How L&D can model Leicester City FC to do more with less
First things first, let me just take a moment to congratulate Leicester City FC on achieving the impossible this season. I'm sure by now you have all read numerous articles and posts relating to how Leicester went from narrowly avoiding relegation from the Premier League last season. To starting the season as most likely to be relegated this season, with 5,000:1 odds of winning the league. Only to prove all the doubters wrong by winning the league with a few games to spare. Much has been said and written regarding how this miraculous feat has been achieved but what can L&D in particular learn from our new Premier League champions?
Winning on budget
A major talking point about the Leicester success is how little the team cost compared with the other teams around them in the league. The table below shows the cost of Leicester and the other teams:
| Club | Spend |
|---|---|
| Manchester City | £443m |
| Manchester United | £421m |
| Chelsea | £322m |
| Liverpool | £272m |
| Arsenal | £241m |
| Tottenham | £183m |
| Leicester | £57m |
The difference between the top 6 teams and Leicester for spend is tangible. For example Manchester City spent 7.8 times the amount of money on their team last season. In fact out of 20 teams in the Premier League, Leicester were 17th on the list in terms of spend whereas the table above shows the top 6 teams. So what can we take from this?
Spending money is no guarantee of success. All to often in L&D it is about creating a 'shiny' new training programme to meet the needs of the business the question has to be...do you need a programme with all the bells and whistles to achieve the business goals? or even, do we already have something in our catalog that can serve the same purpose?
Leicester have managed with minimal investment and working with what they had available in the squad. They have perfected their winning strategy by understanding what skills their current players have and how best to utilise this resource to achieve their goals.
Spending money is no guarantee of success. All to often in L&D it is about creating a 'shiny' new training programme to meet the needs of the business the question has to be...do you need a programme with all the bells and whistles to achieve the business goals? or even, do we already have something in our catalog that can serve the same purpose?
Leicester have managed with minimal investment and working with what they had available in the squad. They have perfected their winning strategy by understanding what skills their current players have and how best to utilise this resource to achieve their goals.
Use a strategy to match your strengths
One of the contributing factors to Leicesters success relates to the strategy employed over the course of a season. In very basic terms the strategy revolved around:
1. Concede as few goals as possible
2. Score on the counter attack
The first strategy may seem straight forward however implementation is something entirely different. Leicester conceded the 4th lowest number of goals throughout the season but the more impressive figure is that in 42% of their games they did not concede a single goal. Couple this with the fact that they only lost 3 games all season shows that they were great at keeping goals out and even when they did concede they were getting goals of their own to make up for it. In actual fact it was not until the later half of the season where they actually started to achieve clean sheets en mass. Prior to Christmas they had conceded 24 goals. Since Christmas they have only conceded 10. Simply by focusing on improving defense with an already relatively competent back four they have now set records for the number of consecutive clean sheets.
With regards to the second strategy, they have made best use of the speed they have upfront. Jamie Vardy has just won a player of the year award for his contribution to this years campaign. The key to his success is largely based upon his rapid pace and ability to get in behind the defense of the opposition. This suits the counter attacking style of play to a tee and Vardy's 22 goals confirm this. He is also partnered with Riyad Mahrez with 22 goals and 11 assists of his own which further adds to the counter attacking capability.
The learning here is that an L&D function should take the time to understand what it is doing well and play to it's strengths. For example if you have a LMS that is great at delivering results in some areas and not in others, consider focusing your attention and strategy around making all content delivered via that LMS as good as it can be. Perhaps even consider using the LMS as a method for communicating other business information and really make it an integral part of the learners daily process. What ever your strategy, aligning it to your strengths rather than starting from scratch on your deficiencies may produce faster business results.
The first strategy may seem straight forward however implementation is something entirely different. Leicester conceded the 4th lowest number of goals throughout the season but the more impressive figure is that in 42% of their games they did not concede a single goal. Couple this with the fact that they only lost 3 games all season shows that they were great at keeping goals out and even when they did concede they were getting goals of their own to make up for it. In actual fact it was not until the later half of the season where they actually started to achieve clean sheets en mass. Prior to Christmas they had conceded 24 goals. Since Christmas they have only conceded 10. Simply by focusing on improving defense with an already relatively competent back four they have now set records for the number of consecutive clean sheets.
With regards to the second strategy, they have made best use of the speed they have upfront. Jamie Vardy has just won a player of the year award for his contribution to this years campaign. The key to his success is largely based upon his rapid pace and ability to get in behind the defense of the opposition. This suits the counter attacking style of play to a tee and Vardy's 22 goals confirm this. He is also partnered with Riyad Mahrez with 22 goals and 11 assists of his own which further adds to the counter attacking capability.
The learning here is that an L&D function should take the time to understand what it is doing well and play to it's strengths. For example if you have a LMS that is great at delivering results in some areas and not in others, consider focusing your attention and strategy around making all content delivered via that LMS as good as it can be. Perhaps even consider using the LMS as a method for communicating other business information and really make it an integral part of the learners daily process. What ever your strategy, aligning it to your strengths rather than starting from scratch on your deficiencies may produce faster business results.
Maintain consistency when you are successful
Leicesters approach this season could be summed up by the tried and tested phrase of "it isn't broke, don't fix it!". In his previous stint as manager at Chelsea, Claudio Ranieri was nicknamed "The Tinkerer" for his constant changing of the starting squad. This year he has changed his squad less than any other team in the league. This is partly down to the consistent high performance of the team as well as the limited depth of talent in the squad compared to the larger teams. However the fact remains that Leicester have been one of if not the most consistent team this season. This consistency has meant that positive feelings of winning as well as training day activity is built upon week on week with largely the same number of players. This has lead to all players having a greater understanding of the others in the team and what they are collectively trying to achieve either that game or across the season.
Building on my previous hypothetical example regarding LMS systems, if you are having success with a specific platform then it would be wise to stick to one platform and perfect it. All too often I have seen learning communities with a plethora of different LMS's, portals, hubs, etc to navigate in order to access learning. Not only is this inefficient from a maintenance perspective, the learning experience becomes fragmented and arduous. One platform would provide a single point of access for all learning as well as consistent messaging and process for learning.
Anything is possible
The final piece of learning relates to the power of belief. At Christmas many pundits were stating that Leicester wouldn't win the league despite being top of the table at that point of the year. The only people that really truly believed they could were the team themselves. Now at the end of the season so much can be said about how important it is to believe that you can achieve something, even when others say you cant. I have observed, over a number of years, that change or adoption of new methodology can be hampered by a variety of limiting beliefs. They may be similar to some of the following:
- • We don't have the budget
- • The learning community are too busy to learn something new
- • It will take too long to change
- • What about or existing processes
- • The transition will be too difficult
These limiting beliefs can stop you implementing a process or initiative that will improve learning or business performance but why should they. If you could be more like Leicester and have a belief that anything is possible and that what you are trying to achieve will benefit the business then forge ahead with conviction and purpose.
Final thoughts
Over the following days and weeks there will be countless articles and posts written about Leicesters miracle title run. In each of these articles there will be new analysis and insight into how the impossible was made possible. Perhaps the final point is a simple one. This year Leicester were a great example of how the end product can be greater than the sum of its parts. I heard a pundit describe the team as having not just one player who had a had a great season but as a team that had all its players have a great season. At the end of the day it would seem that hard work, dedication and a commitment to a common goal really are a recipe for success.
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