Are you a leader with vision?
When you think about the future of your company, what do you see? Do you imagine dominating the marketplace and leaving competitors trailing in your wake? Or do you hope to maintain your current position and play it safe?
In my recent mentoring session with Kevin Keegan, the former England manager and BigChange ambassador, he warned me about the dangers of complacency. In order to keep moving forward, he told me, you need to keep setting ambitious - even impossible-seeming - targets.
When Kevin took over as manager of Newcastle United in the early nineties, he set an extraordinary target: to win the Premier League. “My first programme notes [when the session started in 1993] were: ‘Watch out Sir Alex, we’re after your title!’” he said. “I can remember one of the directors coming to me before the game saying, ‘What’s this? You have put us all under unbelievable pressure.’ I said, ‘I honestly believe that we can go up and win this league.’
“I knew if we tried to finish third or fourth, we’d finish fifth. Most teams just try to survive. But we wanted to push the players to be right up at the top of the table. We did it because we sowed the seeds in their minds that we were good enough.”
Newcastle United’s 1995-96 season has been described as “an absolute classic” by Total Football magazine, while the team’s extraordinary run at the Premier League title has gone down in history. “We won the championship with Newcastle by quite a few points,” Kevin said. “We told players, ‘We’re not just going up into the Premier League. We’re going to win it.’ I told them: ‘We’re not your normal team. We’re not a Championship side, we’re a Premiership side that’s been playing in the Championship for a year’.”
It’s always a mistake to play it safe, he warned me, because you stifle all ambition that way. “Consolidation” is a dirty word, he said. “If a chairman says to you, ‘We’re going to consolidate’, that means you are going to go backwards. The idea is that you’ll settle for mediocrity; you’ll consolidate.”
One way to avoid mediocrity is to make sure you acquire and develop the best talent in the business. Last week, I wrote about my session with Kevin where we discussed the importance of having an Alan Shearer on your team. Every organisation needs its own top “goal scorer” to succeed, whether that’s a star salesman, customer service genius, or technical wizard. But it goes beyond just having people that are good at their job: Kevin believes you need at least one ‘disruptive genius’ on your side to give you an edge.
These people often have big personalities, and can be hard to manage, but they are crucial for creating and maintaining forward momentum. I love finding disruptive geniuses, and I never shy away from giving them the space to thrive in BigChange. In the words of Kevin: “You can’t be successful without them. Every team I’ve ever managed has had a disruptive genius and you have to have them. They push themselves to the limit, they push you and they push your judgement. Without these geniuses you don’t win things.”
These disruptive geniuses are part of the magic formula that is required to help your business level up but they do present a challenge to managers. “They can upset the group but players accept it because of the ability they bring to the team,” Kevin told me. “They are willing to put up with the odd tantrum. Players will be looking at a mountain but the disruptor will see over it. He will see what’s coming.
“If you get rid of them, you’ll have an easy life but you won’t win anything. A lot of managers get rid of them and the team has been easier to manage but the team has always gone down a level.” Click here to watch the Secrets of Leadership