How rugby club Saracens taught executive skills — but hid the cheating
Executives love to look to the sports world for their leadership gurus
● Carlo Ancelotti, the football manager and three-times Champions League winner, and Clive Woodward, coach of England’s only Rugby World Cup-winning team, are among those to have published corporate leadership books in recent years.
Former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson has lectured on executive education at Harvard Business School, while boxer Wladimir Klitschko has designed a management programme at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland.
Tapping into this insatiable demand, Saracens, the London rugby union club that boasts more England players than any of its rivals, created an executive management course: “The Saracens Way”.
Over the past three years, clients which have received insights on instilling the values of “honesty”, “discipline” and “humility” in a winning team include insurer Allianz, investment bank Investec and wealth managers St James’s Place.
Yet Saracens’ success was arguably built less on its stated values than on acquiring the best players. And to acquire the best players, the club’s multimillionaire owner Nigel Wray broke the rules.
Last month, Saracens was relegated from Premiership Rugby, the top tier of English rugby union, because of persistent breaches of the league’s salary cap, which is designed to stop teams overspending on players.
The unprecedented demotion followed revelations that Wray had entered into property and commercial investments alongside players, including several stars of the English rugby team.
Saracens launched its course about three years ago, offering executives up to a day of workshops at the club’s home ground in north London.
The Saracens Way is named after a club philosophy previously identified by fans and media commentators as the secret of the team’s victories. This includes a 2017 Financial Times article, which suggested players were encouraged to build camaraderie and trust through open and deep discussions.
“We may discuss Descartes,” said David Jones, a psychologist who was then in charge of players’ personal development. “We may discuss themes like envy and anger.”
In its corporate seminars, Saracens drew on its own experience of transforming itself “from an underachieving organisation to double European and four-time Premiership champions and how everything that created that success is hugely transferable to your organisation”.
In a testimonial listed on The Saracens Way website, Mark Rogers, an executive director at St James’s Place, said: “We were able to see so many parallels and transferable methods into our own ‘performance’ business.”
However, in sport, as in business, financial strength is often more decisive than star managers like to think. In football, academic research has shown that the size of a club’s wage bill is the best indicator of a team’s final league position.
After the Financial Times contacted a number of companies regarding their past endorsement of the management course, the St James’s Place logo and a testimonial attributed to Rogers were removed from The Saracens Way site. St James’s Place, which has been hit by its own scandals, said “it does not comment on commercial relationships”.
Allianz, which in 2012 signed a six-year deal worth £8m (then about R112m) to sponsor Saracens, said its executives attended the management course in 2017.
In response to revelations of the salary cap breaches, the insurer said: “At Allianz we act with transparency and integrity and living up to these high standards is very important to us. We will be holding discussions with the club to confirm this shared understanding and commitment going forward.”
Investec said members of its sales team attended a “training day” in 2017, adding: “We’re interested in learning about high performance across many disciplines, including art and sport.”
“There is a huge industry that has grown up over the past 25 years around transfer of knowledge from sport to businesses,” said Tim Crow, an independent sports marketing adviser.
“It is certainly very beguiling for people at the top level of business looking to accelerate their business and develop their leadership teams. Sport is a lot more attractive than what else is on offer in business coaching, Saracens were smart in leveraging that and turning it into an [executive training] business. ”
It is unclear if The Saracens Way is a lucrative revenue source for the club. “Pricing is tailored to meet each client’s specific needs,” said the club.
According to Companies House records, Saracens had pre-tax losses of £3.9m in the year ended June 30 2018, widening from a £2.8m loss a year earlier. Revenues remained largely flat at £17.9m.
Next season, the club’s income will be hit by relegation. There is uncertainty over which star players will remain.
Recovering from this fall from grace may be the biggest test yet of The Saracens Way.