I did some work the other day as part of the IPA’s Leadership programme and it got me thinking about one of my other passions, football and specifically the current plight of ‘my’ team, Charlton Athletic.

Since the start of the 2010/2011 season 11 new managers have been appointed in League One – out of 24 teams – Swindon Town have even changed twice.

Change, instigated by the Board and often fuelled by the fans, is most often a reflection of a poor run of results and the hope that a change of manager will lead to a refreshed onslaught towards promotion or a sterner defence against relegation.

Commentators often refer to new management having an immediate effect on performance, though rarely is this sustained.

This obsession with change reminds me of something attributed to the Roman author Gaius Petronius in AD06, some 2,005 years ago:

‘We trained very hard but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be re-organised.

I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising – and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress whilst producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation’.

The question buzzing around my mind is when change happens in football (or indeed in business) how effective is that change likely to be if there is no leadership? Of course this begs the question, who is the leader – the manager who selects the team and the tactics; the Board which owns and runs the club or the team captain on the pitch?

Take my team; Charlton Athletic plies its trade in League One having suffered relegation from the riches of the Premiership and the Championship.

At the start of the 2010 /11 season we had a manager who rebuilt the team with limited budget; the team was doing well, it was in the play-off positions with games in hand, the manager won the November manager of the Month award for League One.

In December results started to slip (attributed by some to the curse of winning Manager of the Month).

At the end of December Charlton was acquired by new owners & three days later the manager was fired; a new manager was appointed – a playing hero to the fans, he wins his first four games on the spin but then manages to muster a single, solitary point out of the 21 available in the next 7 games.

The team drops to 12^th in the table, hopes of a play-off place dwindle; indeed there are nervous glances towards relegation.

All this happens in 10 weeks.

So who is to blame – the new manager, the team, the Board; and who is the leader who can guide the team out of the slump?

Let’s go back to the start of December when results started to slip – what happened?

Perhaps it has something to do with the seemingly, positive announcement that: ‘the current owner was in due diligence with a group – still bizarrely with nameless backers to this day – to acquire the assets of the club’.

What effect does this announcement have on the team and the manager?

I’d conjecture a degree of uncertainty not just regarding the future of the club, but the future opportunities for the management team itself. Interestingly if we look back to October 2008 we see an almost exact same scenario – the team form goes out of the window when the Middle Eastern consortium Zabeel Investments announced their intention to acquire the club.

At the end of December the new Chairman is revealed, he pledges his support for the manager and then sacks him three days later – perhaps the manager had been forewarned of his impending dismissal and whilst outwardly professional to the end, he knew his days were numbered?

The players are, of course, all professionals – but most had been recruited by the recently sacked manager – & indeed thanks to Twitter we also know the players respected the outgoing manager and many were shocked and disappointed at his exit – ‘but that’s football’.

The new manager joins and indeed results pick up in the short-term, but then results tail off dramatically.

So back to the question – who is the leader; the new chairman who says little of substance, even at a recent fans forum; the new manager – an honourable man with immense charm and footballing ability, but in his first management role; the team captain, an ageing warrior well-respected by the fans but not a demonstrative leader on the pitch?

I fear the core problem at Charlton Athletic is that we don’t yet have a leader – not in the Boardroom, nor on the touch-line or in the team – someone who can set a vision and ambition for the club, make sure that everyone buys into it throughout the organisation & can also create the environment to let it happen.

Change is inevitable, internally in the Boardroom, externally on the pitch and in the market, but without leadership, we risk seeing a succession of knee-jerk decisions leading to confusion, greater inefficiency and undermining morale – and from there the only way is down.