Sven-Goran Eriksson was appointed as the England football coach just a year ago, occasioning howls of protest from the national soccer community. He would be a disaster, we didn't need a foreigner, there were plenty of English managers who could do the job.
Having taken last year's failures to next year's World Cup, he is now a national hero.
Eriksson's management style represents a very Swedish way of doing things. The culture of Swedish companies is strikingly different from that of UK firms. Bearing in mind the track record of Swedish companies in world markets -- such as Saab, Volvo, Ikea, Ericsson, ABB, and Sandvik Steel -- it is also very successful. A small Swedish software company even had the impertinence to mount a takeover bid for the London Stock Exchange last year.
The major features of the Swedish management style can be summed up thus:
Discuss, analyze and then decide: Unlike the ranting of most past managers, the present coach is cool and detached. He sits away from the touchline. So it is in Swedish companies. The approach is to analyze, discuss problems with colleagues and to arrive at decisions.
No place for the dominant, autocratic style of many British corporate leaders -- such as Richard Greenbury at Marks & Spencer -- held up as the ideal at many UK business schools.
Keep cool, calm and patient: This was evident in the Greek match last week. Under pressure Eriksson doesn't panic. This is a feature in Swedish business culture, reflecting a management education that gives as much, if not more, emphasis to emotional and social intelligence than to simple brainpower. These qualities are lacking in many British corporate leaders.
Trust and empower: Eriksson can take a back seat at games because he trusts his players. Swedish companies are known for empowering strategies. They invest heavily in staff training. The result is highly productive businesses with low operating costs.
You don't need many tiers of management if you have trained, trusted staff. Swedish companies have high-trust cultures with little of the employer-employee hostility found in many British companies.
Such cultures are not easy to build. Incentives and rewards have to be in place. But, most important, staff must know they will be left to achieve what is expected of them.
Build commitment: One of Eriksson's achievements has been to change players' attitudes. Nowadays they play as if they actually enjoy it and it is their priority. Swedish companies know that when employees are emotionally involved, it is no longer just a job. They come up with ideas for improvement, making the company innovative and therefore competitive.
Businesses are learning organizations: Eriksson selects players for each match from more or less the same squad. This means they get to understand each other's strengths and weaknesses and the team can develop its overall skills.
Swedish companies give high priority to continuous incremental improvement by developing staff rather than by buying in skills.
By contrast, the strategy for many UK companies, as with English football teams, is to go for the quick fix: fire, buy-in (or outsource), continuous change.
Teams are the basis for individual success: Eriksson has made England a team rather than a collection of players who get together to play football. For previous coach Kevin Keegan, it was built around two or three key players. Swedish companies are managed on the basis of teams as the foundation for the development of individual skills.
Importance is given to developing shared knowledge, which provide the basis for the allocation of work tasks, decision-making and techniques of self-management. All of this requires low staff turnover and long-term employee commitment -- something that Eriksson is clearly fostering.
Respect and praise: Eriksson respects his players for their talents and sees his job as bringing out the best in them. His style is facilitative and confidence-building -- a far cry from the half-time dressings-down that most players get.
Swedish companies likewise show their respect for employees in egalitarian employment conditions, family-friendly policies and adherence to EU working-hours directives. Respect for individuals leads to greater commitment.
Eriksson's style is very different from the barstool approach of most English managers.
He is the product of a cultural environment that has as its starting point different assumptions about what motivates people. From these emerge distinctive leadership approaches, organization structures and ways of doing business.
Sweden gets a bad press these days in the UK. New Labour ministers look to the US for inspiration, whether for macro-economic policies or for role models for developing business efficiencies.
But some are now asking, why not take another look at Sweden?
It has a low rate of social exclusion and scores highly on all international measures for quality of life.
A recent Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development study concluded that Sweden has the most advanced information economy in the world.
The cool approach of Sven-Goran Eriksson has done wonders for the England soccer team. Perhaps one could do worse than to re-think the advantages of the gung-ho approach of the US and British managers that are so much admired.
Richard Scase is a professor at the University of Kent, in southern England. His forthcoming book Living in the Corporate Zoo will be published in January.
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