How to Achieve … Like Leicester City

At the beginning of the 2015/16 football season who would’ve believed that Leicester City would be crowned the Premier League champions. After all, the odds were certainly against them and they had only narrowly avoided relegation the previous season with a win in the final game of the season.

So how did they manage it and what lessons can your business learn from their success?

There are a number of contributory factors to Leicester City’s success which when applied to your business can help facilitate growth, encourage teamwork and ultimately help your business achieve success.

Strategy

Like business, success in football is pre-dominantly based on identifying a strategy and applying this strategy effectively. This includes the composition of your team, understanding your own strengths/weaknesses plus those of your opposition, and pinpointing and then exploiting any opportunities whilst minimising the threats.

It can be tempting to focus on individuals within your team and build your strategy around their individual strengths rather than looking at the team as a whole. But what happens if that individual leaves or the rest of the team aren’t able to perform effectively within your chosen strategy? By creating a strategy that encompasses the strengths of the whole team the impact of an individual leaving can be minimised and their replacement will be able to fit in to your strategy more easily.

Confidence & Self-belief

Although they had only narrowly avoided relegation in the previous season, Leicester ended that season in strong form, winning 7 of their last 9 games. It would’ve been all too easy for Leicester to focus on the negatives but by focusing on the positive end to the 2014/15 season Leicester began the new 2015/16 season with confidence and were able to continue this form into the season.

Success breeds success, and working in a positive environment that thrives on celebrating success will help promote confidence and self-belief and facilitate further success. Even when things go wrong, there are lessons to be learnt and positives to be taken from the experience.

Teamwork

One of the main headline grabbers throughout Leicester City’s success has been Jamie Vardy, their top goal-scorer, however the contribution made by other members of the squad cannot and should not be overlooked. For example, it doesn’t matter if an individual scores a goal in every match if the defence then concedes 2 goals per match, and it’s important to understand how many players contributed towards the overall outcome of scoring the goal – this could include all 11 players from the team, rather than the final goal scorer.

Each and every person in your team needs to be working effectively together to reach the team or business objective and understand their own contribution to the overall picture. By feeling valued and part of a team effort, individuals will be able to perform to their own strengths in the knowledge that they are being supported by the strengths of other team members.

Consistency

Leicester have maintained a consistent team throughout the season enabling trust to build between the players. They knew how each other played and how to bring the best performance levels out of the different team members which in turn translated to a consistent performance for the fans who began to expect the same week in, week out.

This level of consistency and trust can be brought about within a business through the introduction of processes. By ensuring consistency within your organisation you can manage your customers’ expectations and build levels of trust and brand loyalty by offering consistently high levels of service and/or product quality.

Luck

Finally, it’s fair to say that Leicester have experienced an element of luck in their run to the Premier League title – but a little bit of luck can certainly go a long way!

You may not think these elements have anything to do with marketing however everything here is actually what makes your brand live and breathe – both internally and externally. A clear strategy; a strong, confident identity; great customer service through internal communication, training and processes; consistency for messaging and branded communications – will all give you improved opportunities to win business … which is lucky!

If you would like to discuss how we can help your business succeed, give us a call today.  

Karen Munson is Strategic Officer at Enterprise Marketing Solutions and contactable on 01296 695635 or Karen.,munson@enterprisemarketing.co.uk.