Agile Lessons from the Most Innovative Team in World Cup History
July 5, 2014
How one of the most dominant soccer dynasties in history laid the agile blueprint for how you should build and manage your team.
In the history of soccer, there have been few teams as remarkably innovative and as relentlessly productive as the Dutch club Ajax in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and, subsequently, the Netherlands World Cup national team of 1974.
On the field, their domination veered close to perfection. From 1965 – 1973 Ajax won six Dutch championships and three straight European Cup titles. During the 1971-72 season they lost just once, outscoring their opponents by a total of 104 goals to 20. In 1974, the Netherlands national team breezed its way through to the World Cup finals, only to fall to the host country West Germany 2-1.
They didn’t just beat competing teams, they bewildered them with a completely new style of play — a “carousel” style where any player could switch positions to cover any part of the field at any time. Defenders could move up to attack, attackers could fall back in their place. At its core, “total football” (as it would come to be called) was a more fluid, organic approach to field management based on responding to — and aggressively attacking — any on-field situation.
It was flexible, adaptable, and devastatingly effective. And when you think about it, the very best agile startup teams operate in exactly the same way.
Why You Need Team Members Who Can “Switch”
“During rest breaks we all talked. We all listened. Suppose we tried this? What happened when we tried that? We started letting midfielders and defenders join in attacks, and saw the ways in which forwards would have to support such flexibility by flowing back to cover. Position-shifting came easily and provided opponents…with a chaos of movement and change with which to deal. The first Dutch word I really learned to speak was switch.”
— from “Ajax Is All About Attack” by Jim Shepard
Startup teams don’t thrive by limiting their work to set guidelines and processes and confining themselves to narrowly-defined roles. There’s too much to be done not to wear a variety of hats. Too many unknowns not to make things up and adapt as you go.
That’s why many experienced entrepreneurs recommend hiring generalists early on. As Giff Constable, CEO of Neo, puts it, “You can’t predict exactly how you are going to evolve, or what the most important thing to work on or the biggest bottleneck to overcome will be even a month from today. You need people who are flexible, who can get stuff done no matter the need, and who can do all this without losing sight of the big picture goals.”
But while that’s the name of the game in the early days, the tendency is to veer away from that approach as the company develops, bringing on board more specialists and increasingly segmenting teams into specific roles and disciplines.
The danger, of course, is that you end up with departmental silos, which can severely limit your ability to stay nimble and can create a variety inefficiencies — from missed collaborative opportunities to increased vulnerabilities and bottlenecks in production.
Benefits of Taking a “Total Football” Approach
“I had to let midfield players and defensive players participate in the building up and in the attacking…. In the end, when you see they have the mobility, the positional game of such a team makes everyone think: ‘I can participate too. It’s very easy’. And then you have reached the top, the paramount of the development.”
— Rinus Michels, Ajax coach 1965- 1971, Netherlands 1974 World Cup coach (Guardian)
1) Focus Stays on the Bigger Picture
One of the beauties of the Dutch “Total Football” philosophy was that players weren’t limited to thinking, “My job is to be the best defender or the best mid-fielder.” Instead, they were focused on moving the ball forward collectively, creating scoring chances, and ultimately winning the game.
Likewise, when you encourage members of your organization to stop thinking solely in the bounds of their departments and individual roles (ex: my job is to provide x amount of leads, or produce x lines of code), then you open up more opportunities for them to contribute to moving the needle, sometimes in ways you may not even anticipate.
2) You Improve Collaboration & Reduce Bottlenecks
According to Dr. Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of the agile development methodology Scrum, in order for any organization to achieve maximum productivity, its teams need to be cross-functional and equipped with all the skill-sets necessary to achieve its goals. Bottlenecks are formed when teams have outside dependencies, or are too overly reliant on any one member accomplishing a critical task (i.e. one star striker scoring all the goals).
By ensuring that any member on a team can “play any position” and accomplish any required task, you cut down on bottlenecks and increase the team’s potential velocity.
Generalists vs. Specialists
Sutherland takes care to note he’s not suggesting every team member needs to be a generalist, or that specialists should be avoided all together — naturally, many teams need members who are especially skilled in certain areas. But he does underscore the importance of encouraging team members to work together to narrow any knowledge or performance gaps by learning from each other. For example, software developers can avoid bottlenecks by learning how to do testing; marketers can pick up design and analytical skills, etc.
In that way, adopting a “total football” approach is less about hiring generalists vs. specialists and more about effectively managing them — shifting individuals’ and the team’s overall mindset to operate more collaboratively and fluidly as a unit.
That’s what lead many to consider the Dutch squads of the late ’60s and early ’70s one of the greatest soccer dynasties of all time. The fact that “total football” has been so rarely practiced ever since points to the inherent difficulties and demands of pulling off the approach. But for those who can, greatness awaits.
Additional Reading on Agile Management
- The Key Agile Principles Behind Holocracy (podcast with Jeff Sutherland)
- Here’s How Spotify Scales Up and Stays Agile: It Runs ‘Squads’ Like Lean Startups (TechCrunch)
- Agile DevOps: Breaking Down Silos (IBM developerWorks)
Image by Rami ™