On choosing England's manager

The search for the next England manager highlights three problems faced by many organizations looking for a new boss: incommensurabilities, cognitive biases and groupthink. These problems mean it’s very hard to identify the “best” candidate. The incommensurabilities are:

1. Experience of success versus knowledge of the organization. Luiz Felipe Scolari knows how to win the World Cup, but knows less than the other candidates about English football. Many organizations with middling performance face this sort of trade-off. Experience of excellent performance can only come from outside the organization, so those who have it don’t know the company so well.

2. Continuity versus change. In an organization doing brilliantly well or terribly badly, the choice of internal candidate (or not) will be obvious. But in the majority with middling performance – like the England team – it’s less clear.

3. Is style the man, or is it a choice? A drawback of Sam Allardyce is that Bolton play ugly football. Is this because the long ball game is all that Big Sam knows, or is it because, given Bolton’s meagre resources, the long ball game is their best chance of success? The former speaks against Big Sam, the latter for him. But how – given limited evidence - can we distinguish between a one-trick pony and someone who chooses the optimal strategy?

4. Abrasiveness versus team spirit. Another alleged drawback of Big Sam is that he’s a loudmouth who’ll make people uncomfortable. Many successful leaders do. But so do many unsuccessful ones. A “nice man” by contrast offers a more stable prospect. Again, this choice is clear in a thriving or failing organization. But it’s less clear in a middling one.

The thing about these trade-offs is that there’s no single clear way of choosing among them. There’s no algorithm for making the optimal choice. It’s a judgment call.

And the thing we know about judgment is that it goes awry. There are two particular cognitive biases here:

1. Over-reaction. A few weeks ago, when Middlesbrough were losing 4-0 to Aston Villa, no-one thought Maclaren could get the job. Now, after a few good results, he’s favourite. But how can a run of form make such a big difference to his apparent fitness for the job? Because people over-react to short runs of news.

2. The fundamental attribution error. We attribute performance more to individual agency, and less to environmental factors than we should. We forget Arsene Wenger’s (ironic in his case) point: “sometimes a bad coach will find a good team by accident.” So, for example, was Big Phil’s 2002 World Cup success due to his management or to a great squad of players? Is Steve Maclaren’s success at Boro due to good management or to a generous chairman?

The third problem is that groups can be bad at making decisions. There are two pathways to disaster. One is when the group is too cohesive, and gets carried away by over-optimism; this is groupthink.

The other is when the group is too fragmented, and the decision becomes motivated by sectional interest. This might be the danger faced by the FA. The top priority in life for one board member – David Dein – is to ensure that one of the best coaches in the world gets nowhere near the England job.

Now, the thing about football is that it is a more transparent business than many others; it’s very obvious what a successful team is.

So if it’s so hard to make the right choice of manager in football, how much harder will it be do so in other organizations?

Comments

[dearieme]

Football has the advantage that at least they have the opportunity of choosing from among managers rather than from among footballers. In many firms they do the equivalent of the latter.

[Fisking Central]

Maclaren would be a disaster. Don't want Big Sam either - we'll end up playing 4-5-1, lumping the ball up to Peter Crouch. If it has to be an Englishman, imho it should be Curbishley, but if not, they should go for Scolari.

[dearieme]

What a piece of piss that job is. Right, you tell the boobies who play for you, the idea is that you pass the ball to guys in the same colour of shirt as yourself. Got it? And don't cock it up or I'll be sent off to manage an NHS hospitall.

[george]

to be honest m8its afuckin load of shit n u shud be a disgrace to u country u bunch of twats