I’m not sure. It’s a really great statement, especially in today’s clickbait soundbite age. But have we gone too far when we’re saying that the culture is more important than strategy? Trigger warning, this is an England/ Southgate post, I know for many of you I may be pushing you too far, and it may be best that you stop reading now, guess the rest of the content, and add a ridiculous comment below.
I appreciate it’s easy to join up the dots in hindsight, but I would argue that lots of us have been critical of the England football managers strategy over the last six years. As we all know by now, Southgate improved the culture within the team, or at least is credited with having improved the culture, or did he?
My view of the ‘team culture’ point, is that the world of football has come a long way since the cliques that used to make up the England team. The world of football has done a lot to change the way footballers behave, there is a much stronger focus on education, they’re coached and mentored very differently now, and as such, the way they behave, generally, I’d describe as more professional.
I think its fair to say that maybe, just maybe, the cliques thing isn’t really that big a deal with this cohort of players, and so perhaps the England manager was getting a little too much credit for what he’d done with the team culturally.
Culture aside, sport is really simple, it’s a results business. The results over the last six years have been good, but they haven’t achieved what they set out to, or at least I hope they haven’t. You set out to win in sport and England (men’s team) haven’t won anything, and so I have to question the strategy. I believe that the adopted strategy, at several times over the last six years, has not been strong enough or appropriate for the positions we found ourselves in, or the opposition we’ve been up against.
We all know, whether people talk about it or not, that in the last few competitions we’ve been extraordinarily lucky to find ourselves against such weak opposition in the group, and knockout, stages. We should have beaten Italy. And in my opinion, we should have applied a much better strategy against France in 2022, and against Spain a few weeks ago.
Spain, as the superior team, are able to dictate terms and in essence the rules of engagement, if you allow them to, which we did. As it happens, on paper, England’s team, for many pundits around the world, looked stronger than Spain, but I come back to my main point, we didn’t get apply an appropriate strategy to win. We didn’t; they won.
I think there’s a very strong argument that a great culture without the right strategy has served the England team, and its fans, poorly. So, does culture actually eat strategy for breakfast? Of course you need a strong culture in any team or business, but by now does this not go without saying? Do we really need to be reminded in 2024 to create an inclusive environment, strong in psychological security, that engages, has fun, and cares about its team. I mean really, if you need to be told this, perhaps leadership is not for you.
Appropriate strategy though, as proven in the case of England, is essential for success; culture alone will not get you there. I do wonder from time to time, as a society, are we so obsessed with keeping people happy that we’ve forgotten that tough decision are essential. Strategy is not about the easy choice, its about the right choice. Should Harry Kane, captain of England, started in the Euro’s final, probably not. It would have been a tough decision to make, and I don’t envy Southgate being put in that position, but in my view, he did not make the appropriate strategic decision that would have given his team the best chance of success, and as such, his team did not deserve to win – a tough pill for many of us to swallow.
Is culture important? Yes, absolutely. Does it eat strategy for breakfast? Perhaps in 1991 when Peter Drucker is famously misquoted as having said it does. Nowadays though? Personally, I think we could all benefit from a little more focus on strategy. If you were to ‘invent’ estate agency today, assuming the industry had never existed, what would you do differently? I bet there’s lots. The question is, are you brave enough to stick the Captain of England on the bench.
Ben Madden, 20-year estate agent and host of the Pass the Syrup podcast
