At the end of the popular and successful AppleTV series Ted Lasso, Ted discovers the soccer strategy called “Total Football” which ends up not only solving the problems of his team but also, in a sense, the personal lives of many of the show’s characters as well. Sort of. (Did that give too much away? Hopefully not).
And sure, I’m a soccer fan, and sure, in many ways “Total Football” revolutionized the game that hundreds of millions of people play around the world. Not to mention basketball for the equally large number of players who incorporated the “triangle offense” version of it that the Chicago Bulls used to win all their championships with Michael Jordan. So clearly it is a powerful thing that, you know, works.
But why just sport? Why not other things. Like advertising, say? Could the fundamental concepts of “Total Football” be applied to advertising, and if so, what would that look like and would it even work? And by “work” I mean, “function better than the shit show than we have right now.”
So I took a look. But before I explain what I figured out, a brief review of what exactly “Total Football” is (and my apologies to all aficionados of the beautiful game if I oversimplify it).
In its most basic sense, “Total Football” asks the question, “Why must we wait for opportunities that are perfect for the type of player presented with them?” In other words, why must we wait for only the shooter to be presented with the opportunity to shoot only the defender with the opportunity to break up a play, only the midfielder with the opportunity to make the great pass. Yes, shooters shoot, passers pass, defenders defend, and yes, expertise is valuable. But how many opportunities are lost because the defender was in a shooting position and utterly clueless about what to do? Or the shooter was in a defensive position and totally botched the play?
“Total Football” says, as I understand it, let’s still have players who are great at their areas of expertise, but let’s also have them be good at the other things. So if the defender, say, is in a shooting situation, he has a higher likelihood of scoring. If the shooter is in a defensive situation, he is better able to defend. Because these opportunities are rare so why wouldn’t we want to make the most of them?
And to be clear, “Total Football” does not say a “jack of all trades” is better than an “expert”. You still want people who are really good at what they’re really good at, because they’ll be able to do things that you can’t teach, and that the other players will never be able to do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t add to their skillsets – not to make them “well-rounded”, but to, as we said above, take better advantage of the few opportunities the team is presented with during any given match.
So, in other words, “Total Football” is really about maximizing opportunity.
But it has this really interesting knock-on effect. It doesn’t just take better advantage of the few opportunities you get during a match – it actually creates more opportunities.
Imagine three players on the same team, arranged in a sort of triangle. Player one has the ball, which he is about to pass to player two. And player three? He’s actually the most important player in the triangle. Because what he does affects where the ball goes next. If he runs into open space, the ball can be passed to him by player two. Simple and obvious, right? But what if he runs into open space, and the guy covering player two sees him do that, and drifts off of player two in order to block the expected pass? Well that creates more space for player two, doesn’t it? So maybe player two holds on to the ball and moves it himself. Or maybe player three runs into open space and the guy covering player ONE decides to cover him, leaving player one open to receive the ball back.
Lots of opportunities to move the ball and create opportunities, right?
Now, these opportunities don’t exist really if, say, player three is a defender, and the other team knows he’s not a scoring threat – so they won’t need to change their coverage when he runs into open space because the likelihood that he’ll do anything meaningful with the ball is pretty slim. Or if player two isn’t a passer, so they know that ANY pass he’s likely to make is going to be sub-par, so instead they put MORE pressure on him to make his pass to anyone more difficult. And on and on. In other words, because we’ve increased the players’ skill sets, we’ve increased their threats to the other team, and their own options, which creates more opportunities.
Now you may say, hey, when that defender runs into the attack, well he’s not defending any more, leaving his team exposed. Right. So guess what? The shooter moves into defense. Not for the whole game, just for the time the defender is attacking. And because defending is part of his skillset, this works. Not as well as if the actual expert defender were there, but better than if you had an old-school shooter there.
Which means there’s a second knock-on effect, which may be the most important.
It creates the opportunity for teamwork.
The shooter covers for his teammate. The defender creates an opportunity for his. They’re seeing the game in terms of each other, their movements, and their potential opportunities. The defender isn’t just sitting back there thinking “I’m just a defender, you figure out how to score up there, chum. I’ll wait until the ball comes down here.” And the shooter isn’t thinking “when someone wants to send me the ball, I’ll be right here waiting for it. Until then, try not to let too many goals in, okay?”
No, the defender sees a space in the attack that he can exploit, the shooter sees an unmarked opponent that he can take care of. Teamwork. They work as a team. And because they do, they learn more about each other’s roles and challenges and preferences and skills. Which creates a stronger bond.
That’s “Total Football”. And why the hell wouldn’t we want that in advertising?
Developers uncovering opportunities because of some beta experiments they see in tech. Account people discovering creative opportunities because of client budget changes. Creatives discovering strategic opportunities as they look at competitive work. Strategists noticing media opportunities that the competition is ignoring.
Again, not turning creatives in to developers and account people into creatives. But giving people the skills to better take advantage of the few opportunities we’re presented with, and in the process creating more opportunities.
And, just as in soccer, creating better overall organizations. Because as Gillian Tett points out in her book The Silo Effect, organizations that are able to combine the depth of understanding experts provide, with the connective tissue that keeps them working with their peers, are more successful than those that don’t.
Just like they are on the soccer field.
Now, just like on the soccer field, this requires a different type of person than you had in the past. Who can think differently about their role, about their teammates, about why they’re doing what they’re doing and what they’re really trying to accomplish and how. People who are less interested in silos and more interested in goals. Who don’t think you have to sacrifice expertise for teamwork.
And most importantly, who trust.
That last one may be the most difficult of all to achieve.
But the rewards, they can be huge.
And hey, if Jamie Tartt can do it, adworkers can too.
Maybe…