RON DERBY: Going from the long ball to the long view
If given space, would a GIBS- or Harvard-educated MBA graduate be able to sell and implement a long-term strategy for a listed vehicle in this day and age?
When last did you hear CEOs or chairs speak of five-year or 10-year strategic plans for their companies? Not that there is as much of an audience for this in today's world as there is for followers of Arsenal and my dearest of football managers, Arsene Wenger. Let's forget for a minute that fans including myself are a bit uninspired about the team's prospects in some distant utopia. But had we not believed the Frenchman's growth story from the start, would Arsenal be a feature on the global football map - or in a position similar to that of Leeds United? After Wenger's early successes, I think that had the club's board followed an easier and debt-fuelled plan to buy the club's way to success there wouldn't be an Emirates Stadium and we'd possibly be playing mid-table football in that grand old Highbury. In corporate boardrooms, how many executives have been given the space to build a company in the same way as Wenger and even - I must give due credit - Alex Ferguson? And if, given t...
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