Frank Rijkaard, "Self-management", organizational ecology

Ever since I wrote the FC Barcelona case, "FC Barcelona: Changing the Rules of the Game" about the Laporta successful turnaround, I have been fascinated by the hailstorm that accompanies even the smallest shifts in the club's fortune.

This week Head Coach Frank Rijkaard is against the ropes. This is the same Rijkaard who won a Champions' League title and two Spanish league titles. But this year, with Real Madrid ahead of Barcelona in the League standings, Rijkaard has been accused of losing control of the locker room, in particular Ronaldinho, Barcelona's official "galáctico" mega-star.

The accusastions turned to crisis when Edmilson, another of the Barcelona's Brazilian player, a mature solid player but not a star, told a reporter that there were "black sheep" in the lockerroom, and questioned Rijkaard management. Rijkaard, it seems, treats his players as adults and prefers "self-management" to imposition. The result, according to Edmilson, is chaos.

Those who want Rijkaard's head say that his "management style" is not appropriate in a club where Ronaldinho is not playing well and may have personal problems (another of Edmilson's revelations); more importantly, though FC Barcelona is said to have the best team in the world, the Club seems to lack direction on the field at times and there are uncharacteristic defensive lapses. The critics want someone who will put some discipline back. They don't believe that Rijkaard is the man to do it.

Which brings us back to an old problem that we have discussed before, but which I want to give a slightly new take on. There is a wide-spread belief that each Head Coach comes with a simple straight-forward management style and coaching recipe. Accordingly, choosing the Head Coach is contingent on the players and the chemistry in a particular moment. This cross-sectional approach to leadership has lead to firing Head Coaches as soon as they lose a few games. No one seems to care why it is happening, whether the loses are triggered by a couple of injuries, a few bad games, a bit of bad luck, enemies and the press looking for blood and a story or, the unlikely case that the Head Coach is a lousy coach. Given the way coaches rotate from team to team, it hardly appears that qualification and skill are at issue; it seems to be all about contingent fit.

All this assumes that Rijkaard has the cognitive and behavioral flexibility of a hedgehog. The animal grunts and that's that. It is as if the self were a socially constituted fact as unchangeable as the rotation of the earth.

This week with my Doctor in Business Administration strategy seminar, we studied organizational ecology and institutional theory. Together, the two theories tell us that industries are born and die principally because of their inability to adapt to the environment; and individual firms are born to innovate and die because they develop routines and rigidities that are inevitably inadaptive. We can say pretty much the same for individuals, as well.

At the level of the individual, ecological determinism confuses personality traits with behavior. Personality traits are relatively fixed by a certain age, but behavior need not be. New information is taken and processed within the parameters defined by the individual's cognitive limitations, but how the information is later used is dependent on the interaction of that information with the repertoire of behaviors the individual has developed. An individual with a rich set of behaviors may be capable of a wide range of responses to a new situation and new information precise because he or she has identifiable, strong personality traits. The traits are not just a limitation, they also permit us to have a style, a way of doing things, that at least in some people has real breadth, depth, and flexibility. In other words, we are capable of change and of intentional behavior that may vary from previous behaviors.

Tragedy, Greek or Shakespearian or Bushian, is based on a deterministic response driven by a man's (or woman's) character. In the words of Heraclitus, "A man's character is his fate." But character may be large, varied and generous, full of possibilities, or it may be small, monotone and stingy. Greek and Shakespearian tragedy are cautionary tales, reminding us that small, monotone and stingy men and women dominate the species.

Such things are a question of character. Rijkaard prefers to manage players as young persons free to build their own character, and that given freedom to do so, most players will chose responsibility. It is a noble idea, but like all noble ideas it may not work in all situations. In the current circumstances, Rijkaard's preferred management style may not work. We shall see how large a behavioral repertoire Rijkaard has.

But, as always, all does not depend on Rijkaard nor the players. There are others, principally FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta, who can decide Rijkaard's fate even before we get to see what Rijkaard is capable of doing. As a strategist, my interest is in seeing Rijkaard play this out.

Comments

[Eric]

David,

Very nice post, makes me actually miss your classes ;)

Another interesting addition to the discussion is how the decisions of a corporate CEO, in this case Joan Laporta, may not be motivated by the best interest of the corporation (ie, el Barça), but rather by the CEO's own survival. In many ways, Laporta needs both Rijkaard and Ronaldinho's failures in the possible event that either wish to leave the club for other teams. This is a common scenario for Barça. Because Barça is "mes que un club", the Laportas out there have always needed a non-Barça justification for losing their top stars (Maradona, Schuster, Laudrup, Ronaldo, Figo). Laporta could never permit Rijkaard or Ronaldinho to leave because they elected to be somewhere else. So he, and even the Catalan press, are already preparing the way for the damnified to be the coach and superstar, and not Barça's management or jersey.

[Ivan]

Professor, if you have the time, could you write a new post based on the current situation at FCBarcelona, once the season is off and Rijkaard is being replaced by Guardiola? I've read with high interest the post on Rijkaard and would love to get your insights on this new situation. Many thanks! A FCB member (soci).

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