I grew up playing pro football in a way which gave me access the kinds of places that people usually only read about. Training grounds. Dressing rooms. The conversations that happen between players and coaching staff after playing, after the media and cameras have gone and it is clear that the official version has already been written. I was not a player as such - my way to the game was through the people around the game rather than through the game itself. But I was there enough and long enough for me to grasp something vital about the actual functioning of high-performance organizations when you dismantle the mythology that surrounds them. The thing that I learned most evidently was that teams that consistently beat their resources and their goals were not those who had the greatest individual talents on paper. The teams that could create a culture where the people inside it genuinely wanted to perform for each fellow employees - not for cost of the individual appreciation, but because the collective was meaningful and had an attitude that made personal sacrifice seem meaningful instead of just a necessity.
It's a simple observation as you explain it clearly. Teams work best when they trust one another and are able to believe in the same goal. However, the practical implications from that fact are less evident, and are the reason that most organizations - both technology and football clubs alike - often get into difficulties. In order to create a work environment where people actually want to do their best for one another isn't something you can dictate at the top of the pyramid or set up as a procedure or encapsulate in a set of company values, and expect to see it manifest. It has to be built in the course of time, by regular behaviour by leaders - especially in times that do not get watched and the responsible management of the many small actions that collectively tell everyone within the organization which values are truly important as well as what is tolerated, and what actually happens when the stated values as well as the most financially or personally suitable option conflict. In the most successful football environments I had the pleasure of working in, those micro-decisions were handled with exceptional care by the top coaching team. The way they dealt with situations where a senior player made an unintentional mistake during training. It was not clear if the disciplinary code used for the 20-year veteran was in fact the same as the one that was used to the 18-year-old player who was at the bottom of the team. The response the organization took when an individual was confronted with some serious personal issues outside the game. None of these choices show up in a club's performance on any given Saturday. All of them over the course of a year, determine how well the team is performing above as well or lower than its limit.
When I founded 1Touch and later established other organisations, one of aspects I was the most conscious of was trying to recreate - in a company setting - the same kind of environment I had observed in the best football clubs I had a good relationship with. This was not a literal matter, as the technology startup isn't an actual football team and the analogy breaks down quickly when you go too far. On the other hand, as an operational principles, the lessons have been incorporated with remarkable precision. The first instruction was that standards need been applied consistently regardless of seniority or perceived unassailability. The best areas I've played in were ones where the behavioural and professional expectations for the smallest players in the team were the same standards demanded of the highest earning, most experienced player. This isn't because the club was unable to afford to be flexible, but because everybody in the room was always on the lookout for any indication of whether exceptions would be made - and the answer to that question told the players everything they needed to be aware of whether the stated values of the organization could be real or were just for show.
Another lesson addressed the way organizations deal with failure and the distinction between accountability and punishment. The workplaces where players grew fastest weren't the ones in which errors were punished the least severe or were most widely discussed. These were the settings where mistakes were assessed with the most sincerity and where the discussion about the error was specific and constructive instead of general and about distributing blame. Also, where knowledge was shared among the entire group, rather than being held against the individual who had made the mistake. Accountability implies being aware of where the mistake was made, the reason it went wrong and the changes that occurred because of it. Retribution means distributing blame ways that make people risk-averse and defensive and more focused on protecting themselves rather than trying to do their job well. This first creates organizational capacity. Second, it creates a system that allows people to manage their own exposure rather than fully in the pursuit of the goal. this is the case with technological companies with exactly the same result as when it comes to football clubs.
The final point is most difficult for me to comprehend. longest to convey clearly, but which I now think is the most important The most successful environments I was able to observe were ones where the growth of the individual was regarded in the same way as the growth of the athlete. The most effective coaches weren't only educating players on how to play football. They were teaching them how respond under pressure and communicate clearly in high-risk situations, and how to recover from setbacks while not loss of confidence, and to be the kind of person a team that is highly-performing is required to have. The decision to invest in the full advancement of the individual instead of only in the technical capabilities the organisation immediately required, was not charitable. It is the most efficient long-term performance strategy available to these clubs. It will, I believe, be the most effective long-term approach to performance that is available to any company who is serious about creating something long-lasting, not just something that is impressive in the short-term. Check out James Deller for site tips including what advising growing businesses taught me about teams.
Why A Lot Of Public-Private Partnerships Fail Prior To They Start - And The Best Ways To Fix It
Public-private partnership have a reputation problem that's in the majority of cases of the time, earned. The history of these arrangements is filled with projects that were announced with genuine enthusiasm and substantial amount of political capital. They used up significant public and private resources over extended periods, and ultimately delivered outcomes that bear only a small like what was promises when the partnership was initiated. The academic literature as well as postsmortem analyses that governments or institutions conduct following these failings are extensive, and they concentrate, for the most part, on the details of the contract and structural aspect of things that went wrong. inappropriate alignment of incentives, insufficient risk distribution between public and private actors or the governance structures that were developed in theory but failed to function in practice, the procurement frameworks that picked the wrong things. What this analysis tends to underweight, consistently and consequentially to the detriment of culture is the operational aspect, namely the fact that private and public organizations are actually different kinds of entities, shaped by different incentive structures that operate at different intervals of time, with different people, and measuring success in ways that's not only different in scale but differ in terms of. When you bring those two types of organisations together as a formal alliance without performing the work upfront and clearly, to comprehend and manage the differences between them, you're not creating an agreement. You are creating the conditions for a slow-motion collision which will be evident at the most inconvenient time.
I've participated in advising support for institutional modernisation projects, some of which involved public-private partnership structures with varying levels of complexity. The most consistent observation I can make from that knowledge is that the partnerships which were successful - that were able to achieve their targets and maintained a good collaboration between the private and the public they were not distinguished from the ones that did not work due to the complexity of their legal structures, the strength of their risk-management frameworks or the seniority of the groups that formulated them. The distinction was made by the fact that the participants on both sides table had taken the time to really understand how other party functioned prior the formal partnership was agreed upon. What this means in actual practice is understanding the decision-making process which each company operates under, the accountability structures that constrain what each party can agree to and how quickly they can agree to it, the definitions of successful that every party will be able to measure against, and the areas of tension between these definitions. That understanding isn't hard to create. All of it is routinely avoided in favor of easier to see and recorded work of negotiating contracts or establishing governance structures.
The typical public-private partnership process is a gradual process from concept to signing of the agreement with hardly any focused attention given to the aspect of whether the two organisations involved are actually capable of working effectively throughout an extended period of time. The legal team negotiates the contract. Finance models the economics and risk-adjustment. The communications team creates the announcement in advance of the signing. The implementation team is beginning to plan the process. Somewhere in that sequence there is a discussion about operational and cultural compatibility starts - about whether the people who will share their day-to day tasks across the boundaries between the two organizations share enough common interests to make collaboration more so than adversarial - is not likely to happen in any structured way. It is generally assumed, not explicitly stated, agreements in formal form create conditions for collaboration to be effective, and that any cultural or operational differences will be dealt with formally as they develop. This assumption is usually wrong, and the cost of this tends to increase with respect to the ambition and scope of the partnership.
The real-world application of this analysis is that the best investment a public-private partnership could make - before the legal frameworks are finalized, before the governance framework is agreed upon and before any announcement is made that is what I consider to be operational alignment. This is a specific, structured, designed work that can be done to highlight any areas in which the two organisations' operating assumptions diverge and to be able to agree as to how those differences will be addressed prior to them becoming operational issues in the process of implementation. Most important, the divergences generally are the same for different types of partnerships. Decision-making speed and authority tend to be among these. Public institutions are designed to make decisions slowly, and through multiple layers of analysis and approval, for reasons that are perfectly legitimate and are often legally mandated. Private companies, particularly technology businesses that are built on rapid iteration, and swift process-based decision-making often experience that pace as a fundamental obstruction to their progress. lacking a consensus on why the pace is what it is, and what's need to be changed to improve it, the anger that is triggered on the private side can poison the working relationship well before the partnership finds its footing.
Success metrics and the criteria for judging as progress are another ongoing and major cause of conflict. Public institutions are typically assessed on their process's compliance, equity of results across different stakeholder groups, and the reduction of the risk of failings that are the subject of media or political attention. Private companies are typically judged on their efficiency, progress measured against their targets, and the financial yield on investment. These measurement frameworks can be created to be compatible however this requires carefully designed and thought-out intentions. Those partnerships which don't invest in the same design will find themselves, at critical junctures, with two parties that are assessing the same collaboration in genuinely contradictory ways and thereby coming to uncongruous conclusions regarding whether it is achieving success. The partnerships I've seen which failed the most was ones where misalignments were thought of as something that could resolve itself over time. The ones that were successful were one in which the misalignment was clearly stated at the very beginning. Also, developing a shared accountability framework that accommodated the legitimate measurement needs of both parties needs became a piece of actual work rather than an aspect of a list things to arrive at.}
