A detailed study of the culture behind the Barcelona way
IT’S EARLY in Pep Guardiola’s first season in charge of F.C. Barcelona. His players have just missed a glorious chance to take the lead against their opposition. Pep, still relatively unknown at this point in his career, reacts differently to most managers in this situation.
Instead of berating his complacent players, or jumping and grabbing his head in frustration, he turns and looks towards his bench.
He wishes to identify the players who have reacted to their team’s miss and those who have just sat there, uninterested. Those who fail to show emotion towards the team’s missed opportunity are, ruthlessly, sold the following summer.
‘The Barcelona Way: Unlocking the DNA of a Winning Culture’, written by Damien Hughes, an expert in ‘change psychology’, documents the culture which allows Barcelona to consistently operate at the highest level of performance.
For those who have always wondered what goes on behind the scenes in the powers of world football, they have been treated in recent times with a raft of new information.
In Manchester City’s now infamous documentary, ‘All or Nothing’, you get a first-hand account of life in Manchester’s number one football club.
‘The Barcelona Way’ acts in a similar manner. Hughes discusses many of
Barcelona’s key practices and reveals how ‘La Masia’, their under-age academy system, manages to consistently produce world class talent.
He details how Johan Cruyff went about creating the culture of the Spanish giants and how most recently Guardiola was able to re-ignite this flame.
However, there is a word of warning to be had for football fans. If the front cover would have you believe that every single one of the 284 pages in this book are dedicated solely to F.C. Barcelona, you will be disappointed.
Hughes utilises Barcelona’s model to explain many principles which apply much more specifically to certain niche professions, such as sports coaches and business managers.
He wishes to inform these markets how crucial an organisation’s culture is to its success - this appears to be his primary objective for the book.
However, his clever use of Barcelona as the model to his theory, means he can also tap into a wider target market of interested sports fans.
To Hughes’ credit, he divides the book into five manageable sections: Big picture, Arc of Change, Repetition, Cultural Architects and Authentic Leadership.
Doing this gives the reader bite-sized chunks, which they can truly focus on and develop their understanding of, before they move to the next section.
It is one of those books that you can keep coming back to, and once you’ve read it through, you can re-visit individual sections as often as you desire.
Hughes’ findings are generally research-based and he consistently refers to this research when attempting to make his points.
That said, this academic style of writing isn’t necessarily for everyone and the author attempts to balance the books by involving the reader with ‘exercises’ every couple of pages. These exercises call on the reader’s own experiences and invite the reader to consider how they would react in certain scenarios.
JASON GOODISON
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