the problem is so big, and there are so many injuries, that there are few solutions available that aren’t extremely costly and painful – and none of them are very desirable.

In this way, Spurs’ injury crisis follows a pattern I’ve seen recur in my client’s (and my own) businesses: it compounds in a way that ‘problem’ very quickly becomes ‘problems’.

With Spurs, a few players got injured – that’s a problem. But it meant the players who were fit then had to play more minutes to cover for the injured players, so more went down under the strain. Problem became ‘problems’. Now, the tiny number of people who are left fit are playing every minute of every game – and of course they soon start breaking down. Suddenly, you’ve got 11 players left, and ‘problems’ have become ‘full blown crisis’.

I see this type of spiral happen a lot with team performance issues that get left unmanaged inside businesses.

Left unchecked, 'problem' becomes 'problems', 'problems' become 'crisis'.

A person is underperforming – that’s a problem. But it’s not directly managed by the leader, and now those around the underperformer are left to pick up more work or deal with the consequences – creating friction, dissatisfaction and burnout. ‘Problem’ has become ‘problems’. Now the leader is dealing with a few problems at the same time, so they’re not at they’re best, friction becomes full blown conflict, and what could have originally been managed as one feedback conversation has become ‘call in HR – we’ve got a team crisis’.

Both situations follow the same dynamic.

As leaders, we should expect that problems will emerge in our teams. This is normal (and our ability to solve problems as they arise is kind of why we have a job). But, if left untreated, these problems compound, multiply and escalate.

As Kulesevski suggested (I'm paraphrasing, here): the optimal solution to the current injury crisis would have been to have solved the squad size problem six months ago. And the real solution to the team crisis I’ve described is to have had the performance conversation with the underperformer at the start.

This is what I mean by ‘solving problems by not creating them’. It’s easy to avoid early-intervention hard conversations, but it almost always creates more work for ourselves down the track (usually harder, less satisfying and higher risk work).

Put another way – leaning into difficult conversations and solving problems early doesn’t only solve the problem that in front of us; it solves all the downstream problems by not creating them.

“…and then we will blame immigrants and poor people.”

Even though it’s an almost intractably difficult issue to solve as a manager, Postecoglou’s response to the injury crisis has, I believe, been instructive for anyone in a leadership role.

Postecolgu was asked by a journalist this week: “I can’t imagine there’s been many times in your career you’ve felt under this much pressure [where] on a weekly basis people ask if you should lose your job. Do you feel the pressure, and do you think you’ve had enough backing from the board?”.

A very direct question, indeed (...imagine the response from HR if you said that in a performance review!). During times of stress and pressure, I’ve seen people respond to much more benign questions than this with everything from a long list of excuses, to anger at the questioner, to throwing board members, senior executives, staff and clients under the bus and blaming them for all the woes.

But instead of those responses, Ange had this to say:

“In this type of situation, it can be a tough gig. You can feel very isolated, and you can be very vulnerable. I don’t feel that. I think the playing group, and the people I work with, are doing their utmost to help me guide us through this. I don’t feel like anyone is blocking that. From my perspective, my focus is firmly on the things I can control – and what I can control is making sure I’m preparing the team.”

In another answer to a similar question, he added:

“At the moment, I’m here [and] I take responsibility… We’re in a difficult situation because of where we are squad-wise… but if that’s what your crutch is, particularly in tough moments, then what’s the point? I’m in for the fight and for better or for worse I’m not going anywhere because everything is in my power and is my responsibility”.

In fairness, Postecoglou has (in my view, understandably) also had no shortage of stylistically ‘prickly’ moments when dealing with the press on this issue – but I think the substance of his answers has remained consistently in line with the above.

I contend these are great answers for multiple reasons, and show a delicate line being artfully trod. ?

Firstly, he takes responsibility. They include the lines “everything is in my power and my responsibility” and “my focus is firmly on the things I can control”. At no stage is any latitude given to the notion that the injury crisis absolves him of his responsibility as a leader to make the best of the situation and prepare the (available) players as best he can.

Secondly, he truthfully acknowledges the challenges. By saying “We’re in a difficult situation because of where we are squad-wise” there is a clear and explicit identification of the problem the team faces, but also very quickly an echo of the responsibility-taking by adding that this should not serve as an excuse.

There is always razor's edge to be walked between describing and explaining the truth of the matter, versus making an excuse. I think it's well-walked, here. ?

Thirdly and finally, he shows unity. Often during times of struggle, our instinct is to create a sub-group who can be blamed for the problem and use that blame-shifting as a way of taking heat off ourselves. In business, sometimes usually subjects we shift blame onto are clients, other leaders, other parts of the businesses, or individuals within the team.

This same tendency is visible at a societal level, articulated beautifully in the film The Big Short when a character says of the Global Financial Crisis: “I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people”.

Some might even say you can win an election by leaning into our tendency to shift blame onto 'the other'.

Parts of the Spurs’ supporter base, segments of the media, and even some senior players have certainly pointed no shortage of fingers of blame – often at Spurs’ Chairman, Daniel Levy – as the main cause of the current crisis. Plenty of people blame Postecoglou himself, too, of course.

The temptation for Postecoglou, as the one in the sharpest spotlight, to jump onto the blame bandwagon and divert attention onto others must be overwhelming. But he doesn’t. Instead, in his statements he emphasises organisational unity: “I think the playing group, and the people I work with, are doing their utmost to help”.

If he can do that under the intense scrutiny of some of the world’s most aggressive tabloid media, in the glare of flash bulbs and TV cameras, and with 60,000 fans yelling at him while he works – I think we should be able to find the courage to take responsibility and emphasise cohesion in times of crisis in our own jobs.

“We don’t always know how it ends”

Sometimes a barrier to taking decisive action to solve 'problem' before it becomes ‘problems’ is uncertainty about what will happen next. If I take action, will I make it worse? If I have this performance conversation, how will the other person react? If I shutter this project that isn’t working, will people flip out? If I make this investment and it doesn’t work out, will I lose my job?

In a scene in the brilliant TV show The West Wing, ultra-wise Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, and President Bartlett are debating whether to take retaliatory military action against a foreign country. The President is reluctant to act because McGarry can’t offer him a clear picture of precisely how everyone will respond and what will happen next.

McGarry simply says: “we don’t always know how it ends”.

As far as that goes for Tottenham, I have no idea if Spurs will weather the injury crisis and if Postecoglou will keep his job. In the last 24 hours, they had a great win (again driven by teenagers) in a big European game – but as I stressed at the beginning, I am not a football analyst.

But I do know for sure that we cannot let the fear of uncertainty stop us from taking responsibility, acknowledging the hard truths, promoting cohesion, and embracing the mantra that ‘we should solve problems by not creating them’. Whilst it can’t remove uncertainty, it can make a successful outcome far more likely.

And that’s what I believe we learn about strategy and leadership from the current situation in North London.

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Dominic Thurbon is an experienced senior executive, successful entrepreneur, and researcher, writer and speaker. He is a director and co-founder at Alchemy Labs.

Find more of his work at www.domthurbon.com

This article was not written by AI :-)

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…post-script

*Clearly, actually, I do want to talk about football. So, one final note for the sports fans out there (with no link to the topic of leadership, management or strategy at all).

This morning, the irrepressibly excellent Luke Moore of The Football Ramble shared a series of amazing statistics from The Times that sum up how entirely bizarre the Spurs season has been and, in his words, “crystallises everything we know about [Spurs] this year but haven’t really articulated … it’s absolutely remarkable”.

He quotes:

“Spurs have the fourth most losses in the league. The third most goals. The 10th best expected goal difference. The seventh best actual goal difference. Have lost four consecutive league matches. Are 15th [out of 20 in the EPL]. Have one foot in the Carabao Cup final having beaten Liverpool in the semi-final first leg, yet have the third worst odds of winning it… Yet they remain favourites for the Europa league”.

As I say, I could not for the life of me fathom a leadership lesson to pull out of that – but it’s too wild not to share!