What Went Wrong at Chelsea (Part 1)?
Why did Chelsea football club go from runaway English Premier League champions to relegation candidates within 16 games in 2015?
Here was a collapse that no one foresaw. In 2014-15, Chelsea won the English championship by eight points having lost just 3 games over a 38-game season. But 16 games into the 2015-16 season Chelsea were only one point above the relegation zone, having already lost 9 games. Experienced commentators said they’d never seen anything like it before in professional football. So what happened?
This three-part post will explore the possible system story behind the club’s on-field collapse which led to Jose Mourinho’s sacking … and what leaders can learn from it. I’ll argue that the story’s main actors (the official leader, the people who commission the leader and the “followers”) must stand back at times and see the whole emerging story rather than let its individual elements blind them. That way they’ll have a chance of steering their organisation away from a downward spiral into crisis. However, this intellectual truth will count for nothing if – while mired in the crisis and feeling the pressure – the actors don’t remember it and find a way of seeing the big picture. The key? It’s self-mastery, the ability to choose your emotional reactions under pressure – a continuing theme of this blog. Today I’m posting part 1. I’ll post part 2 tomorrow and part 3 the day after.
This Is Not the Truth
Let me be clear from the start: I have no inside information on what happened at Chelsea football club over the summer and autumn of 2015 when they went from champions to relegation candidates and Jose Mourinho, the club’s extraordinarily successful manager, was sacked. So what follows is not the truth, but rather, the possible truth.
Why Bother with This Story?
My intent is not to write the definitive story of what happened at Chelsea, but to illustrate how complex systems stories can explain the way seemingly small or trivial causes can produce major, even surprising, consequences. The consequences at Chelsea, I believe, are impossible to explain with single-issue accounts.
The trouble is, so many superficial explanations and one-dimensional stories about Chelsea’s unheard-of slump emerged (“the problem was his dispute with the doctor” or “he lost his players’ backing” or “Costa is spending too much time outside the penalty area”). That’s why I feel it’s time to, one, explain how problems like Chelsea’s are rarely due to one issue and, two, dig for the root problems rather than mistaking effects for causes as many journalists did, probably because they were writing to tight deadlines.
So, to repeat: what follows isn’t the truth, but an illustration of how a major, stunning, explosive crisis that no one foresees can develop from small beginnings and reach unstoppable momentum.
Why engage in this piece of fiction? Three reasons. First, because it might sensitise leaders to the idea of keeping an eye on the big picture and checking to see whether their behaviour might be unintentionally creating results they don’t want … even if that behaviour served them well in the past. Second, to show how those who appoint or commission the leaders – for example, business owners or boards of directors – can unwittingly worsen the crisis. And third, to point out that those playing “follower” roles may also be unconscious architects of results they don’t want. In short, this offers learning points for the leaders, the people who commission them and the people who follow them.
What Is a System Story?
A system is a complex whole driven by its interacting parts. It arises when its many elements work together to make a whole with a distinct identity and purpose that’s greater than its parts. So, for example, a car is a system. It contains assemblies like an engine, a gearbox and a dashboard computer, and tiny parts like screws and rivets, but what makes it a car is the way they all work together to create a means of transport. By themselves the parts can’t do that. Your body is also a system. So is a computer. And so is a football team and a football club, but the parts are human beings.
A system story is the narrative of how and why a system changed over time through the interaction of its many parts – often in unintended complex ways and with time delays that, without the story, would make it hard to connect cause with effect.
The system we’ll be looking at in this example is Chelsea football club between January and December 2015. The system story will appear tomorrow in part 2 and we’ll analyse it in part 3.
The author is James Scouller, an executive coach. His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published in May 2011. You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com. If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews. If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE. You can read more about his executive coaching services at The Scouller Partnership’s website.
