of belonging is passed down through the generations. It’s pride. “I knew this kid and look at him now …”’ Most of the shirts on sale in the club shop don’t have player names on the back; the club wants supporters to put their own names on the back, to encourage kids to dream that one day it might be them.
Amorrortu agrees. ‘Yes, it’s about a pride in belonging to this club, belonging here, to feel part of this club. The chance that the kids might play in the first team gives them great excitement. It is these intangible things that encourage the player to make a bigger effort during his development. To feel part of Athletic is to be in communion with the values of the club. To play for this club means you identify with an idea. It’s a feeling and that’s a way of being, to feel a part of something. Athletic represents a lot. It is not only the team of the city, it also represents a philosophy.’
Amorrortu’s staff of 91 coaches try to bring this philosophy to life. The document talks about encouraging autonomy, allowing players to take responsibility, and focusing on the players’ educational and psychological improvement. He compares it to a stone that, if rubbed enough, will change shape. ‘It comes from something natural, essential, inside.’
The values relate to the region. ‘The culture here in the Basque country is a culture based on hard work, collaboration, common feeling, and of participation, of working together in a team, of a way of being,’ he says. ‘It is something transmitted down the generations in a spontaneous way. And from that, we can say we form part of a legacy that comes from our ancestors.’
Keeping this legacy going, above all, is how Athletic measures success. Players and staff alike are clearly very aware of it. ‘It’s a lot more than a football club,’ says Aduriz. ‘It can’t be compared to any other club in the world, it’s unique,’ adds Williams, tipped to be the new star for Athletic and Spain. ‘For me, victory is watching 11 Basque players every Sunday, maintaining the philosophy that’s been there for 100 years,’ says club historian and museum curator Asier Arrate. ‘That’s our title.’
They are quite right; but it’s by redefining how they measure success that makes Athletic different in the world of football. It also makes them attractive to a corporate world looking to find its own version of el sentimiento Athletic to improve performance. ‘Professional sport has a set of questions, issues and values that can be very useful for the business world,’ Amorrortu tells me. He is a regular at business conferences and says, with typical Basque understatement, that there is ‘some curiosity’ about how Athletic develops its sense of belonging among the players.
HOW TO GET AN EDGE – by JOSE MARIA AMORRORTU
1 Have an objective and make your ideas clear. What is your success?
2 Surround yourself with great professionals and behave in accordance with what you want to achieve.
3 Leave a legacy for society and create value in your surroundings. All companies need to make a profit but the benefits of social purpose are for the whole society.
Amorrortu also talks about the importance of showing patience and building for the long term. Businesses want to replicate a sentimiento Athletic but are less interested in emotional development, improving behaviours (not just knowledge) and instilling confidence in employees. ‘People think so much about short-term performance that sometimes we lack patience and we need to remember that.’ We will see later in this chapter that the effects of short-term decisions can have long-term implications. But Athletic shows patience: in the ten years before my visit, the club has had only three different head coaches, the fewest of any team in La Liga. This is not the case elsewhere: across the 92 Premier League and Football League clubs in England, 36 made a total of 51 managerial changes during the 2016–17 season (Leyton Orient boosted those numbers by getting through five different coaches).
Stability enhances the sense of belonging. An environment that threatens belonging can produce uncooperative behaviour, information hoarding and, according to a study by psychologists at UCLA,2 an experience equivalent to physical pain. ‘When our social needs are being satisfied, the brain responds in much the same way as it responds to other rewards that are more tangible. Being treated with respect and as a valued member of an organisation may activate reward systems in the brain that promote stronger learning of behaviours that predict more of these social rewards in the future.’
There are 13 men’s teams in the Athletic structure: behind the first team are Bilbao Athletic (Segunda Division B), Baskonia (division three) – in Spain, youth teams play in the lower divisions – two Juvenil teams (17 to 19 years old), two Cadetes (15 and 16), two Infantiles (13 and 14) and four Alevines (11 and 12). There are also two women’s teams.
At the end of one recent season, the coach of Bilbao Athletic’s second team, José Ziganda, addressed the board about his team’s progress. Their results had improved. The average age had dropped. Things were going well. But Ziganda was still not happy. ‘I want to develop players here and then see them stay,’ he said. ‘But I’ve not yet heard a player say to me, “I won’t leave this club until you kick me out.”’ His comments earned a round of applause.
At the end of the 2016–17 season, Athletic did make a coaching change. Valverde was appointed Barcelona coach and Athletic promoted Ziganda to head coach.3 Historians pointed out that Ziganda had replaced Valverde before, during a La Liga match at Real Valladolid in June 1995, when Ziganda came off the bench to take the place of Valverde. Both men, of course, were playing for Athletic at the time.
‘It’s logical that we also see players staying as success,’ says Amorrortu. ‘To maintain our competitive level, to play in Europe, and to have the most players from our own cantera in the first team.’ According to a CIES study, only two clubs in Europe’s top five leagues had more internally produced players in their first-team squad in season 2016–17 than Athletic.4 The average length of time a first-team debutant has spent at the club is 7.2 years, more than any other team in Spain.
Talent retention is an increasing problem for business today. A study by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that in 2016, the average tenure of a job for 18- to 35-year-olds was 1.6 years. In a few years, millennials will make up half the workforce, and expect to stay in that job for under two years. The term millennials refers to the generation born after 1984 who are often accused of being hard to manage. How to get the best out of millennials will crop up throughout this book, as most footballers still playing these days fall into this generation.
The stigma of changing jobs every few years is a thing of the past: millennials who switch jobs are believed to have a higher learning curve, to be higher performers and even to be more loyal, as they care about making a good impression in their short time at each job.
Building a culture helps you keep your talent. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for a recruitment company, looks for the driving forces behind why people choose their jobs and what matters to them at work. Using a data-sample based on performance reviews and salary surveys of over 615,000 candidates between 2014 and 2017, he identified the factors that drive professional happiness. His finding: the top predictor of workplace satisfaction is not pay but the culture and values of the organisation, followed by the quality of senior leadership and the career opportunities available.5
LinkedIn’s Talent Trends survey backed up these findings. Forty-one per cent of professionals saw themselves staying at their current company for under two years. Those who wanted to stay long term, it reported, were purpose oriented and had bought into their company’s culture and long-term mission.
The
