How to get ahead in sports.
Today’s Sunday Column is an apology to all those who have reached out to ask for some advice. I’ve collected a handful of axioms that, hopefully, are useful in general, but especially to the industry.
The Albachiara Journal is an eclectic collection of our opinion and perspective, from our travels and encounters.
“How do I get into sports?”
We are all getting asked that one these days. So many want to break into our industry, or find a different job within it. Others are just scared about what could happen to them, mid-career, and need to talk.
Today’s Sunday Column is an apology to all those who have reached out to ask for some advice or mentoring. People just can’t reply to everyone, and this is some kind of attempt, in my case, at a batch-reply.
The sport’s business is part of the creative sectors of “special” products that sell passion and emotion. It operates with different rules to the mainstream corporate world, and over 30 years I’ve collected a handful of axioms that are useful in general, but especially within this industry.
1) Play the player, not the game.
The greatest asset Silvio Berlusconi ever had was to project himself very differently depending on his audience in that moment. He was convex when faced with concave, and vice versa.
Who do you have in front of you? Work that out, and present a mirror image back to them. People want to hire, be around, and do business with, others they think as similar to themselves.
It’s the rather obvious, but real, Principle of Likeability.
Think of yourself and your personality as a graphic equaliser, with slight adjustments to each component possible every time. This flexibility may be criticised as being “all things to all men”, so don’t exaggerate. But do slide those knobs up and down, as needed.
In the creative industries, more than say in the engineering or manufacturing sectors, you will need to do this more, as the variety of character you meet is wider, and they are certainly more eclectic.
Sport has always been a pally intermediary business, mainly populated by operators who are objectively rather average, likely not having wide corporate experience, or honed vertical skills. Think about why and it’s not even anyone’s fault. It’s just a fact.
They were rules and regulations people, like the famous club secretary, an ex-player, a willing overly-pedantic amateur. They are ex sponsorship and perimeter board salesmen, rights brokers (when that was a thing), or even agents.
They, likely, won’t have a Master in FMCG Strategic Marketing for the Modern Digital World.
So, to be liked and desired by these people, you would do well not to scare them too much.
Few people warm easily to “new”, and fewer still like “change/progress” thrown in their face as absolutely necessary.
One of the clear and undeniable trends in sport has been the evolution from a fuzzy “relationship” approach, to a request for harder more scientific validation data. This is as true in player recruitment and tactics, as it is in sponsorship and performance marketing, and is an animated debate in our industry that never ends. Fact is you need both soft and hard skills, as long as they are excellent.
I like to call this evolution more simply as a raising of the quality bar. Sport’s love of “gut feel” as a decision-making process is no longer enough, but the incumbents still like to tell you that it’s the secret sauce. Because that’s all they’ve got to offer. Only they can “see” a player straight away.
So if you are an A operator, with serious knowledge and skills, this will present you with a conundrum in trying to enter our industry. Forgive the harsh pithiness, but you will need to dumb down a bit, because As hire A+s; whereas Bs hire Cs and Ds.
This is the real world. So, play smart. Play the player.
Jobs here, dropping real truth bombs, is really not so different to what Roy Keane is always trying to articulate. The ex United man was undoubtedly an A player, and today his whole pundit shtick can be well described as angry intolerance of Bs and Cs.
For him it’s a form of cheating.
We need to get the bluffers out of this club.
Some readers may lament that we need to get the bluffers out of the sportsbiz industry in general. Probably. But the fact is they will exist for a while yet.
Events at United have proven Keane absolutely correct but It should be noted that his truculent inflexibility has failed him in management. He just can’t ever accept lower standards, or to fake it for political or diplomatic reasons. Souness said much the same when retiring from the game; he didn’t have the patience to hand-hold the less-than-elite.
Never lose sight of your objective. There is no success in feeling superior and not getting the job, or winning the deal.
Steve Jobs tells us that teams of A+ people self-police and demand standards, but conversely organisations not blessed with these elites types find a different way to survive. They tend to keep serious quality at a distance, as the juxtaposition is too uncomfortable for them.
Let that sink in.
Sport, for the reasons above, is not short of the Bs, Cs, and Ds, and they won’t willingly hire you if you are an A+. The jolly G&T rugger bugger who is good in the bar after midnight is not going to bring you into his cosy club just because you understand deep-learning and data lakes.
Play the player in front of you. Be smart and shrewd. That’s the greatest management skill of all.
Let’s be clear, sport isn’t Apple under Steve Jobs, and this is exacerbated even more by its love of committee structures and impossible governance. These places are best described as the sanctuary of the timid and harmless; a nice place to hide in a banal talking shop, creating an inevitable breeding ground of compromise, all with no transparency and accountability.
Nota bene: Jobs had zero committees. No coincidence.
If you want to hire great people…
All this is exactly where we are as an industry, and explains the biggest challenge for sport in Europe. And it’s the same hurdle for anyone wanting to work in it, with ambition. There aren’t enough of what Jobs calls “great people”, so my advice, the first axiom, needs to be summarised like this:
Learn to fake being mediocre if needed.
If, instead, you bring all your talent into the interview room, and have a hard opinion, you will likely scare them. Assess well the job/deal you want, and work out who will be deciding if you get it. Do full research on that person and their career. If it’s a top performer, an A person, then bring all your studies, skills and ability into the meeting. Dazzle. But if it’s one of Keane’s bluffers, stealing a wage, then I can recommend flattery as an alternative.
2) Elegant sycophancy.
Under-powered people are always insecure. Deep down they know the truth, and whatever façade they have used in their lives hides the reality that there will be some element of Imposter’s Syndrome. Sport is well populated by these people.
They will, therefore, always love external praise and validation, and you should give it to them. All humans, with some exceptions, love to have their ego stroked, and get their dopamine fix. The best “sycophants” stroke it really well, with intelligence. They will, for example, reach out in the tough moments, offering private sympathy, because that’s when the room is less packed with other suitors, and when the target is feeling most vulnerable.
Celebrate all these wonderful leaders at their conferences, on LinkedIn, at your interview, over a Prosecco. Tell them how much you admire them, what a great deal they’ve just managed to sign, how you looked up to them as players.
Like in any talent, honourable or less so, it takes skill to do it well. With class and credibility.
We have some choice sycophants operating in sport; truly world-class operators, and they (we) all know who they are. But it absolutely works. Kudos to them. They have had better careers than you or me in the main.
Compliments and encouragement are a key part of man management, but it’s usually most elegant and efficient when being pushed down the way, to subordinates. In the other direction, it can be false and ugly. Don’t exaggerate or you’ll end up in Dante Alighieri‘s Inferno.
The “Sommo Poeta” puts these types of people in the eighth circle of his Inferno, placed even worse than the murderers. An explanation is here, I thoroughly recommend this article.
So are we really just an industry of underwhelming mediocre flatterers?
This is, of course, a generalisation for effect, but, my God, there are so many datapoints around us to suggest we are guilty as charged. And that is key if you really do want to make your way in our industry.
The leadership of golf has, for example, absolutely no mitigating factors to its mediocrity. We have a European Tour turning itself into a pathway league of irrelevance, and the PGA is…
…well, let’s leave that to Victor.
The PGA has been torn apart by a deficit of vision and leadership. So much so that it would be so ironic if McIlroy would indeed go to LIV. He won’t, but Rahm was also equally vehement in denial. Who knows?
The real point is that the PGA has just been so poor, paying its leader $20m each year to preside over a collapse into fratricide. One even doubts if an eventual defection of Rory would be a resignation event for the CEO: if he is still there today, after his merger with the people he accused of insulting 9/11 families, there is clearly no shame in the governance of the Tour.
But does all that make Jay Monahan a C or a D? Not necessarily. It just means he’s a bad man.
To succeed in the sportsbiz, the main talent you need is to work out if the person in front of you is a lucky plodder, a narcissistic sociopath, a ruthless assassin, or Captain Kirk. And then, play that player.
3) Hustle, hustle, hustle.
The jobs aren’t going to come to you. Not in this sexy sector. You need to make it happen. Build your brand.
People will always notice who can be relied on to have done the hard yards in prep, to deliver on tasks, and all that goes a long long way. Football has the best example.
Gianni Infantino, is a very capable operator. He is neither a genius nor a C or D, but he has certainly overachieved. He was (and is) a master flatterer.
I knew him briefly when he was a very personable and available manager at the Swiss League. At European Leagues meetings, he wasn’t a big beast in the room, but he worked it superbly, offering his league to do so much of the grunt research and communication for the Leagues. He made friends and earned respect with those who could progress his career. He then joined UEFA in a mid-manager role and always made himself visible and available. Despite he and I being peers and colleagues, when I sat on the Professional Football Committee he treated me like the Aga Khan. Nothing too much trouble. His reverence was a bit cringe tbh, but I’m sure it worked in spades with others.
A few years later, my colleague and frenemy at the Scottish FA, David Taylor, was chosen by Michel Platini as his CEO at UEFA. A huge job. He struggled there politically, as David was a good man thrown into a viper’s nest, and was moved sideways into the separate commercial arm of UEFA, and then evermore marginalised. I went to see him in those days, and over a (very) quiet dinner in Nyon, I asked for the story.
Infantino, at this point, had risen to take David’s old job of UEFA CEO! Go figure, as the Americans would say.
How did Gianni do that? He wasn’t the obvious next choice. He came from nowhere.
I listed the names of others at UEFA who should have got that job. David explained…
Gianni works very very hard, and makes himself indispensable to those in power. He flatters very well and is the go-to guy who will read all those tenders and committee docs, and be there 24/7.
This is how you get ahead. Usefulness and reverence to power. With hustle and drive.
David Taylor keeled over on a football pitch and died a short while after this meeting. Carpe Diem folks, coz you never know the minute.
To continue reading this article, and discover the last three axioms, please click here.
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