All of us, whatever we do, will have attended some sort of training courses, seminars, workshops and the like.
Many times we go along and leave afterwards, wondering what the point of the exercise was and ponder that it’s several hours of our lives we will never get back.
Others live with you because they not only enhance and inform you professionally, but they also teach you life lessons that are as useful in the home as they are in the workplace.
As part of an in-depth, detailed and thorough series of workshops in a previous non-journalism role, Wilson Learning entered my life as they guided myself and several colleagues through a year-long ‘Way of Leading’ course.
It was really just one person who conducted each session, a wonderful American lady named Linda Wilson (it wasn’t her company, the surname was just happenstance).
Linda was the most magical coach: she could read you the Yellow Pages and deliver it in such an engaging and entertaining way that you’d hang on her every word.
The content was often challenging, regularly thought-provoking and invariably each two-day session left you wiser, more rounded and with a fresh view on business, colleagues, family and life.
One particular element was about how all successful businesses go through different phases or cycles, be they start-ups or long-established.
The first phase was the entrepreneurial stage, where things were tried and some succeeded while other failed.
In this phase, a business is finding things out with the aim of moving forward and advancing.
In nature, many lifeforms don’t get past phase one: a lot of tadpoles don’t become frogs, most acorns don’t turn into trees, and businesses – either totally new or under fresh ownership – don’t succeed.
Those that do enter a second phase, the efficiency stage: they know what they’re going to do, and not do, and put their faith, time and energy into the systems and structures that proved successful in phase one.
It’s in this second phase that businesses see real success and growth – along with profit.
The problem is, at the same time, silos and fiefdoms appear. The workers become more focussed on keeping the boss happy than their customers.
Policies and procedures override meeting the needs of those you serve, and soon red flags will appear: less success, less profit, stagnation rather than growth.
The good businesses spot it. The bad ones go into denial and enter a death spiral from which they cannot escape.
Having spotted it, the good businesses go back to where they started, and re-enter phase one.
They start to look at things afresh, try different ideas and make changes. While it can be hard to let go of things that worked so well in the past, the alternative is to keep doing what has been making those red flags ping until the pings become a flatline.
The changes required often cause chaos and can be uncomfortable, and they can include changing people as well as changing processes, practises and products.
Businesses that have been successful over lengthy periods will have gone through those cycles – entrepreneurial, efficiency, change – several times.
Whether they refer to it as reinventing themselves, restructuring, reorganising or any other buzz word, the concept is the same: act as close as you can to the top of your growth curve, and certainly not when you’ve almost reached the bottom of it.
In the case of Watford Football Club, it feels like there has been a realisation that without change, a death spiral is waiting round the corner.
Go back further, until owner Gino Pozzo arrived, and it’s possible to see Watford’s various phases over those 13 years.
New manager, new staff and a lot of new players when he arrived, third in the league.
The next season was less successful, so more change followed – as did automatic promotion in 2015.
Obviously Watford’s phases were shorter than those of other clubs as head coaches came and went, but as they did the Hornets finished 13th, 17th, 14th and 11th in the Premier League.
However from 2012 through to 2019, the general direction of travel was upwards, the success and income were greater, the quality of players the club signed and the fees they paid were higher.
So perhaps, in 2019, there was need to realise the club had reached the top of that particular growth curve, and it was time to go back and make a few changes to keep things fresh.
It was the highly-successful former Liverpool manager Bob Paisley who once said that the time to strengthen your squad was when you had just won a trophy. Don’t wait until the success ends.
However, the overall trend since 2019 has been downwards, save for the promotion in 2021 which will always have an asterisk attached to it because it was completed largely behind closed doors due to Covid.
The last three seasons of mid-table Championship fodder meant something had to change, and admittedly this writer was an advocate for the owner looking harder to find someone to take the club off his hands so that Watford could, as in the model above, go back to the entrepreneurial phase they experienced when Gino Pozzo first arrived in 2012.
However, uncomfortable as it may be for some, there has to be acceptance that there isn’t an orderly queue of cash-laden individuals or groups waiting to take the club off his hands.
Yes, other clubs get bought and sold, and clearly they find suitable purchasers. But few of us know the circumstances at any of those clubs, so it’s hard to judge if Watford have not looked hard enough, or if they have and found nothing.
The last few weeks have seen the sort of change we’ve become accustomed to as a head coach and his staff depart.
Then there has been change that is quite unpalatable, as long-serving members of the administration staff are moved out and replaced.
And now we are on the verge of a change that nobody saw coming – least of all those in Italy.
The Pozzo family are about to end their 39-year association with Udinese, sell the club and focus their energy, time and resources on Watford FC.
At this point, there may be cries of ‘and pigs will fly’ or ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’.
Those reactions are understandable and the owner, while not liking them, probably would expect to have doubters.
However, the latter is far more pertinent: if and when we see it happening, then we can believe it.
After all, upon sacking Tom Cleverley the owner did indeed offer his longest public statement in quite some time. When a man who usually says nothing finally says something, it is very worthy of noting, remembering and watching.
"I realise we have a responsibility to make this club the very best that it can be and I am energised in my determination to make Watford competitive, successful and challenge for a return to the Premier League,” he said in his statement a few weeks ago.
As well as: "Going forward, we will do everything in our power to keep those more experienced players in our squad to help the younger members in their development.
"We are not abandoning the model which has served us well over the years: identifying youth and developing it. But we recognise the need to keep this current squad together and build on it if we want to be successful.
"The club will never be jeopardised financially, but we will do everything possible to provide stability and growth where the playing side is concerned.”
In short, the owner wants to try and keep all the best players from last season, add to it where he can, and ultimately have Watford in a position to challenge for the play-offs, or better.
As stated earlier, if we see that happening, we can believe it – and if it does happen, then we’ll all be happy (save for those who would like a change of ownership, come what may).
That aforementioned training from Wilson Learning also highlighted there will often be chaos as change occurs, and right now that is probably what we are all experiencing – and not just in terms of personnel and the owner’s priorities, but also things like the very early transfer activity and a retained list issued before anyone could moan it hadn’t been.
Change is chaotic and often uncomfortable – the view that Tom Cleverley would have made the ideal head coach around which to rebuild and re-energise was one shared by many.
However, if the owner is prepared to sell Udinese and focus on Watford, and use his money to underpin these changes, then he has the right to do as he sees fit.
None of us would spend our life savings on a house renovation but let someone else choose the builders.
Not that we should expect Pozzo to suddenly throw wads of cash at the club.
It’s not something he has ever really done, except for when the bounty from the Premier League meant funds were there to be spent or when he used the scouting network to successfully buy low and sell high, thus creating a surplus to reinvest.
In fact, it’s understood two of his most significant ‘investments’ in Watford were a lump sum that cleared the debts of the previous owner, and covering the staff wage-bill to protect their jobs and keep the club operational through the pandemic.
Clubs far bigger with substantially more money sloshing around looked to furlough as their route out of that situation.
As written previously, Watford’s all-time average league position is 34th – equivalent to 14th in the Championship. So last season was par for the course.
At least the Hornets have maintained their place in the second tier, even if the last three seasons have been hugely underwhelming. You only need look a few junctions up the M1 to realise doing so is far from a given.
There are the carcasses of many clubs who would consider themselves at least as big, if not bigger than Watford, now playing in Leagues One and Two.
Cardiff (2019) and Huddersfield (2018) have dropped out of the Premier League in recent years and now find themselves a level below the Hornets.
Wigan won the FA Cup at the end of Pozzo’s first season at Vicarage Road: they have spent four of the last five seasons in League One, and will be there again come August.
Championship winners Leeds will be starting their fourth season in the last 22 in the Premier League in a couple of months – Watford have enjoyed six of the last 10 in the top-flight.
Because the decline over the last four league campaigns in terms of performances, results and league position have been so obvious, it means a little perspective is required in order to start to regain some confidence and belief that the owner can back up his words and turn things around.
Naturally, there is the argument that the club has wasted the money from the recent glory years and is now so brassic it’s hard to understand what happened.
And when you read the last set of accounts, it’s obvious why the club has sold players to balance the books and not spent big, even allowing for the reasonable questions as to how it came to this point.
Again, though, look at other clubs and Watford’s position – while unpleasant – is also far from unique. In fact, it looks quite rosy.
Leicester lost £92.5m in 2022 and £89.7m in 2023. They are now facing a points deduction ahead of their return to the Championship.
They did win the league and have a season in the top-flight – albeit a miserable one – but would we swap their financial position for ours?
- Striker the priority as defender deal nears
- Udinese sale heads towards completion
- Midfielder set for Vicarage Road return
It is easy, and rightly so, to become so embroiled in your own club’s situation, on the and off the pitch, that the plight of others which is far worse cannot be seen due to the blinkers of fandom.
This isn’t an apology for the bad decisions, inexplicable choices, grim football and overriding feeling of disconnection that can be laid at the owner’s door.
He cannot point to the Premier League seasons, a trip to Wembley, an impressive stadium and some of the stars that have graced the yellow of Watford without also taking ownership for the things that have gone wrong on his watch, many of which still need fixing.
But as with the advent of a Supporter Board, these green shoots of positive change need to be fed and watered, in order that they might grow into something more.
Trampling on them now just to make a point is not helping anyone because, like it or not, the owner is not just about to put his eggs in the Watford basket he’s moving the whole poultry farm from Italy to England.
To refer back to those business cycles, Watford had been on a growth curve but were heading into a death spiral.
The change we have seen so far since the end of the season suggests the owner has spotted that and is going back to what he did best when he first arrived – and which delivered success sufficient to warrant a huge flag with his face on it covering the Rookery End.
He’s becoming entrepreneurial again in his approach, trying different things and taking a fresh approach to others as he seeks to find the right formula to deliver that promotion challenge he talked about.
A lot has changed in the 13 years since he bought the club, not least the wealth of Watford’s competitors.
Many a time we have moaned, with justification, that continuing to do the same thing is unlikely to bring a different result.
Now we have changes – so while there is no guarantee of better outcomes, there is at least recognition that a repeat of the last four seasons is more likely to see Watford risking leaving the Championship through the bottom end of the table.
The owner has a distance to travel in this re-energised spirit of change to convince people: for some it’s only a few miles, for others he’ll need to go to the moon and back.
But he’s made it clear he’s not selling, he’s focussing on our club, and he’s told us what good looks like.
At least give him a chance to fall flat on his face or deliver a team and season that is successful, before prematurely deciding which of the two are going to happen.
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