Creating potential - we're champions again!

Thirty years. THIRTY YEARS. Finally, we're champions again. As a pre-teen, I watched Kenny Dalglish deftly take the ball on his chest, slot it past the Chelsea keeper and win the league in 1986. Weeks later, Ian Rush scored twice to win the FA Cup against Everton 3-1, and I was enthralled.

I would see Liverpool win the league twice more - in 1988 and 1990. I didn't know it then, but that would be it.

There were moments in between - feeling almost embarrassed winning the FA Cup in 2001, on the back of Michael Owen's goals after being besieged by Arsenal for most of the game.  Just days later, laying flat out exhausted in front of the living room TV, as the same team won the UEFA Cup 5-4 against Alaves on a golden goal.

In 2005, I watched in incredulity as a very average Liverpool side made the comeback of all comebacks from 3-0 down to win the Champions League against a far superior Milan side.  A year later, I collapsed yet again in front of the TV as Steven Gerrard thrashed home a stoppage time goal on the way to winning the FA Cup against West Ham.

But other than that, it was generally year after year of above-average mediocrity. Never good enough to win, never bad enough to entirely lose touch with hope.

Then Jurgen Klopp rocked up in October 2015. We were tenth in the league then. Tenth! In his introductory press conference, he famously said - I'm just an ordinary guy, "the Normal One".  But in the same breath he boldly declared - within my contract in the next 4 years, we'll win a title. We've got to change from doubters - to believers.

By the end of season 2 in 2017, we were in the Europa League final (but lost). In 2018, we were in the Champions League final (lost again). In 2019, we won the Champions League! Klopp was right - we'd won a title, and a big one! And this year, finally - league champions again.

What's unusual about Klopp's success is that he didn't go about it the "usual" way. The 2000s and 2010s were broadly characterised by big clubs buying big players - the likes of Chelsea and Man City buying some of the best players in the world. But because Liverpool were such a mess, none of these big players would join us.

So Klopp was constrained to bringing in a bunch of just decent players. Salah and Fabinho were former Chelsea and Real Madrid rejects. Oxlade-Chamberlain was a reject from Arsenal! Mane, Van Dijk, Lovren and Lallana were all from "camped in the bottom half" Southampton. Firmino was from middle-of-the-table Hoffenheim. Wijnaldum, Andy Robertson and Joe Gomez were from relegated sides Newcastle, Hull and Charlton. Matip was a free transfer from Schalke. Trent was a youth player. The captain Henderson was the guy with the funny running gait (from relegated Sunderland!).

Today, we look at the Liverpool team and think, wow, world class from top to bottom. But none of them were world class when they joined. Even more intriguingly, none of them could even be said to have had world class potential when they joined (an astute observation I read this morning on ESPN, which prompted this blog). But somehow they developed world class potential, and then fulfilled that potential.

So what happened? We know it's no fluke. Because Klopp did the same thing at his previous club Borussia Dortmund in Germany. He brought in middle-of-the-pack whatshisname players, and turned them into world beaters. How does he do it?

I started my career in the civil service, which employs the concept of "current estimated potential" (or "CEP") in its HR philosophy. Although they call it "current estimated", it's pretty hard to change the "current estimate". Most people have their future progress sealed almost from the moment they join. On one hand, you could argue that this is pretty good evidence that the CEP system is correct, because people end up fulfilling what was estimated as their potential decades before.

On the other hand, it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If your CEP is not high, you don't get to be exposed to more challenging work earlier in your career, so naturally your growth stalls. In effect, because of your CEP, no one believes you can do challenging work, so you don't do challenging work, and in the long run you end up actually being incapable of doing challenging work.

To be clear - I'm not saying that the CEP system doesn't work. I think in most cases, it is probably reasonably accurate. Generally speaking, if you're hardworking and smart, you'll get good academic results. Good academic results are not a good indicator of future success, but being hardworking and smart certainly are.

So how do you explain Klopp's track record of turning moderate CEP players into high CEP players? Here's a thought - it's his whole philosophy of turning doubters into believers. He believes in you. He puts you in really difficult positions - more than you think you can do. He doesn't have a cookie cutter approach to force you to fit what he wants. Instead, he creates an environment in which your particular strengths thrive.

Klopp had a goalscorer supreme - Robert Lewandowski - as his centre forward in Dortmund. He came to Liverpool, saw Roberto Firmino, a kind of non-scoring anti-Lewandowski forward, and implemented a system which actually created world class potential for Firmino, to the extent that people now think Firmino is world class! Now, Firmino still needed to work his guts out to fulfil that potential, but he now had room to grow into!

Isn't that amazing?

I've seen it happen to quite a number of people in my career. A guy who is distinctly average, isn't trusted to do difficult stuff, and he leaves. He gets plunged into crisis at his new place, because his boss is missing-in-action. With no one else to turn to, he leaps into the fray. And today he's head of the whole region. Another fellow is mediocre, keeps making careless mistakes, has no future, is told to leave. He joins a think tank, where his big picture ideas are suddenly valued, and now he's got potential to fill.

Sometimes we're fortunate enough to work for people who will make space for us to create new potential. I have definitely had the benefit of working for, and learning from such leaders. They see our strengths more than our weaknesses. They don't just see who we are and are not, they see who we could be. They then challenge us to grow into that potential. Sometimes we want it, and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we make it, sometimes we don't. But they invite us to grow anyway.

The best model of this kind of leadership is God Himself. Moses was a lousy speaker (Exo 4:10; 6:30), but God gave him room to grow as a leader (and the help of a good speaker, Aaron (Exo 4:14-16)), and he was charged with the responsibility of bringing the entire Israelite nation out of the mighty Egyptian empire.

There are lots of other examples - Abraham was a liar (Gen 20); Jacob was a cheat (Gen 27), Joseph was a braggart (Gen 37), David was an adulterer (2 Sam 11), Elijah was a coward (1 Kings 19), Matthew was a nation-betraying conspirator (Matt 9), Peter denied Jesus thrice (Mark 14), Thomas doubted (John 20) and Paul was hot-headed (Acts 15).

Despite their many flaws, God said to these people - I believe in you.  He put them in situations where they discovered that they actually had world-class potential. And then they rose up and fulfilled that potential.

Each year in June is a somewhat tense time, because it's appraisal time where I work. It's obviously not possible to promote everyone, but I am reminded that it is our responsibility to establish an environment not only where people can fulfil potential, but where we can actually create new potential.

Sometimes it involves changing our processes. Sometimes it involves changing our organisation. But most of all, it involves changing our minds and discarding our past biases about the limits of our people. Turning ourselves, and our people, from doubters to believers!

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
1 Corinthians 1:26-29 NIV