Liverpools League Cup Victory is a lesson for Business Leaders in the Value of Nurturing Young Talent Properly

Yesterdays victory by Liverpool against Chelsea in the League Cup Final was quite remarkable considering they were missing 10 of their big stars through injury and had to fill their bench with young academy players.  Towards the end of normal time Chelsea had the upper hand and Liverpool were tiring but Jurgen Klopp was brave enough to take off many of his established players and replace them with youngsters who had just a handful of games between them.  Liverpool then dominated the extra time and finally snatched the win two minutes from the end.

There is something beautiful about watching a home grown player score a goal in front of their adoring fans or to see these young Liverpool lads beat a Chelsea side that cost 1 billion pounds to put together.  It isn’t just about youth - the average age of the Chelsea team at the final whistle was actually younger than the Liverpool one - it is the fact that these players have grown up through the Liverpool system and you can see just how much the team means to them, unlike the expensively assembled disparate group of Chelsea players who are no doubt talented - but not a cohesive team.

I believe that the most successful global companies share this mindset for talent development and all business leaders can learn a lot from what Jurgen Klopp has done.

“This is the most special trophy I ever won….This tonight, if you find the same story with academy players coming on against a top top top side and still winning it…I never heard of it” (Jurgen Klopp post match press conference).

Here are the three takeaways I think we can apply to business

Over Invest in Early Careers Programs     

In football the number of players who will make it to the first team of their premiership club versus the total number of players who join their academy is a very small percentage. However most successful clubs have big academies and the fact that Liverpool can win a trophy with a team packed with young home grown players shows the tremendous payback.  In the business world I believe the benefits of hiring and nurturing a significant amount of young talent is of tremendous benefit to the health of the organisation and so all businesses should look to invest in broad early careers programs including apprenticeships, internships and graduate programs.    This not only helps those business who invests but also provides a significant upskilling to the wider economy.

I was fortunate enough to come through a great graduate program and have also deployed similar things in organisations I have worked in.  It builds an incredible bond between the employee and the company and a loyalty that cannot be achieved with an external experienced hire.  The company has the ability to train up the right skills from the start while the employee is fresh to new ideas and can also shape the employees with the values that the company wants to encourage.  By building cohorts for new joiners you create new communities within the company who gel together and form strong personal and working relationships that can last for decades and breed whole waves of future leaders.  From a cost perspective early careers salaries are very affordable versus mid career or senior hires and for global companies you can hire scores of young graduates for the price of just one expatriate.  Young talents can be deployed into roles where you need fresh thinking or you just have resource gaps which you would alternatively plug through agencies or temps.  These young talents provide an affordable liquid workforce and a base for the future.   

When you hire the best young talents in early careers programs you need to be ready to lose a large proportion through the first few years of the programs.  This seems to deter some companies from implementing early careers programs but in my mind it just means you need to over-hire at the beginning and expect that when you hire the best you will lose some to others.  If after 10 years you have populated your mid to senior management with talents who have grown through the organisation on merit it can only have been a good investment!  Companies - like sports teams live and die on the quality of their people and in the battle for talent this is a worthily price to pay.  Often standard company headcount budgets are very rigid and so I have found it useful that in the first couple of years it makes sense that the leadership team creates a separate protected headcount and budget for the early careers entrants.  The resources are provided “free” to receiving departments and so there is a much more open minded approach to receive a young talent with limited experience.  You can be sure that if that young talent prove themselves their managers will be more than willing to take on the costs when the initial period runs out!      

There is nothing more rewarding than providing talented young people a start in a business.  It is rewarding for the leader and can be tremendously beneficial for the company and the young person who you give a start to.

Build support structures for young talent

“I have only one understanding of development and of making success, and that's by going step by step.” (Jurgen Klopp)

Chelsea had many young players on the pitch on Sunday too.  In fact they had some of the most coveted and expensive young players in the world.  They had many chances to win the game but they just couldn’t finish it off and completely disappeared in extra time.  Why is this?  What can we learn?

Imagine if you decided to build your business with all new hires and put an age cap of 23….it is very likely they your team would make many mistakes and your business would suffer.  This is similar to what Chelsea have tried to do.  It doesn’t work in football and it won’t work in business.  What Liverpool have done is to build a support structure for their young talents.  They are taught to play the “Liverpool way” which is consistent from when they join the academy when they are 7-8 years old until when they make it into the first team.  They are provided coaching and mentoring all of the way through the process so that the development of the players is constantly monitored and feedback is provided.  Players gradually progress through the ranks and if they are lucky enough to make it to the first team they are exposed gradually to matches by using substitute appearances in cup games as a way to give them the chance to learn and prove themselves.  For those that do well they become established players in the first team - like Trent Alexander Arnold, Curtis Jones or more recently Connor Bradley.  This structured approach has unearthed some incredible players and helped Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp win all the major trophies in England and Europe.

To bring through young talents in an organisation requires an equally structured approach.  Throwing them in at the deep end and hoping they will swim may work at times but is more likely that you will end up like Chelsea rather than Liverpool and you will have many unhappy employees who will leave you in droves.  Establishing a structured onboarding and training at the outset is critical.  Provide a wide range of experiences and exposure for young talents early on to real life challenges and this will enable them to learn, grow and prove themselves.  Many companies deploy a rotational program for early careers entrants which gives a rich experience for the employee past the initial onboarding programs.  This provides the employee with the chance to find the areas of your business they enjoy and for the company to see where they thrive the most.  Thoughout the process it is very important that the young talents have a consistent go to person who oversees their development, a mentor they can talk to and line managers who understand what the program is about and how to guide and nurture young talent.  It may sound like a large investment up front but the rewards are clear after 3-4 years when young talents emerge to start to take on significant roles and really deliver value.  If that person decides to stay with the organisation for the next 25 years then their contribution alone will probably pay for their whole cohort!                 

A balanced & diverse team is always best

Even though I have focussed on the young guns of Liverpool it was actually Virgil Van Dijk who scored the winning goal.  At 32, Van Dijk is one of the most experienced big game players in the premiership who has represented Liverpool nearly 200 times and has over 60 caps for his country.   The Liverpool team is well balanced with a range of ages and experiences throughout the squad.  These more experienced players provide guidance, advice and protection to the younger players while these emerging talents make sure the older pros are keeping on their toes so they don’t lose their place in the team!  This diversity of experience provides a great energy and balance in a sports team and I believe it is very similar in a business setting.

A more diverse team in the organisation, when managed correctly, provides a broader range of ideas and thoughts than a team of people with similar backgrounds.  We often talk about diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and age and I strongly believe that a team which is more diverse on all these factors is a stronger team.  Tenure, however is something that is frequently overlooked when looking at diversity.  For diversity of thought I think a wide range of tenures in a team is a great positive.  Too many people who have been around forever can limit creativity whereas a bunch of newbies usually ends up with a team repeating mistakes of the past and lacking context.  For any leader of an organisation I believe it is one of your key roles to constantly review the diversity and freshness of your organisation to ensure that in all areas of the business you have a sufficient injection of new talents blended with experienced talents and that the thinking remains fresh, wisdom is maintained and there is still an energy to doing things.         

As a final note it is probably somewhat ironic that Jurgen Klopp actually learned a lot about managing young talent from Mauricio Pochettino - who was his opposite number on Sunday in the Chelsea dugout.    Klopp watched what Pochettino did earlier in his career at Southampton and Tottenham with his focus on investing in developing young players.  Klopp brought a lot of this concept to Liverpool.  He knew he couldn’t compete with the financial might of Manchester City, Manchester United or other Nation State funded clubs and so built a brilliant hybrid of a core of homegrown players and a select group of stars purchased from other clubs.  His hit rate on transfers in terms of successful integrations of players is second to none in the premiership and that is because he is extremely careful when he goes outside to buy a big player - carefully considering the impact it will have on the whole team dynamics.   He is surgical with his approach to hiring form outside and for his core team relies on his established and experienced players and his emerging young talent.  I believe as business leaders we can all learn a lot from Jurgen Klopp about how to nurture young talent and build successful blended teams.