Steer Clear of Own Goal Situations and Pursue Sweet Success akin that of Manchester City FC

By Mwangi Wanjumbi – Newtimes B. S. CEO & Chief Consultant/Trainer

After a whole 44 years of playing football without a break, Manchester City Football Club of UK has finally lifted the league cup. Forget that the 2 winning goals against Queen Park Rangers were scored within the last 90 seconds of extra time. The fact that the cup was won on a superior goal difference compared with those of Manchester United, the seemingly bitter rivals, is also neither here nor there.

This reality that the Man City team won the cup after struggling for so many years has attracted my attention, after several years of lackluster interest in the game of football. It may sound funny to find a grown up man endowed with little or no interest in football, especially when the game no longer knows age or gender boundaries. In that regard, I am inclined to explain my little or no interest in football, which stretches back to 1994.

That is when the world cup football games were hosted in the USA. The experience is memorable especially for having spent endless mornings watching live matches that were starting about 2.00 am. Normally, they could continue up-to 4.00 am, else stretch longer sometimes. The next morning I could report to work, in a very lousy condition, not much different from one who had spent the better hours of darkness in pubs.

Thus, the impact of poor sleep extended right up to the workplace, where it was naturally difficult to be fully effective. My then boss must have noticed the changes, but gone slow, perhaps imagining that I was going through some genuine challenges. Most probably as involuntary payback, I later reviewed the situation, and immediately started disconnecting from football. That, in my wisdom was the only way, to avoid becoming a football fanatic, where I was seemingly headed.

Additionally, I still recall the match between Colombia and USA. The Colombian team was highly fancied and therefore expected to substantially progress in the tournament. But, during the 1st half of the match, something terrible happened. American midfielder John Harkes played a dangerous ball across the box. While attempting to obstruct the pass, Andres Escobar, the Colombian defender, misdirected the cross into his own net.

As the captain, Andres was the moral core for the Colombian soccer team. But, that did not save him from mad fans back home, in Medellin. Upon arrival, the 24 year old Andres Escobar was shot and killed, only ten days after the own goal debacle. This experience was chilling for each and every football lover, the world over. Obviously, people respond differently to such situations. In my case, the Escobar experience removed me even further from the game. How can football fans be so savage and unforgiving?

We all make unintentional mistakes one way or the other. That of Escobar was certainly unintentional, and therefore did not deserve to lead to his death in any way. Nonetheless, do we have situations where team players venture into intentional own goal scores? Indeed, this has severally been witnessed particularly in the game of cricket. It is not clear why this game is monotonous for what is commonly referred to as match fixing.

Needless to venture into details, it has happened in many corners of the world including our own. Consequently, the players have been banned for long durations. That has eventually led to their loss of form and interest, thus leading to premature retirement. Incidentally, own goal scenario does not just happen in sports. It is very common with both  people and organizations. How and why?

When organizational and personal brands are not properly integrated, general luck of loyalty prevails. Employees end up reporting to work for the wrong reasons and motives. More often, performance gets challenged, especially when the motivating factors are not properly aligned. Usually, employees perform only to justify being retained in employment. That is why some writers rightfully insinuate that employees who are not motivated perform at only 10% or 20% of their performance potential. What happens to the rest?

Certainly, it goes to waste. The employers loose on time and efforts that ought to have added value to the workplace. The employees on the other hand loose out on opportunities of growing the company and most likely being recognized and rewarded for the same. Are these not precipitations of own goal situations? Apparently, it is difficult to view them in any other way.

Conversely, organizations become complacent and stuck to traditional approaches in management and leadership. More particularly, all planning is based on short term perspectives. More still, organizational and individual performance appraisals and training rely heavily on historical perspectives. In our own consulting experiences, it is very common to find organizations considering skills that were needed (in past year or years) but lacking, therefore basing ongoing training needs on the same. In other words organizations ignore or are unaware of the skills needed for successively facing the future. Do these tendencies not present other own goal situations as well?

Inevitably, Manchester City Team must be praised enormously. The management and different generational teams continued working tirelessly, despite a 44 year history of being eluded by the English Football League Cup. That harmony and drive is the way to go for workplace and all other teams, whatever the challenges experienced along the way. Ideally, all progress oriented individuals and organizations must refuse to become victims of own goal situations. That is even more crucial in today’s highly competitive business environment, which is continually and without exception requiring organizations to embrace the new 21st century organizational culture. My sincere appreciation goes to all those   compliant with the said increasingly unavoidable culture. Meanwhile, may you have a blessed and own goal free week.

Recent Comment

Leave Reply

Hey, so you decided to leave a comment! Thats great. Just fill in the required fields and hit submit. Note that your comment will need to be reviewed before its published

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>