In an in­ter­view with Ani­ta El­berse (2012), “Fer­gu­son’s For­mu­la,” Sir Alex Fer­gu­son dis­cussed his eight lead­er­ship prin­ci­ples that formed the core of his strat­e­gy that made Man­ches­ter Unit­ed one of the most suc­cess­ful foot­ball clubs in the world.

1 The Foun­da­tion

Fer­gu­son's strat­e­gy fo­cused on build­ing a club from the ground. “I want­ed to build from the bot­tom…in or­der to cre­ate flu­en­cy and con­ti­nu­ity of sup­ply to the first team…the play­ers all grow up to­geth­er, pro­duc­ing a bond that, in turn, cre­ates a spir­it.” “Build­ing a club brings sta­bil­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy…[the] youth de­vel­op­ment ef­forts end­ed up lead­ing to many of our suc­cess in the 1990s and ear­ly 2000s.” For him, the role of the man­ag­er is to pro­vide “tech­ni­cal skills, make them win­ners, make them bet­ter peo­ple, and they can go any­where in life.”

2 Re­build your team

He stat­ed “The goal was to evolve grad­u­al­ly, mov­ing old­er play­ers out and younger play­ers in…who did we have com­ing through, and were there signs that ex­ist­ing play­ers were get­ting old­er? If you see the change, the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion, you have to ask your­self what things are go­ing to be like two years ahead.”

3 Set high stan­dards- every­one is ac­count­able

Fer­gu­son em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of stan­dards by stat­ing, “every­thing we did was about main­tain­ing the stan­dards we had set as a foot­ball club- this ap­plied to all my team build­ing and all my team prepa­ra­tion, mo­ti­va­tion­al talks, and tac­ti­cal talks.” “We nev­er al­lowed a bad train­ing ses­sion. What you see in train­ing man­i­fests it­self on the game field….so every train­ing ses­sion was about qual­i­ty…it was about in­ten­si­ty, con­cen­tra­tion, speed high lev­el of per­for­mance.”

He ex­pect­ed more from his icon­ic play­ers. he be­lieved their su­per­star egos were not a prob­lem but an as­set as win­ning mo­ti­vat­ed them to work hard­er. As such “Ronal­do, Beck­ham. Gig­gs, Sc­holes, and oth­ers [were] out there prac­tic­ing for hours. I would have to chase them in…. they re­alised be­ing a Man­ches­ter Unit­ed play­er is not an easy job.”

4 Firm han­dle on con­trol

main­tain­ing con­trol was crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of Man­ches­ter Unit­ed. Fer­gu­son be­lieved the club was big­ger than the play­ers even though some were the best in the world. If play­ers were neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of the team dress­ing-room, team per­for­mance, and oth­er play­ers and staff then “you have to cut their cord,” there is “ab­solute­ly no oth­er way".

“It is im­por­tant to have con­fi­dence in your­self to make a de­ci­sion and to move on once you have. It is not about look­ing for ad­ver­si­ty or for op­por­tu­ni­ties to prove pow­er; it’s about hav­ing con­trol and be­ing au­thor­i­ta­tive when is­sues do arise.”

5 Ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the mo­ment

Fer­gu­son notes that “few peo­ple get bet­ter with crit­i­cism; most re­spond to en­cour­age­ment in­stead…for a play­er-for any hu­man be­ing- there is noth­ing bet­ter than hear­ing 'Well done'.”

How­ev­er, at the same time, he be­lieved that “rep­ri­mand was im­por­tant” and it took place im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the match in the dress­ing room. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he did not be­lieve in “crit­i­cis­ing a play­er for­ev­er".

“I would tell them that hav­ing a work eth­ic is very im­por­tant…I would re­mind them that it is trust in one an­oth­er, not let­ting their mates down, that helps build the char­ac­ter of a team.”

Dur­ing half-time, the con­ver­sa­tion var­ied ac­cord­ing to the state of the game. “When you are win­ning… [the fo­cus is on] con­cen­trat­ing, not get­ting com­pla­cent and the small things you can ad­dress.” How­ev­er, when the team was be­hind or not per­form­ing to ex­pec­ta­tions he notes, “You have to make an im­pact…I liked to fo­cus on our team and our strengths, but you have to cor­rect why you are los­ing [not play­ing to stan­dard].”

6 Pre­pare to win

“I ex­pect­ed to win every time we went out there. Even if five of the most im­por­tant play­ers were in­jured, I ex­pect­ed to win... once we stepped on­to the pitch be­fore a game, I was con­fi­dent that the play­ers were pre­pared and ready to play be­cause every­thing had been done be­fore they walked out on­to the pitch.” He de­scribed him­self as a ‘risk tak­er,’ he pre­ferred “to lose 1-3 if it meant we’d giv­en our­selves a good chance to draw or to win.”

7 Ob­ser­va­tion and del­e­ga­tion

“I do not think many peo­ple ful­ly un­der­stand the val­ue of ob­ser­va­tion as a crit­i­cal part of my man­age­ment skills. The abil­i­ty to see things is key, more specif­i­cal­ly, the abil­i­ty to see things you do not ex­pect to see.”

8 Adapt­ing

He be­lieved that “you con­trol change by ac­cept­ing it". It in­volves “hav­ing con­fi­dence in the peo­ple you hire. The minute staff mem­bers are em­ployed you have to trust that they are go­ing to do their jobs. If you mi­cro­man­age and tell peo­ple what to do, there is no point in hir­ing them. The most im­por­tant thing is not to stag­nate. I [once] said to David Gill [for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive, of Man­ches­ter Utd], 'The on­ly way we can keep play­ers at Man­ches­ter Unit­ed is if we have the best train­ing ground in Eu­rope'.” That is when we kick-start­ed the med­ical cen­tre. We can’t sit still.”

“I treat­ed every suc­cess as my first. My job was to give us the best pos­si­ble chance of win­ning. That is what drove me.”