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A retired Scottish footballer and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist don’t seem like the likeliest of friends and collaborators. But Alex Ferguson, the long-time manager of the ultra-successful Manchester United team, and Michael Moritz, the chairman of Sequoia Capital, have more in common than you might suspect.
Ferguson, whose team won 38 trophies in the 27 years he coached, and Moritz, an early investor in Google, Yahoo, and Airbnb, have both thought long and hard about the art of management. Together they’ve written a book on the art of management — Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United — that distills the lessons in leadership Ferguson learned while heading the world’s most successful sports franchise.
Becoming a star on the football pitch (as Europeans call a soccer field) and in business requires “practice, practice, and practice,” and the successful manager must always be prepared to “retune things,” Ferguson told a group of Stanford Graduate School of Business students.
Via The Learning Factor, Ricard Lloria
As a player, coach, and manager, Alex Ferguson learned the importance of discipline and thinking long term.