England's Role Model Manager

England goalkeeper David James talking about the manager Fabio Capello in The Guardian: "He keeps everything clear for the team, you don't have any ambiguous situations. He gives the players the environment to work in, he arms us with the knowledge of the opposition and he trusts that the ability we have is good enough to beat that opposition." It seems to me that's a pretty good definiton of the role of the manager.
I've always found that the best managers have a clear vision and provide their people with the tools, knowledge and support to succeed. That's what I've always tried to do but it's not as easy as it sounds.
Your clear vision can easily get clouded with day-to-day distractions and compromises; tools can be expensive and it's not always easy to be sure which will really work; in order to provide knowledge, you need to have it yourself and to be sure which is relevant; supporting people should be easy but it's even easier to criticise.

Barcelona- More Than A Club

I love Barcelona Football Club. As they say themselves it's Mes Que Un Club. It's owned by the fans and has long been associated with the free spirit of the Catalonia region of Spain. Despite being in effect a co-operative, they are also one of the richest, most successful football clubs in the world.
As John Lewis and numerous other employee or customer owned companies show, there is an viable alternative to running a business in order to please the short term interests of shareholders. If only some British clubs, currently up to their ears in debt, had adopted the Barca model.

Barcelona's Victory Is Good Business

We English are expected to support English clubs in Europe but I don't much like the English Premiership set-up so I prefer to support a team I do admire like Barcelona.

Compare and Contrast. Man Utd, like all English clubs, embraced the free market and in their case ended up owned by an American company who saddled them with £700 million in debt. Barcelona are owned by their 113,000 members who elect their Board and President. They even turned down a £20 million sponsorship of their shirts in favour of promoting UNICEF. Football clubs started as teams with fans- Barcelona have stayed that way and still manage to be more financially successful than Man Utd.

There is a lesson. Don't underestimate co-operatives as a way to run a business- John Lewis, The Co-Op Bank and the Phone Co-Op all do very well, as do many of the trusts that run arts organisations. The danger of the more common business model is that shareholders come before customers and employees. The result is bigger and more remote (geographically and emotioanlly) companies.

Giving power to the people who are the company- the employees or the customers- ensures that the business doesn't forget why it was created in the first place.