In The Living Leader’s latest website feature, Under the Spotlight, we place members of the leadership team here, quite literally, ‘under the spotlight’ asking them questions about their personal lives, professional experience, leadership development, and how these are all related.

One question is around people in the public eye, and who in particular they feel would most benefit from a leadership development programme and why. This feature, along with the latest news stories, got me thinking that one person I think could really benefit from joining a future Personal Leadership Programme (PLP) is the Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich, famous globally for his business success, but more locally for his ownership of Chelsea Football Club.

Hitting the headlines again recently, Abramovich has been criticised for his removal of manager Andre Villas-Boas, who had just eight months in charge of the club, and would argue, that he didn’t do too much wrong.  However, Abramovich obviously thought that the club would benefit from the leadership of another, and so the axe fell on one of the sport’s brightest young managerial talents, leaving the Russian on the hunt for his 8th manager.

Surely the reverberation of this kind of decision-making must send shockwaves through the organisation and affect the morale of everyone involved, from office to ground staff, trainers to players. It is generally accepted that a focused and positive mindset is critical for sports people, so this cannot be an ideal environment for creating outstanding performance on the field of play.

Football does seem to be a unique and often crazy world, especially in the UK, and particularly with clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City where money has been invested at such levels that it has dominated the quest for success. However, it is still worth thinking about possible lessons for business at large.

For us at The Living Leader one crucial point to make is around shared responsibility. No one person can take responsibility for performance, whether you are on the field of play or in the boardroom. However, the opposite message is apparently being sent at Chelsea.

There appears to be little effort placed into ensuring that responsibility for success is shared at the club? Instead, pressure seems to be continually placed on one person for reaching the vision laid out by the key stakeholder within the club. The motto seems to be: Buy someone else and get another leader. Of course, this may sometimes have short-term impact, but it is never going to be a sustainable option moving forward.  No matter how much money is ploughed in, until there is a clear and demonstrated value that everyone matters and can therefore play their part in success, no organisations, football clubs or otherwise will create sustained high performance.

It may take longer, and will require having more than eight months of commitment to those working around you, but building a culture of leadership and stability for the long-term throughout an organisation is a far more effective way of raising organisational performance than by continually making changes at the top and constantly searching for that missing piece. Often, it doesn’t exist.