The first thing to say is that I am not Cristiano Ronaldo. One of us has better cheek bones than Joni Mitchell, appreciates ice baths more than Wim Hof and turned footballing talent into greatness through application and willpower. The other writes the viewfromabridge.org blog.
As Ronaldo stepped up to take the first penalty in the shoot-out against Slovenia he encapsulated all the best things about leadership, taking responsibility and nerve. Having had a penalty saved in the course of the game and shed tears just a few minutes before the shoot out, it may have included an element of egotism but it certainly showed self-belief. It also reminded me of an important professional lessons from my early career.
Three Strikes
I was in month one at ASDA as a Public Relations Officer and finding life hard. It felt a million miles away from my first job as Press Officer at Tesco where I had established a network and a successful start to my career. It was my first time living a long way from family or friends and I had no track record of delivery in the new company.
The buyers were a hard-edged, hard-nosed, hard driven group who bargained for every advantage in a company that based its ASDA Price brand on being low-cost. Both grocery buying and fresh food buying were led by Liverpudlians1 who took no nonsense and no prisoners from either suppliers or new arrivals from the south. For those familiar with the Liverpool teams over the years it was more Tommy Smith (the “Anfield Iron”) and Ron Yeats (“the Colossus”) than Virgil Van Dijk and Harvey Elliott.
Being invited to a fresh food buyer meeting to be briefed on an innovation felt like a good moment to assert my skills and dispense my wisdom on all things media related. The meeting began and was straight down to business with the announcement that ASDA had worked with suppliers and was launching new cheese packaging that was colour-graded and numbered to show strength of flavour from mild to strong. All eyes turned to me as I was asked about the coverage would be possible when it was launched.
Mistake one was to believe that this was the moment for a treatise on the way the media worked. Mistake two was to think that cheese grading was not important news and that a competitor might have already beaten us to a similar scheme. Mistake three was to verbalize those thoughts. We all know that three strikes and you’re out.
As I finished my lengthy and patronising explanation of why this was not national news all heads pivoted to the Associate Director at the head of the table for the judgement and sentence. It was brief and dismissive, “I’ll talk to Iain Tweedie in the morning.” Iain was my boss, who had all the edginess and steel of an ex-Manchester Evening News reporter alongside the smarts to go on to build a global career in a major bank.
My mouth was flapping as I tried to find a way back but I was cut off as the meeting moved on to the next business. For another hour I was trapped in the room with nobody looking at me let alone commiserating. As I prepared my resignation letter that night, I was consumed by my failure to perform well, a sense of public humiliation and the belief that there was no hope of redemption. I may not be Ronaldo but seeing his despair brought it all back.
Stepping Up
Iain Tweedie arrived early but I had been in the office an hour rehearsing my resignation speech and had already handed the letter over and begun explaining when the phone rang. It was the Associate Director and I hear Iain’s calm tones as he responded, “Well Alan’s here and has been thinking about it overnight. He’s on his way over with his ideas.” He put the phone down and gave me a one-minute briefing that stayed with me all my life:
- Explain that you realise you hadn’t taken time to express your recognition of the work people had put into the grading scheme but that you’ve been thinking about ways of getting publicity.
- Talk about some very big ideas – projecting the ASDA logo on the moon, floating a barge with a huge cheese on it down the Thames past the Houses of Parliament – and say anything is possible if there is sufficient budget and you want to be on the front pages of the national papers.
- Then shut up, listen to what the Associate Director says and respond with enthusiasm.
The pep talk was a masterclass in accepting responsibility for your actions, showing appreciation for the client and the brief, demonstrating your creativity and ambition while recognizing budgetary constraints, then showing respect for feedback. He gave me his absolute backing and confidence but left no doubt that it was my personal responsibility to have the conversation. Duly fortified and directed I walked on slightly wobbly legs down the corridor to the Associate Director’s office.
I don’t remember too much of the discussion but I certainly made good on accepting that I hadn’t done very well in the meeting and borrowed the barge idea before closing my mouth and really concentrating. He said, “All I was really wanting was to get something in the The Grocer for the team and the suppliers”. For readers unfamiliar with the UK retail scene, The Grocer, is a major trade magazine that would be more than happy to take an ASDA article with quotes from a senior director announcing an innovative cheese grading scheme.
I realised that I had just been given a brief that clarified the audience and the objective. Had I taken the time to ask questions about these vital aspects of communication in the meeting I wouldn’t have had a night of torment. The PR lesson was to start by understanding the job to be done2. Five minutes later I left the office to continue what turned into a successful six years at ASDA and even got invited back a second time as part of the team rebuilding the company after near bankruptcy.
Looking back, I smile grimly at the overreaction of writing a resignation letter for something so minor but understand the lack of maturity and experience at play. Nobody held the incident against me and I learnt that from time to time almost everybody has been in a similar situation. Most of all I learnt that even after something feels like a disaster it is rarely game over unless you decide it is.
All That Matters
So, there you have it. People talk about getting back on the horse after being thrown or that “it’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up”3. My own favourite aphorism is – all that matters is what you do next – whether it is following success or failure.
Cristiano took a deep breath and placed the ball perfectly into the corner of the net as the first step in Portugal winning the penalty shoot-out. We will all remember him making a clutch play when he was mentally and physically exhausted. Bom trabalho, Cristiano, but good luck to England in Sunday’s European Championship final.
NOTES
- Len McCormick (who went on to become Deputy Chairman at Batley’s cash and carry) led grocery buying, the foundation of ASDA’s price leadership, and David Robinson led fresh food buying at the time. It’s a long time ago but my best recollection is that they both hailed from Liverpool – if anybody knows better I’m happy to correct the record.
- Clayton Christensen’s “theory of jobs to be done” is one of the great, all purpose ideas that every communicator should know. It works as much for internal communications and meetings as for product development and branding. It’s also great for helping put a perspective on personal choices.
- There are several versions of this saying but the version quoted here is attributed to Vince Lombardi, head coach & general manager of the Green Bay Packers from 1959-1967. He is also credited with saying “Fatigue makes cowards of us all” which, in the context of a penalty taken at the end of 120 minutes play, suggests the extent of Ronaldo’s self-discipline and will.