Chris Ingram is as passionate about football as he is about business. Owner of Woking Football Club, and majority shareholder in the fast-growing football businesses Sports Revolution and Azzurri Fives, Chris is one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs.

Recently celebrating 50 years in the media industry and still actively involved with Woking, Chris is ideally placed to comment on the business side of football.

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In his first feature for Football FanCast, Chris Ingram looks at the parallels a business has with football.

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This month, I want to turn to football. Success and failure is always very visible and you see the result of your actions very quickly indeed. It’s as difficult to be in denial if your team has no points after ten games as it is about an empty restaurant. Here are just four things you can learn from watching football:

Creativity

In business people talk glibly about the essential need to be innovative and to take risks in a world that is moving very quickly and which is ultra-competitive. But it takes a great deal of work to create the environment for that to succeed.

The heavily disciplined team that is under orders to play to a system and where the ‘flair’ player who wants to do something different is ostracised and not picked by the manager, is a perfect parallel with many companies.

Confidence

Teams can often go on a run of say, eight straight wins and then, suddenly starts losing games. The crowd gets on their backs, groaning then jeering. They cannot understand that the greedy forward who was shooting on sight before, now passes the ball to someone else all the time.

Like an employer, the fans have paid their money and feel entitled to vent their frustration, but they don’t seem to realise that they are destroying the confidence of their team. That forward will do anything rather than take responsibility for shooting at goal because he’s scared of mis-hitting it and hearing more jeers. Meanwhile, the players at the back play the ball sideways, nice and safely rather than trying the ambitious defence splitting pass – because they’re terrified of giving the ball away to the opposition.

Eventually the team can become so paralysed with fear, that they even do the simple, safe things too slowly and the other side snatches the ball away anyway.

And how do you break out of this desperate vicious circle? Again, it’s there, clear to see. The crowd move from huge frustration and negativity to welcoming the tiniest improvement. They end up applauding someone who tries an ambitious, but unsuccessful pass (“Ah, but the thought was there!”) or the forward who shoots and the ball goes well wide (“At least he had a go!”). And lo and behold, the team’s confidence comes creeping back. It can happen in 45 minutes on the pitch, whereas in business it can take at least six months; but the principle is the same.

In The Trenches

At some stage in business, the going gets really tough – maybe things are scary. Perhaps you’re losing a lot of business and whenever the phone rings it’s bad news. Or you’re running a public company and you know you have poor results for which you will be vilified in the press.

In my experience it is when there are lawsuits and there is a threat of being sued and the resulting humiliation if you lose, that things can become most divisive.

I have been involved in two such cases – many senior executives became very scared and just melted away when the going got tough. You may think you know people well, but wait until there’s a rumour that the ship might sink.

On the pitch you want the guy ‘who’s not scared to put his foot in’. He goes into every 50/50 tackle looking to win, not pulling out at the last minute. These people are worth their weight in gold! They never run away from the tough decisions.

The benefit of experience

The best example is out there on the pitch: the older, class footballer – perhaps a former ‘box-to-box’ player who used to run endlessly up and down the pitch for the full ninety minutes. What does he do when he’s apparently slowing down, but still wanting to play?

What are the words that are used for footballers? Not the weak, generalised words used in business of ‘experience’ and the outraged cry of “they don’t value experience these days!”

The words are ‘vision’; ‘interception’ and ‘anticipation’.

The experienced player has a better, overall view of the game and not just the part that he’s playing. That’s the vision bit. So, when he receives the ball he knows in advance what he’s going to do with it: who, where and how he’s going to distribute it.

He’s not really quicker, but he’s done his thinking in advance so he can use those few seconds to greater effect. He knows where he’s going to put the ball in advance – and he also has several options up his sleeve because the game is constantly changing.

Because he can anticipate what’s happening he seems to have more time when others are rushing around frenziedly. There is the nice expression that summarises it all – ‘he lets the ball do the work’.

People talk of footballers who ‘have the knack of being in the right place at the right time’. This enables them to make the timely interception of a defence-splitting pass or a well-timed tackle at a crucial moment. The experienced player has seen the threat long before the other players have considered it.

I cannot think of a better parallel with today’s digitised, always-on business life. Perhaps those ‘ill-educated footballers’ have a thing or two to teach us when it comes to selling the benefits of experience.

Written By Chris Ingram