I've treated TOA readers to thousands of words about culture, in the sense of how an organization's culture is vital to its success. The drawback to my focus on the organizational level, however, has been a lack of insight into individual behavior. Sure, it's nice to have a great culture, but what does it look like to exemplify that culture? This is a vital concern, for a culture that can't reinforce itself is unsustainable, and this lack of reinforcement often ties back to team members having no clear way to build on the culture with their own behavior.
This brings me a personal highlight of the pandemic, these videos from Liverpool FC, which have proven more than once to be the light minute in a dark hour. Each one captures a few moments from the team's daily lockdown training routine and in the chaotic banter lives the entertainment. The bed head jokes, slacker accusations, and needling about social media posts are always in good fun (and I assume any negativity stems from the challenge of hanging out over video conference). Like any Liverpool fan, I've known the team is unusually tight-knit just from watching the games, and in these videos I have evidence of its closeness off the pitch.
After a few of these videos, an interesting feature started to catch my attention. The linked video above has an example around the two-minute mark - you good, Taki? The comment always comes from Sadio Mane, one of the team's biggest stars, and his question is always directed at Takumi Minamino, the team's new Japanese signing. 'Taki' signing at the start of January was a Major Event for me and my fellow Japanese Liverpool fans and in my excitement I read quite a bit about his arrival. One thing I recall now is that Mane was identified early on as one of the players helping him get acclimated, with a shared ability to speak German an important factor (they've both played in Austria). Further, the Senegalese had experience settling into England and the thought was that he could share his wisdom with the new arrival.
I can imagine what life is like for Taki these days, and the grind of trying to establish himself in a winning team while acclimating to a new country and its language, customs, and culture. The daily training sessions with the team were likely a critical part of establishing a new routine, but I suspect two months wasn't enough time to feel completely comfortable with the squad. The situation is obviously far more serious now in lockdown, so it's great to see Mane continuing to check in with Taki and help him feel welcome in the team.
Indeed, perhaps this is one of the biggest unspoken challenges of a strong culture - the team becomes so close that new arrivals start having a hard time fitting into the group. This problem, albeit consequential of great success, is one of the biggest threats to a sustainable culture. The problem is often exacerbated when new arrivals don't have much in common with their new team. In my managerial experience, this was consistently my most important problem, and I don't have any clever or special advice. I think at some point I decided that if the core of the problem was a collective issue, the solution must come from the collective. It wasn't a completely wrong idea, but like most of my early thinking about culture I should have challenged myself to describe the solution in terms of consistent, repeatable behaviors.
I've observed something in these videos that has shown me one possible direction for rethinking my conclusion. Mane's quick check in is a small reflection of manager Jurgen Klopp's consistent behavior. The videos show Klopp pulling the strings, sometimes subtly (like the way he personalizes his welcome for each new arrival in the chat) and in other moments much more obviously (like when he demands his players sing happy birthday in their native languages). As the leader of the team, Klopp knows he sets the culture, and what I see in these videos is the deliberate behavior of a manager who understands that this means being first - first one in the room, first one to initiate a conversation, first one to make an observation that reinforces or corrects a behavior. A repeatable behavior isn't repeatable until someone goes first and sets a clear example.
Klopp is widely credited with changing the culture of club upon his arrival in October 2015 and much has been written over the years about how he reshaped the team. Less is said about what he does to build on the foundation, but I'm very interested in learning more because to me it's the most interesting question about culture, and perhaps the most difficult - how do you elevate a good culture to a great one, where its best qualities reinforce themselves through the consistent behavior of the team? I think Mane's daily greeting for Taki speaks volumes to this regard. Klopp's culture, like any culture, can only be built so much by one leader before others must step in and do their part. The culture's evolution, through a process of reinforcement and progression atop its core foundation, relies on the collective behavior of the team. Some team members may naturally help the culture evolve, as Klopp likely did during his own playing days, but for the most part the players will rely on the manager's example.
It's clear that Klopp sets this example, clear because Mane checking in on Taki is just like Klopp checking in with everyone else. The behavior is probably overlooked by most observers because for the most part it doesn't seem to matter, but it's probably the most important thing Klopp has done in the past six weeks, and possibly throughout his tenure. The subtle aspect is that each individual check in doesn't matter, at least in the big picture. Does it really matter if Lovren calls Salah, or that Salah ignores him? They've been with the team for years and don't really need the check in. Does every player need to hear Ox sing on his birthday? Shaqiri might, but a lot of people I know don't care at all about their birthday.
What's important is that in a team there is likely someone who would love to hear a birthday song just as there is always someone who needs a teammate to check in, and the problem is that the leader can't meet these needs for every single person every single day. A great way to solve this problem, one way to ensure each person gets that personalized attention when it is most important, is to give everyone the same personalized treatment whenever possible, always demonstrating how to do so while remaining consistent to the culture. The team will see this and know how to pick up the slack when the leader has too much to do, or when it can't be anyone else but a player, maybe one day that player even being Taki, who reinforces the culture by asking in front of a new signing - how are you, Jurgen?
