Southgate offers vital lessons to FTSE 100

Revitalising an exhausted brand. Getting a team to outperform. Managing the media, and whipping up some enthusiasm among customers who had more or less given up on the product. Gareth Southgate is certainly getting something right as England manager. OK, we are probably getting ahead of ourselves. We may well crash out against Colombia on Tuesday night. Even so, there is some excitement and passion around the team that hasn’t been evident for at least a decade and possibly two.

There are a fair few FTSE companies that could use some similar magic. Just like the England football squad, there are lots of companies that have woefully under-performed given the quality of the assets at their disposal.

There are plenty where teams don’t come together, where the spirit, fight and determination have gone, and where customers have drifted away. Here are five major companies that could learn some lessons from Southgate’s performance.

First, Glaxosmithkline. The pharma giant has been drifting aimlessly for a decade, with a succession of new strategic plans that never seem to amount to very much. At just over £15, the shares are worth less than they were in July 1998, and that is after a good run over the last three months.

It makes money, and it keeps paying out generous dividends, but it is about as exciting as the Panadol tablets it manufactures. It has been expanding into consumer healthcare, but the real money in the pharma industry is made from inventing new ways of effectively treating major diseases, and GSK has not been much good at that since its glory days in the Eighties and Nineties. It desperately needs a shot of energy.

Second, British Airways. After merging with Spain’s Iberia to create IAG, what used to be the “world’s favourite airline” has become completely demoralised. Penny pinching on the extras on flights, chaotic computer systems and staff that seem to have decided that Ryanair sets the benchmark for customer relations have all comprehensively trashed what used to be one of the best brands in the global travel industry.

BA badly needs to get some passion back and recover some pride in flying the flag – and it might even find that helps the bottom line.

Next, WPP. After the chaotic departure of Sir Martin Sorrell, there has been a lot of pressure for the advertising and marketing giant to be broken up. That is understandable.

The collection of assets Sir Martin put together worked about as well combined as the England midfield under Fabio Capello. But a simple fire sale is not necessarily the right answer.

After all, no one is going to be paying top whack for anything from WPP right now. Maybe its disparate units just need to be encouraged to work together – and if they could be turned into a team that played for each other, then the company could be in fine shape again very quickly.

Fourth is Pearson. Under John Fallon, the publishing conglomerate has looked bewildered and confused. It sold the Financial Times and The Economist at the wrong time, and its determination to get rid of its stake in Penguin Random House doesn’t look any smarter. The money was reinvested in educational publishing just as that was about to be disrupted by the internet. The company needs fresh management that can give it a complete change of direction.

Finally, WH Smith. Probably the only other national institution that lost its place in the country’s affection as completely as the England football team was the high street books and stationery chain (with admittedly some close competition from M&S).

Tired, shabby shops, with ludicrous, taking-the-mickey prices, have combined to turn what most people remembered fondly as the place they used to buy CDS and books into the country’s worst retailer according to a recent Which? survey.

But the affection for it is probably lurking there somewhere, just as it was for the three lions – it just needs someone to find it again.

Football is the world’s greatest sport precisely because it is a metaphor for life. With its mixture of tactics, teamwork, luck, skill and character, it is a constant essay in what it takes to succeed and fail in life. There are lots of companies that are at just as low an ebb in their fortunes as England were a couple of years ago when they were kicked tamely out of tournament after tournament. But if the England team can be turned around with good management, so can any business.

They just need to find someone with the right mix of hard work, commitment, vision and enthusiasm – although the natty waistcoats, while surprisingly stylish, are probably optional.

‘Just like England, there are lots of companies that have underperformed’