The Ten REAL management lessons from the Olympics

Both the FT and the Grauniad have opined, dewy eyed, on the stupendous lessons for future successful management from the Olympics. The Grauniad's effort is entitles "Olympics: the key to our success can rebuild Britain's economy" and has its core thesis is that success is a mix of infrastructure investment and private elan, that of course the Grauniad's oppoenents (the Conservatives) don't understand this:

...we need to sustain these principles so they become structurally and culturally embedded for continuing Olympic success, but they should also be applied elsewhere. The problem is that they are born of an ideological hybrid that wrong-foots our political class. They are mostly rooted in liberal social democratic values that understand the importance of public investment, public organisation and institution-building. But they also involve an unashamed recognition that in the end individual application, resolve and will to win are indispensable.

David Cameron and London mayor Boris Johnson are happy to celebrate the element that is rooted in competition, elitism and individual effort. But they flounder the instant the conversation moves to the role of public investment and the necessity of understanding and sustaining our unique sport ecosystem, just as nearly every Labour politician flounders the other way round.

Now the Grauniad is fairly left of UK centre, but the FT is ver "small c" (and probably large) conservative to a T (or "C") but it too thinks amazing lessons can be learned (I'm not allowed to cut and paste what they say, as the T&C's are "Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights").

Anyway, they too waxed lyrical on the Legacy, and the benefits of running with large numbers of (lowly paid) volunteers, and that Vancouver got improved transportation, more affordable housing, and top notch athletic facilities. But, we got Zil lanes, people thrown out of their flats by landlords, and the unedifying spectacle of 2 football clubs scrapping over what bargain basement price the "top notch athletic facilities" would be flogged off for afterwards.

Now don't get me wrong - the London Olympics were a superb example of a very complex project, delivered to a very high quality, brought in on time. And the Team GB athletes performed superbly, and the Volunteer Army were superb, and won everyone's hearts. But it was certainly not on budget (even with all those near-free Volunteers) - that went up from c £4bn to c £12bn - so you'd kind of expect the delivery quality would be Rolls Royce class! And, what we also got was gold medal quality finessing of commercial greed, and there are some very searching questions that need to be asked about the ticketing, the pricing, the giveaways to commercial sponsors, the pursuit of perfectly innocent people on trademark etc infringement, and changes made to British laws to make this happen. However, they probably won't ever happen because the Olympics comes around once every 2 generations or so, so all lessons will be forgotten - and Britain had a very good Games, so it will likely all be brushed under the carpet in the carefully cultivated ensuing euphoria.

So, for the truly ambitious manager of Machiavellian mind on the make, we leave this post to posterity to ensure that the real Olympic lessons of success are not lost - and without further ado, here they are:


THE 10 REAL MANAGEMENT LESSONS FROM THE OLYMPIC GAMES

1. Massively underestimate the costs of your project

2. Massively overstate the benefits of your project

3. Get VIP/Celebrity support in early - the Chatterati will then write reams of breathless copy, and the few sceptics are drowned out

4. Find a sponsor with Very Deep Pockets (a national Government, say) and then ensure that their reputation is on the line, so if anything goes wrong it is their problem. From now on you can't lose - and can overspend till the cows come home.

5. Use free or cheap labour wherever possible, and fire them up to believe they are involved in a great enterprise. Bonus points if you can make them pay to work.

6. Ensure that your Commercial Sponsors can privatise their profits while your large backer can tax their citizens to make all the huge losses public

7. Give those Commercial Sponsors the keys to the kingdom in terms of enforcement of commercial privileges. Close parish magazines, sue mom and pop bakeries, trademark 1000 year old words in the English language - all good stuff

8. When the huuuuuge overspend becomes public, argue that it would have been even bigger, but for the heroic efforts of The Brave Management

9. Scalp the paying punter - create artificial shortages that increase desperation and inflate access prices in all ways you can.

10. Fireworks. LOTS of Fireworks. And lots of celebrities, and feelgood about ourself stuff - so everyone goes Yay, Paaaarty and completely forgets about points 1 to 9

Here endeth the Lesson. See you in Rio

(Update: Matt Schofield points out Lesson 11: Win way more golds than expected. Success has a thousand fathers....)