An eclectic and eccentric view of football, business and management by media entrepreneur Chris Ingram.
*
What?! Bear with me I need to explain this as I know you’re not comfortable with the idea.
By now, all those who read these blogs (it went up to five last week), know that, when otherwise bright people buy a football club, it scrambles their brains and they make all sorts of wrong decisions.
Winston Churchill’s football club was Empire FC. Here was a man of huge vision and a fantastic sense of history (and not a bad motivator either). He invented the phrase `Iron Curtain’ and foresaw the Cold War with the communists well before any Western leader and spent ages trying to wake up the Americans to the threat. And yet, when it came to the British Empire after the war, he couldn’t see and wouldn’t see that the world had changed fundamentally and the days of the Empire were over.
His brains were scrambled by his emotional involvement and sentiment for the idea of `Empire’ and he made a number of poor decisions after the War as a result.
The lesson here is that you don’t have to buy a football club to scramble your brains (although it does help). So here’s a key question for any of you running a business, charity or any type of organisation. What, inside your organisation, are you unable to sort out objectively? And when are you going to face up to it? I guarantee you will deeply regret it unless you do.
*
Chris Ingram is as passionate about football as he is about business. Owner of Woking Football Club, and a majority shareholder in the fast growing sports media business Sports Revolution, Chris is one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs.
Recently celebrating 50 years in the media industry and still actively involved with Woking, Chris is ideally placed to comment on the business side of football.
*
READ more of Chris Ingram’s work at our Football Business Section
