A lesson in teamwork

‘They think it’s all over - it is now,’ and thank goodness for that. Trading in a near recession is tough enough. Competing with the World Cup, unless you are in the vuvuzela business, can be mission impossible.

But challenge always presents opportunities to learn and I am crystal clear about the principal lesson we shopkeepers and businessmen can take away from England’s abysmal World Cup performance.

I support the former England manager Graham Taylor’s observation that, when he needs the services of a plumber or consults a doctor, it never dawns on him to imagine that he could fix the pipe better or soothe the haemorrhoids more expertly than they could. So why do tens of thousands of guys in offices, factories, shops and pubs up and down the land believe they know better than international football managers with great track records?

As a retailer who has worked every Saturday, I never got hugely involved in football, other than to investigate the marketing opportunities.

And maybe my lack of soccer expertise and a mind uncluttered with ‘a little knowledge’ or the fuzz of a strongly partisan view lets me see with clarity the reasons for the abject failure and lousy performance of our footballers in South Africa.

How can that failure always be solely the manager’s fault, whether it be Fabio or Sven, or the one before that, or even the one before him? Surely that is stretching coincidence too far. All the best detectives, from Sherlock Holmes to Poirot, from Columbo to Miss Marple, tell us they simply don’t believe in coincidence. And nor do I.

The clue is in the word ‘team’. Of course the game has its prima donnas and issues to do with sharing the limelight, and the boredom that comes easily to those with room temperature-level IQs. But it seems to me that England keeps failing at the game we invented because we bring together top class individuals, who are often treated like gods in their own clubs, and simply hope they will play well together as a team.

But hope is for mugs. Teamwork requires the players’ personal commitment to work together, to practice unselfishly together, to practice some more, add a bit of fine-tuning and then put in still more practice. They are the ones on the pitch kicking the ball, playing this team game; theirs is the prime responsibility for failure.

As a retailer committed to training and re-training, experience has shown me that a rubbish outcome will be guaranteed if our people don’t train to work together. Why should football be any different?

There is no better recipe for success in retailing, in business or in sport than picking the best people you can, motivating them with meaningful rewards and recognition, ensuring they all understand the importance of teamwork and then practising it to perfection. It has worked for me for 41 years. Maybe it could work for the England football team in 2014.

But, if anyone from the Football Association reads this, don’t take it as my application for the England manager’s job.

I would rather sell sofas to piranha fish.

Lord Kirkham is founder of DFS