England in Euro 2016: what can we learn from England's demise?
So last night England failed yet again to make it deep into a major competition. To make matters worse, the unanimous opinion on their performance was that it is the poorest they have ever had! In the aftermath of their defeat no less than 20 minutes after the final whistle the manager, Roy Hodgson, had resigned and the twitter-sphere was awash with jokes regarding two exits from Europe in almost as many days. So where did it all go wrong for Roy and his England Team?
Fundamentally I think it boils down to a lack of strategy on Roy's behalf. The pundits on BBC and ITV both slated Roy for not having any understanding of what the teams best formation was and who its top players were despite having ample opportunity to work this out during the qualification process and the pre-tournament friendlies. This lack of strategy can be seen in the decisions made in each of our group games in terms of substitutions, starting players, playing positions and even the timing of specific decisions. A common thread post game was that we lacked purpose and it looked like we had no idea what we were doing on the pitch. This simply cannot be allowed if you want to succeed.
This is also true for business. All too often decisions are made, or not made, at a strategic level that directly set the tone for how a business's L&D function will operate and the success they will have. A good example of this would be IT infrastructure. In an age where technology is becoming more and more integrated into daily life it is expected that e-learning or learning platforms can be implemented to full effect. These solutions are often built with cutting edge technology and yet they often struggle to be implemented in a business environment due to the lack of IT infrastructure investment. Somewhere along the line a short term view has set the strategy for IT in learning and it is now having dramatic consequences on how effectively L&D can deliver learning to the end user.
Another failing of the England performance and in particular Roy Hodgson is the ability to recognise strengths and weaknesses and act accordingly. There was a lot of media scrutiny regarding Roy Hodgson's decision to take Jack Wilshere to the Euros this year. A player who had barely any league time due to injury and who could not be considered 'on-form'. Roy chose to take Wilshere instead of other players who had played all season and shown an ability in the England squad. This has been put down to his loyalty to his chosen few. This loyalty would also govern a number of key decisions he would make during the four matches we played at this year competition. At its base level Roy is probably guilty of not being able to spot a problem because of his unconsciously biased view point.
As before, business cannot allow similar tendencies to creep into their world. Our activities, initiatives, programmes of learning, processes, etc. all need to be constantly reviewed. What worked well a year ago may not work now. A process of unbiased self-reflection is required in order to truly perform at the highest level possible and I believe that this is one of the most difficult things for a business to do. Internal politics, lack of time and just the day to day pressures of an ever changing world make it hard but if L&D and the wider business is to succeed then they need to be smart about where they focus their time and ensure that they are leveraging their best assets and their successes.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it is easy for us all to criticise the England performance after the game, especially given the fact that it is unlikely that anyone reading this is a professional footballer. However, we do understand our own world of L&D and we should take the hard lessons learned by the England team and apply them to our own day to day activities. Essentially, have a well thought out strategy that is forward thinking and makes the best use of the assets that you have whilst constantly self-reflecting and improving on your winning formula.
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