Newspaper Article

The secrets behind a winning strategy: Ian Cormack examines exactly what makes good leadership by observing the practice and attitude of Sir Clive Woodward, the manager of the English rugby team

Cormack, Ian

2004

Overview

Why did Sir Clive succeed in 2003? Certainly, England had many leading players. Yet, previous England teams had had outstanding players, but they never matched the [Clive Woodward] team's status going into the World Cup tournament. The difference this time was in the management process that Sir Clive employed. The starting point is a clear and compelling objective. In Sir Clive's case, it was \"win the World Cup\", despite England's history of failures. It was a transformational objective because his goal was not just an aspiration. Rather, it was the trigger for the articulation of the \"strategy\" - the steps necessary to achieve it and the tasks that would be undertaken within each of those steps. Moreover, Sir Clive analysed England's opponents and built specific capabilities to match or outmatch them. His staff built statistics that were as much leading indicators (foretelling likely performance under match conditions) as lagging indicators (match statistics per match). They worked on the beliefs within the squad, developed clear boundaries of what would not be tolerated either on or off the pitch, tracked adherence to all of the above and intervened swiftly when they did not like what they saw. They were consistently clear about what they were setting out to do.

• Publisher: The Financial Times Limited
• Subject: Cormack, Ian / Executives / Rugby / Soccer / Tournaments & championships / Woodward, Clive