Can Museums Learn from Alex Ferguson?

Many business leaders have looked with envy at the phenomenal success of UK soccer manager Alex Ferguson. Winning the small matter of 13 Premier League titles, 10 Community Shields, 5 FA Cups, 4 League Cups, 4 Scottish Cups, 3 Scottish Premier League titles and 8 European trophies of various types. Having started with the modest Scottish First Division title with St. Mirren in 1977 you can safely say 'the boy done good'.

He has recently published a book called, 'Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United'. It was written with Michael Moritz the Chairman of Sequoia Capital (major investor in Google, Yahoo etc.). The book tries to draw general management lessons from his time in football. The question is can we in museums benefit from his experience and knowledge?

Both Ferguson and Moritz spoke at Stanford Graduate School of Business and offered 5 'lessons in leadership'.

1. Be consistent in imposing discipline
Consistency is the essence of leadership

2. Embrace your entire team
What he means is, know the names of your staff/volunteers and say good morning

3. Firing is hard - do it right
Be honest during the process

4. Think long-term
Not a luxury many football managers have these days, but try and look beyond the next quick win

5. Lean forward
What he means is the importance of body language


This is all very sensible, but my reaction is -  IS THAT IT? All that success, all that experience, all the obvious leadership in essence all boils down to treating people like human beings and thinking ahead.

So the actual lesson, is that what he says is very sensible, but the secret of success, is just that - a secret. Nobody actually knows the answer. We all know best practice, but that mixture of timing, good luck, sound judgement and that 'controversial penalty in the 4th minute of injury time' all play a part.

Can we in museums learn anything. Absolutely! Be consistent, be honest, say good morning and project positive messages through your body language. If you do this will your museum flourish? Probably not, but it will certainly be a better place to work.

Yet the most important lesson we in museums can learn from Alex Ferguson is his spectacular failure at succession planning. Ferguson encouraged long-term thinking, but not beyond his own tenure (a failure museum managers may be sometimes guilty of). If Ferguson had got that bit right Manchester United would still be winning things, or even still qualifying for the Champions League. For small and voluntary museums this is a key component of their museum planning - so do not follow the Ferguson example and nominate a fellow Scot with a similar leadership style, but a manager that did not (or could not) follow the organisation's vision.

Football managers rarely have the luxury to think too far ahead (Ferguson was that rarest of managers who earned the right to work until retirement).  For most managers the ink is still wet on the contract before they are shown the door. Short-termism is a curse in sport where immediate results heavily prey on a manager's thinking. So his advice to fellow football managers may illicit a hollow laugh in response. But the thing for us in museums is to think long term,  We mustn't not follow football's example or managers would be out on their ear at the first sign of TripAdvisor criticism of the latest exhibition.

We have to keep remembering that the timescale museums work to is 'for ever'. Fundamentally we are charged with managing society's material culture in perpetuity. Therefore we should not have just 3 year or 5 year plans, we need 100 year plans or even 200 year plans. We need to think in even longer terms than we actually do. The Museums Association strategic plan takes us to 2020. I think their plan should be to 2200.

So what have we learnt?

Do not follow football's example, we need to follow our own path -  a longer path, but to make sure we are nice people on that journey.