Have you ever looked at a task and thought “I don’t know where to start?”. I’ve done it a hundred times, but every single one of those instances I have figured it out eventually.
Recently i’ve been paying close attention to Ruben Amorim, the new manager of Manchester United FC. He is a fascinating guy. In 4 years of football coaching he has come from the 3rd division of Portuguese football to winning the Liga twice and now into arguably one of the top 5 biggest jobs in the sport! Yet he has done it all being quite an affable guy and with a smile on his face. How is this possible?
Listening to interview after interview with him, there are two concepts that he always comes back to:
- Focus on Detail
- Trusting the Process
The Devil in the Details
When we really care about something, ‘good enough’ is never really good enough. The world has drilled into us the idea of Pareto’s 80:20 rule and we ruthlessly chase after the 80% gain whilst giving our 20% of effort. There are very few people in the world who will put in those extra 80% of hours to get the remaining juice out of the lemon.
Ruben has made it a priority to look at those details. I can draw a parallel with Pep Guardiola at City or Unai Emery at Villa, two other coaches who are famed for their intensity and attention to detail. The similarity between all three of these coaches is that they have a strict identity. They stick to it, don’t deviate ever, and therefore are able to spend all of their energy going into deep detail within their systems. Whether it is examining opposition or focusing on the smallest movements in their own team, these coaches spend huge amounts of energy on the details.
The details however take time. The 80:20 principle suggests that and experience tends to confirm it. That is where the second concept comes into play.
Trust the Process
Change is something that is implemented over time, changing the state of something into another. Generally, we seek change when we are dissatisfied with the status quo, as in this case, a change of manager a the football club due to poor results. But how do you make change happen?
Recently after a loss Ruben was asked ‘can you learn more from a defeat than when you win’, to which his reply was (paraphrasing!) ‘I learn the same, and I prefer to learn from winning, because I don’t look at the result, only how my players have followed my instructions’. He has the belief that if his players follow his instructions to a tee then the victories will come, even if they are not happening in the short term.
To trust the process is to realise that Rome wasn’t built in a day. We are all guilty, and a lot of the time, of expecting fast results and getting frustrated when we don’t achieve them, but trusting the process is about recognising this fact.
However, note something about the Ruben quote, he is looking for players to follow his system. This again means that he has a very clear idea of the way he want’s to play and how he want’s his players to act. Both the details and the process depend on being prepared and understanding exactly what it is that you want to focus on.
It’s Actually the Idea
So whilst we have focussed here on the details and the process, the truth is that everything comes from having a strong, clearly defined and focussed idea. Generating the idea in the first place and placing your trust in it may be the hardest thing of all here, something which people can spend years and years of their lives creating. So when we look to work on a project, we must ask ourselves a question:
“Do I understand what I am doing well enough? Do I have an ultra clear idea that I understand and that I can communicate to others as a process? Do I understanding the idea in minute detail and am I willing to trust the process of moving towards that idea?”
Only once we can answer these questions can we act like Ruben and learn as much from a win as we can from a loss.