This document discusses how Jose Mourinho operationalizes complexity theory in building successful football teams. It explores how Mourinho treats the team as a complex system with interdependent parts, rather than separate components. He seduces individuals into becoming a cohesive team focused on a common goal. Mourinho also emphasizes presenting any component in the context of the whole system. These lessons can help teams apply complexity thinking for long-term effectiveness.

1. What José Mourinho
Can Teach Us About
Team-Building
Alan O’Callaghan
ajocallaghan@gmail.com
Principal Product Owner, CSP,CSM,CSPO

2. The effecGveness of Scrum in the long term relies heavily
on two characterisGcs
• Rigorous maintenance of a frequent, regular inspect-
and-adapt cycle
• The building of self-organising teams
The mandatory Gme-boxes are well known
• Sprint Planning
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint Review
• Sprint RetrospecGve
The growing of effecGve, high-performing teams is less
understood
What can we learn from other disciplines?

3. THE TEAM

4. Football and Scrum have some similariGes
• Few rules: easily understood
• “Played” by teams
• That have to be coached
• An almost infinite variety of approaches to “winning”

5. 28 major trophies since 2002
2 European Championships
Major League Gtles in 4
different countries
This guy knows
something
about team-
building

6. Mourinho graduated in Sports Science at ISEF*
and was forced to study Matyvev’s classic book
• Rejected its central tenets because it was
focused on training individual sportsmen
• Began developing his own methodology
• Driven by his own early experiences
• Paid to observe teams since he was 15
• Influenced by Manuel Sérgio – an ISEF
teacher and a philosopher
*Ins+tuto Superior de Eduçáo Física
“We have to understand that
eleven men chasing an objecGve
is completely different from one
man doing it.” Mourinho

7. “Mourinho didn’t teach me how to play
football. I know how to play football. He
taught me how to play in a team, which
is something different. And that’s why
he is successful wherever he is.” Didier
Drogba

8. COMPLEXITY

9. “We need a kind of thinking that reconnects that which is
disjoined and compartmentalized, that respects diversity
as it recognizes unity, and that tries to discern
interdependencies. We need a radical thinking (which gets
to the root of problems), a mulGdimensional thinking, and
an organisaGon or systems thinking” Edgar Morin,
Philosopher
Contrasts with Cartesian
philosophy which sees the
world as the sum of its parts,
best understood by
addressing the parts
separately. Leads to
• ReducGonist thinking
• Hierarchical organisaGon

10. What is most striking about Mourinho, according to his friend
and biographer Luis Lourenço, is that he is the first football
manager to opera+onalize complexity in his methods
“I argue that, at the level of training
and football teams, Jose Mourinho is
the first to create a new paradigm of
knowledge, the complexity of Edgar
Morin, and ‘carry it’ from the field of
Philosophy, from the world of ideas, to
concrete human acGvity”. Luis
Lourenço

11. In Mourinho’s methodology there is no separaGon between
• The first team and the reserves
• Training and the game
• Fitness, agility and tacGcal training
• No separaGon between the “player” and the “social being”
…and no separaGon between the coach and the group

12. “I cannot think of another manager
who would have got way with
that… It was a piece of body
language I’ve never seen in football
before. It means he’s one of the
players” Desmond Morris,
Anthropologist

13. “The team structure is important, but so are all the
surrounding structures. And when I say other structures, I
mean different departments – the medical department, the
football department, the kitmen, the scouts…These are all
interacGng structures and can’t be seen as something
isolated.” Rui Faria, Mourinho’s Assistant

14. Team
Coach
Squad
Backroom staff
Medical
Department
…
Club
“The whole that is in the part that is in the whole” José Mourinho
The first key lesson?
The world is a complex
system of centres of
“wholes” within
“wholes”. We need to
base acGons on an
understanding of their
interrelaGonships

15. Acocdirng to crurnet receasrh, the letrets of a word can
be pacled in any odrer if the frsit and lsat letrets rtaein
teihr posGoin. The rmeaninig leterts can be pacled
rnoadlmy, we raed the same. The fcat is we do not raed
letetr by letetr, we raed ecah wrod as a whloe.
Can you make sense of
this?

16. OPERATIONALIZING COMPLEXITY

17. “A team brings together people focused
on a common goal working in a perfectly
established way. It’s defined as a group
of organized individuals led by a leader
and working within a context, towards
the same objecGve”. Olivier Devillard,
Coaching Expert
The second key
lesson?
A group of individuals
only becomes a team
when seduced by a
common goal

18. “It must always be our objecGve to ‘be
champions’. It must be a daily objecGve, a
consistent and permanent moGvaGon, and a
light that guides our journey from now. Every
workout, every match, every minute of our
professional and social life must focus on this
objecGve, which, I repeat is OURS”. Mourinho
From Mourinho’s
leher to the Chelsea
players, before he
met them for the
first Gme

19. Product
Vision
Release
Goal
Release
Goal
Release
Goal
Sprint
Goal
Sprint
Goal

20. “When I prepare a training session, I prepare a global
acGvity, always realizing what the implicaGons are at
the various levels are. So I say that every exercise has
a dominant” Mourinho
How do we address the “parts” as “wholes” in their own
right without decontextualizing them?

21. Third key lesson?
When focusing on
any component of
the system or
process, present it in
a way which
highlights the
context(s) in which it
exists

22. “The weakening of the global perspecGve leads to the
weakening of the sense of responsibility (one tends to
be responsible only for his specialized task), as well as a
weakening of solidarity (each fails to understand its
organic connecGon) [with the group in which he in
inserted]. Edgar Morin
To me the whole is everything, the part is an important
means for the whole to achieve its objecGves. So I think
that from the Gme that group culture exists, there’s the
culture of the whole. The overall objecGve is perfectly
arGculated by the group. I think the noGon of sacrificing
the part for the whole stops making any sense. It’s through
the parts that you reach the whole.”Mourinho

23. There is another approach to
complexity more familiar to
somware engineering : paherns
Christopher Alexander criGques
Cartesian thinking in Nature of
Order. He says paherns are
rules for making “centers”
whole
In his earlier work he says you
apply paherns from the largest
first, then successively choosing
the smaller ones to create
sequences
The Scrum Paherns
Group is currently
mining the “deeper
paherns of Scrum”…
...and punng together
sequences of paherns
that address complexity

24. CONCLUSIONS
• Complexity thinking is key to the building of
cohesive teams
• Groups of individuals need to be seduced by
common goals to become teams
• We need to always highlight the context of
any “dominant”
• Scrum paherns may help us take the next
steps to operaGonalizing complexity

25. Some References
• Mourinho: Further Anatomy of a Winner. P.
Barclay. Orion 2015
• José Mourinho- Special leadership: CreaGng
and Managing Successful Teams. L. Lourenço.
Prime Books.2014
• José Mourinho – Made in Portugal: The
Authorised Biography L. Lourenço and J.
Mourinho. Dewi Lewis Media. 2004
• On Complexity. E.Morin.Hampton Press. 2008

26. More References
• Nature of Order (vols 1-4). C. Alexander.
Routledge 2004
• A Pahern Language. C. Alexander. Oxford
University Press. 1978
• Scrum Paherns Community
www.scrumplop.org
• Published Scrum Paherns
hhps://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/
published-paherns/home

27. Contact Details
Email: ajocallaghan@gmail.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/alanjocallaghan
Website: www.emerald-hill.co.uk