Blog

• tonydorigo
• Blog
• January 10, 2025

Culture – does it matter?

Four reasons why culture matters

In football or business, culture is the invisible force shaping behaviour, decision-making, and overall performance. It’s the organisation’s shared values, beliefs, and attitudes. Culture is not just about having a pleasant work environment; it is critical to a business or football club’s long-term success and sustainability.

I played for six clubs during my career, and it wasn’t a coincidence that success or outperformance was achieved when the culture was at its strongest – and the opposite was also true!

1: Culture correlates with performance 

For data geeks, based on the research of over 1,000 organisations encompassing more than three million individuals, those with top-quartile cultures (as measured by McKinsey & Co.’s Organizational Health Index) post a return to shareholders 60% higher than the median company and 200 % higher than those in the bottom quartile. So, culture matters a lot!

2: Culture is inherently challenging to copy

The quickening pace of innovation in Sports and Business means that tactics, products, and business models constantly face the threat of being replicated. In this environment, the ultimate competitive advantage is a healthy culture that automatically adapts to changing conditions to find new ways to succeed.

3: Healthy cultures enable organisations to adapt

In a world where the one constant is change, culture becomes even more critical because organisations with high-performing cultures thrive on change. The converse also holds: Unhealthy cultures do not respond well to change.

4: Unhealthy cultures lead to underperformance…or worse

Over time, not only do unhealthy cultures foster lacklustre performance, but they can be your undoing. Daily headlines attest that culture can bring corporate giants to their knees. Clubs used to playing in Europe suddenly embrace midtable mediocrity or worse.

Do you have examples of businesses or teams with good and bad cultures?

Good: The great overachievers – Leicester City under Claudio Ranieri. Warning: culture is constant and always needs to be worked on….they were relegated 6 years later.

Bad: Uber in their early high growth years? Numerous scandals, along with several senior figures resigning, including the co-founder/CEO.

What’s yours?

#Culture #TeamWork #Leadership

• tonydorigo
• Blog
• January 8, 2025

Want Elite Performance?

Want ‘elite’ performance – work on good habits!

My latest read is the international bestseller Atomic Habits by James Clear. I’m halfway through, but I’m already looking back at my football career, the good and bad habits, and how they affected the teams I played for.

For context, habits are regular practices or routines people follow, often automatically. They can be both positive and negative and play a significant role in shaping our daily lives and long-term outcomes.

At Leeds United, the Thursday training session before a Saturday game was very methodical, detailed and long! It was set-piece day, both attacking and defending. We would work our way through defending set plays in our defensive 1/3^rd, middle 1/3^rd and attacking 1/3^rd, both on the left- and right-hand side.

We would then work our way through attacking set plays in our defensive 1/3^rd, middle 1/3^rd and attacking 1/3^rd, once again both on the left- and right-hand side.

We repeated this for every game, so it became ‘routine’, and we automatically assumed the correct positions. We just repeated our habits at Anfield, Highbury, Stamford Bridge, or Old Trafford, hanging on to a point or a lead with 10 minutes to go.

However, another significant benefit to our good habits was that they freed up our brainpower to deal with the unexpected. We weren’t thinking about where we should be on every set piece, as it was automatic. Amidst the heat of the battle, we could decipher those unexpected threats or changes and react to them. Did the man I was marking get replaced? Have we lost our main header of the ball? Has the opposition changed their corner routine? Do the playing conditions dictate a different approach?

Good habits can raise your performance to the next level….. I now need to read a bit more to eliminate the bad ones!

#GoodHabits #HighPerformance #Growth

• tonydorigo
• Blog
• December 9, 2024

Cycling Challenge

𝗖𝘆𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲 – 𝗪𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗟𝗮 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗮!

I was fortunate to experience elite-level football, which teaches you much about yourself, teamwork, and leadership. The constant pressure cooker of the media, the fans, and the very public assessment every few days is unique and, once retired, can’t be replicated.

There are plentiful transferrable lessons for business, but can a successful businessperson be immersed, at least partly, in the psyche of professional sports?

Many years ago, I did a charity bike ride for breast cancer with four other ex-professional footballers, along with nine others from different walks of life. Wembley to La Manga in Spain, nearly 100 miles daily for 14 consecutive days. One particular rider, a very successful businessman, did get to experience something that he would never forget.

It was the most challenging day, and we had to get up and go over the Pyrenees. Constant switchbacks going upwards splintered the group as we all just tried to pedal at our own ‘survival’ speed. After many hours, the riders arrived at the summit at different intervals; we started to cheer the next rider home.

We had all arrived except for one. Looking back down the mountain, we couldn’t see him anywhere. As a group, we decided to walk down the mountain, find him, and cheer him on to the finish. After walking quite a way down, we spotted him, shin and knee bleeding, grinding his way towards us at a snail’s pace and wanting to give up. If he had gone any slower, he would have come to a complete stop and toppled over.

For the next 20 minutes, the 13 finished riders cajoled and encouraged our beleaguered businessman up the mountain. We looked like a bunch of hyenas around this poor dead-tired cyclist.

However, he was one of us, and there was no way we could not all get up that mountain. He found energy he didn’t know he had and reached the summit, tired but deliriously delighted, with us wildly celebrating his achievement.

At that moment, he understood—he was part of a team, it was our Team, and we were stronger together.

#Teamwork #DreamTeam #Motivation #Leadership

• tonydorigo
• Blog
• December 6, 2024

Trust the right Process

Trust the Process – but are you utilising the right one?

Your mindset is crucial in your professional and personal life. It’s not always easy to focus on the right thing, so we often meander along daily doing broadly similar things to what we’ve done before.

Now and then, we stop, think, and decide to do something different. The New Year’s Resolution syndrome is coming up quickly – it’s time to join a gym! At the gyms I’ve gone to, you get an influx of new members in January that slowly dissipates over the coming weeks and months. We all know how that ends, but why?

Our focus is heavily weighted on the result rather than the process. Instead, changing your mindset enhances personal fulfilment, and the likelihood of achieving your goals will skyrocket.

Using the gym membership analogy, say your goal is losing weight.  After 5 or 6 sessions, you find that you’ve not lost 1 pound – you get demotivated and end up going less, and eventually, you start searching for cancellation terms! 😊

Instead, think about committing to leading a fit and healthy lifestyle. In this context, you can have goals, but they should be process-driven rather than results-driven. If you commit to that mindset/lifestyle long enough, the goal of losing x pounds will take care of itself.

A few process-orientated goals would be:

• Focus on eating a balanced diet
• A gym/fitness/cardio session 3 times a week
• Sleep 7-8 hours each night
• Hydration goal each day

These need to become habits rather than exceptions. Trust the process, and then our gym-goers’ goals will take care of themselves, as the changes will be sustainable.

So, think before you take up your local gym’s New Year offer!

#Motivation #Mindset #TrustTheProcess

• tonydorigo
• Blog
• December 4, 2024

Stop to Smell the Roses

Enjoy the Ride and Stop to Smell the Roses

I remember encountering a very successful entrepreneur some years ago, and I was fascinated to learn how he built and sold his company for over £100 million.

For all the nuggets of knowledge I garnered from him, the biggest surprise was how he felt after selling out and achieving his lifetime goal. He didn’t experience that Eureka moment; he understood and realised that his absolute joy was not receiving a substantial financial reward when selling up but building his business with the team of people he did it with.

Focusing on the end game is an easy mistake. You can spend years trying to achieve your goal, but it’s done instantly when it’s finally completed!

I played football from 3 years of age, and it wasn’t until I was 26 that I won the now Premier League with Leeds – it took 23 years of training and a blow of a referee’s whistle to signal the achievement. However, I loved the process of training and playing football.

In my keynote or workshop sessions, I discuss ensuring that a key function of your role is one that you enjoy—if not, you’re in the wrong job! Trust that the correct process over time will reap rewards, but that journey can be long and arduous.

So, it’s even more critical that we enjoy the ride and stop to smell the roses. Enjoy the experiences you go through, embracing both the highs and lows. It’s about being present and savouring each moment, no matter what it brings amid life’s busyness.

My entrepreneur found joy in the everyday moments with his team when building his business; maybe that was the lesson to learn. We need a balanced perspective that reminds us to find joy in the everyday moments while pursuing our goals. Trust and commit to the right processes, and then good things happen.

Enjoy the ride!

#Motivation #Mindset #TrustTheProcess #EnjoyTheRide

• tonydorigo
• Blog
• December 2, 2024

Trust The Process Meaning

What Does Trust The Process Mean?

In Sports and Business, many leaders talk about trusting the process. One solution might be a short-term fix, but this may only mask the issue. Trusting the process is the only way to sustain medium—to long-term growth and performance.

It also requires patience and commitment, as results don’t miraculously appear overnight. Golf is a sport where this is visually evident. Players will work away for hours and hours with their swing coach, strength and conditioning coach, sports psychologist, and backroom team. Mind and body are strong, flexible, and balanced. The swing has been grooved by endless ball hitting and analysis of swing plane and speed.

However, how can all this practice turn into performance under pressure? By diligently following another level of the process. Watch any top-class professional golfer before taking their shot, whether driving off the tee, hitting an iron from the fairway, or putting on the green. They repeat their particular ‘routine’, trusting a preconceived process that, over time, will stand up to the pressures of top-level golf.

When putting, a player might look at the line from both sides, take two practice swings, visualise the shot, and then putt. And he might miss. The next time he putts, he will do it the same way, as he trusts the process.

In layman’s terms, trust the process generally means:

1 – Focus on the Journey: It emphasises the importance of the steps and experiences leading to an outcome rather than the final result.

2 – Embrace Uncertainty: The path will be filled with challenges and uncertainties, encouraging you to remain optimistic despite difficulties.

3 – Value Growth: Even when progress seems slow or invisible, the experiences and lessons learned contribute to personal development.

4 – Stay Committed: Perseverance and commitment remind you that consistent effort and patience are vital for long-term success.

Have faith that your efforts will yield positive results, even if they aren’t immediately evident.…..or the ball doesn’t drop in the hole!

#TrustThe Process #Patience #Growth