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Damian Hughes

The Barcelona Way: How to Create a High-Performance Culture Paperback – 9 Aug. 2018

by Damian Hughes (Author)

111 ratings

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In The Barcelona Way, sports psychologist Damian Hughes reveals the key principles that have defined FC Barcelona’s success and shows how the DNA of a winning team can be successfully applied to any working environment, with dramatic results.

'A powerful book on the important principles of creating a high-performing culture.'
Eddie Jones, England RFU Head Coach

FC Barcelona are one of the most successful football clubs in the world. What makes FCB unique is the winning culture that has delivered sustained success for much longer than the customary four-year cycle of an elite team. Lying at the very heart of their success is how they deal with people and the care and attention given to the environment in which those people are nurtured: practices which are of equal relevance to all organizations trying to channel the activities of their talented individuals for the corporate good.

The key principles are: Big Picture, Arc of Change, Repetition, Cultural Architects, Authentic Leadership. These are the same principles that are adhered to in successful working environments across any industry.

Drawing on interviews with key architects of the culture, as well as his own extensive experience as a sports psychologist working with leading sports and business institutions, Damian Hughes provides unique insights into the crucial issues confronting the modern corporate environment, and shows how the lessons learnt at FC Barcelona can also be applied to develop your own winning culture.

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Product details

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Macmillan; Main Market edition (9 Aug. 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1509804420
ISBN-13: 978-1509804429
Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 2.3 x 22.9 cm
Customer reviews: 111 customer ratings
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 70,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5 in FC Barcelona
- #127 in Psychological Training & Coaching
- #25 in European Football Leagues

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A powerful book on the important principles of creating a high-performing culture. -- Eddie Jones, England Rugby Union Head Coach

Barcelona FC is famed for its winning culture. Damian's book unravels what that means and gives us pointers to adopt such a philosophy in our daily lives. A winning read. -- Guillem Balague

Does culture create competitive advantage? Case closed in this compelling analysis of sporting success. Read it. -- James Kerr, author of Legacy

Damian’s book describes for everyone the importance of not just any culture but certain types of culture, consistently applied, in driving sustainable performance. In these disruptive times, building a winning culture has never been more important nor Damian’s book more valuable. -- John Amaechi OBE

The importance of culture cannot be overstated within elite sporting environments. Damian's book offers fascinating insights how these can be implemented within your own world. -- Nick Cox, Academy Operations Manager, Manchester United Football Club

The final frontier in sports, and in business, is something that can't be quantified: the power of a positive culture. In The Barcelona Way, Damian Hughes has pulled off an audacious feat. He not only lifts the veil on Barcelona, he establishes a direct connection between its unique chemistry and its world-conquering success."
Barcelona became a sensation right before our eyes, which makes it difficult to appreciate its true place in history. With riveting stories, well-told science and original thinking, Damian Hughes has lifted the veil on this team’s exceptional culture and how that culture helped it become one of history’s greatest teams.
Barcelona’s astonishing, peerless success has been celebrated in dozens of books, but this is the one we’ve all been waiting for. In The Barcelona Way, Damian Hughes uses a blend of storytelling and science to tackle the most essential question: What can this team teach us about the power of a positive culture?

-- Sam Walker, author of The Captain Class

From the preface, ‘The true evidence of a culture is how people behave when no one is watching.’ You know this is so true for all truly high performance teams/organisations but so difficult to sustain long term. Damian has got under the skin of the very best & gives great insight in how this can be achieved in any walk of life. If you really want to develop a long term cultural change, this is a great starting point. -- Grant Downie OBE, Head of Performance services Manchester City Football Club Academy

The importance of creating a high performing culture is essential for any leader. Damian's excellent book offers the blueprint to do this. I would encourage you read this. -- Steve McClaren

From the Inside Flap

FC Barcelona. One of the most victorious clubs in the world, winning fourteen of a possible nineteen trophies under Pep Guardiola – a record that has never been matched. However, what makes FC Barcelona unique is the winning culture at the core of its DNA that has continued to deliver sustained success internationally. Lying at the very heart of their astonishing achievements is how they deal with people and the care and attention given to the environment in which those people are nurtured. These practices are of equal relevance to all organizations trying to channel the activities of their talented individuals for the corporate good.

In The Barcelona Way, Professor Damian Hughes draws on his own experience as a sports psychologist working with key players and leading businesses in the industry to provide a unique insight into FC Barcelona’s secrets. From these insights he distils the key lessons and how they can be directly applied to the development of your own winning culture.

The five principles for unprecedented success include: Big Picture, Arc of Change, Repetition, Cultural Architects and Authentic Leadership. These are not only key to tackling critical issues confronting the modern corporate environment, but they can also be applied to developing optimum working environments across any industry with dramatic results.

‘Does culture create competitive advantage? Case closed in this compelling analysis of sporting success. Read it.’ James Kerr, author of Legacy

‘A powerful book on the important principles of creating a high-performing culture.’ Eddie Jones, England Rugby Union Head Coach

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Customer reviews

5 star		81%
4 star		13%
3 star		4%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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Henry Weeks

Just makes you want to work for Pep and listen to Damian

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 August 2018

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I’ve read a lot of books on culture within organisations and talked to a lot of people. However, Damian Hughes nails it in this book...I would rank it alongside the people at Saracens Rugby as the most influential form of media I have looked at on this subject. This is not simply a sports book, this is a guide to creating a culture that doesn’t die with one group. The players within the group clearly were prepared to fight for the culture as they viewed it as so important and what Damian Hughes does very cleverly is pick apart how Pep created it and why it was so successful. The description about Pep's speech before the Champions League Final of 2011 is brilliant as it showed me a moment where everything was perfect! I will be using bits of this when I teach kids but I will have to choose my cultural architects carefully! This book will help you get the best out of people if you are prepared to work at it. Saracens and Barcelona in this example are the most wonderful examples of what happens if you do!

7 people found this helpful

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Michael Taylor

Powerful insights into a commitment culture

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 December 2018

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mian Hughes came to speak at Manchester Metropolitan University recently and he was every bit as impressive as I've come to expect.

I've worked with him a few times, delivering client events for TSK and I've seen him speak here before. This was remarkable. His latest book focuses on one of the most successful sports teams of my lifetime, FC Barcelona.

At the heart of this success is "culture". As Damian said to the i newspaper: "As someone who has worked with a variety of elite sports teams and blue chip companies, I always seek to impress upon management the importance of culture. The results bear this out. Research suggests that culture can have as much as 22 per cent impact on performance. Pep Guardiola’s current boss, Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano, emphasised this point – 'culture is a crucial ingredient in all organisations' and is especially crucial at football clubs."

Guardiola's footballing style, his methods and his philosophy were formed when he was a player in Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona team, lifting the European Cup in 1992 at Wembley, a game I was fortunate to have been at.

As Damian says in the book: "Cruyff had his very own interpretation of what doing things the ‘Barcelona Way’ actually meant. It was centred around three trademark behaviours: humility, hard work and putting the team above your self-interest."

I'm going to do Damian a grave injustice in attempting to summarise a whole book stuffed full of stories, evidence and research, but he calls what was created at Barcelona an example of a commitment culture.

I've said before that Barcelona’s ‘more than a club’ irritates me, a little bit like the mysticism of the All Blacks, of which their Haka is a part. Both create the aura of semi-religious purity that so frequently they fail to live up to. But life would be duller without them, granted.

You start to think what other possible cultures any other winning team could adopt. Damian's book highlights five which apply in business and in sport, and from memory, in brackets, are where you might find examples of each one.

The Superstar Culture – Companies would bring in the best talent on the biggest salaries and give the stars the best resources (Real Madrid)

The Autocratic Culture – The will of one person in charge (Man United under Sir Alex Ferguson)

The Bureaucratic Culture – Where middle managers rule (the Moneyball approach, Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers and late period Arsenal under Wenger)

The Engineering Culture – Based on problem solving (Klopp at Dortmund, and now at Liverpool, maybe?)

The Commitment Culture – Getting employees to really buy in to what an organisation is trying to achieve.

I've become curious about what Guardiola is attempting to create here in Manchester, with City. The football they play is magical, based on movement and possession. They've definitely created a winning culture where excellence and preparation have produced outstanding results, but, let's not be coy about it, amidst a setting where money is no object.

I had all of this in mind when I went to the Etihad last night to watch City come from behind to beat Hoffenheim and top their Champions League group. The stand-out player was Leroy Sane, who was left out of Germany's World Cup squad. Also impressive was Phil Foden, who has emerged through the Academy and the great youth set-up at Reddish Vulcans Junior Football Club. Both examples of hard working, humble players who do it for the team.

Damian makes the argument that the foundation of the team at City has obvious parallels with what Pep did at Barcelona – "he quickly dispensed with Joe Hart and Samir Nasri and allowed an ageing Yaya Touré to drift to the fringes of the first team, whilst allowing the humble Kevin De Bruyne, quick-witted David Silva and the selfless Fernandinho to emerge as key figures within the dressing room."

On the back of reading Damian's book I lapped up the Amazon Prime series, All or Nothing. In different ways it told me everything and nothing. For all the claims that it is an access-all-areas and unexpurgated insight behind the scenes it is actually City's tightly controlled commercial exposition of what they want the rest of us to think of them. As Simon Hattenstone said in his review in the Guardian: "For in the end, this is nothing but a gloriously glossy commercial for Manchester City – a great big blowy for the club from run-down Kippax Street determined to become the world’s leading football brand." And that, in a way, tells you more about humility and culture. So I think there's some real hard traces of all of the above cultures at work in the Manchester City Way.

Much as City have built a team and created stars of real quality, forged around a commitment culture, they have used engineering and bureaucracy to source a tier of superstar. And it was Yaya Toure who rather brutally laid the charge that Pep is an autocrat in the way he enforces his FIFO culture.

To come back full circle to Damian's point about culture, it is always an aspiration. Performances dip, things go wrong. It is a touchstone, a guide, defined as much by what is included as by what is left out. For the moment, it's for football fans to savour the potential of City coming up against Barcelona in the final in Madrid in June 2019.

Buy the book here. Highly recommended.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

The football equivalent to the All Blacks book - Legacy!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 August 2018

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The closest footballing dynasty in recent years is arguably FC Barcelona during the tenure of Pep Guardiola from 2008-2012. In this book Damian Hughes delves deep into the DNA of the club to reveal the secrets of their prolonged success, which he eloquently attributes to their unique cultural influences.

The book focuses on a specific framework that the author believes is the key to instilling a winning culture. This centres around five key areas (Big Picture, Arc of Change, Repetition, Cultural Architects & Authentic Leadership). The author goes through each of these pillars whilst drawing on real-life events and incidents that occured during Guardiola's time at the club to support his theory.

This is an excellent insight into elite football and is a perfect book for anyone interested in coaching science, football, leadership or management strategies.

2 people found this helpful

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Mark Clough

One of the most relevant books on creating winning cultures in years

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 August 2018

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Surely I'm not the first to write a recommendation for this book? I've read great books by Frankl, ,Helmstetter,Jim Collins & the like which have all had a big influence on me. I can safely say not one has resonated as clearly as this book in understanding what contributes to creating a winning culture as this book has with me. Positively dripping in inspirational ideas and concepts and really encourages the reader to challenge their own beliefs in terms of building winning teams. Highly recommended

3 people found this helpful

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Switch Solo

A fascinating read!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 July 2019

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A fascinating read. This book provides an in-depth insight into how an organization can develop different types of cultures and the unique but simple methods use by Barcelona to create ongoing success. I had never heard of ‘Commitment culture’ before reading this book and now I will carry it with me for the rest of my working life. Thank you Damien!

One person found this helpful

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S K.

Great insights

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 May 2019

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A wonderful trip behind the scenes at Barca and their methods. Great for anyone interested in how teams worked. I will look to buy all his books on the back of this one.

One person found this helpful

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Andy Fielding

Understanding team cultures

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 August 2018

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Great read, good story to understand the DNA issues. Big Thanks to Damian

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Intelligent insight into what makes a winning culture

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 December 2018

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As a football and sports fan this book really resonates but is transferable to the industries i work in too.

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Vinicius

Apesar da capa, não é um livro sobre Pep!

Reviewed in Brazil on 18 March 2020

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Cultura de alta performance. Não necessariamente no esporte.
Talvez a maior lição que possamos tirar é o fato de que construir uma cultura de alta performance não acontece do dia pra noite, mas se liderada pelas pessoas certas, torna-se a essência de qualquer empresa ou clube.
Nessa obra, Hughes leva-nos ao íntimo do FC Barcelona, dando sentido as tais palavras que tanto ouvimos quando do momento em que Pep alavancou novamente o clube como um dos melhores da história.
Rondo? Um ritual cultural.
Tiki-taka? Uma marca de um estilo de jogo.
Nos faz considerar muito a respeito dos nossos hábitos e daquilo que pretendemos para nossa profissão.

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C. K.

Culture influences everything

Reviewed in Germany on 9 September 2018

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A great book both for people interested in leadership as well as in football - Damian looks into the most successful years of Barcelona when Pep Guardiola took over. He describes what Pep did to get Barcelona back on track. Well written, easy to read with some reflection on the end of each chapter. Well done, great reading

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Amazon Customer

An Outstanding Insight Into Intentionally Building A Culture to Support Sustained Success

Reviewed in Canada on 17 January 2019

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For me a better and more consistent read than some of Damian Hughes' previous books, which were already very good and 'must reads'. Well broken down, illustrated and argued lessons taken from the construction and reconstruction of one of the most impressive models of sustained performance success in professional sport

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KICKCAPITALdotCOM

Excellent material and examples from the best!

Reviewed in Canada on 12 March 2019

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We are always looking to add improvements to our team culture and reading this book has identified areas that we can enhance based on experiences shared from one of the consistently top clubs in the world! Loved it!

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Kyle Reade

Not just about soccer

Reviewed in Canada on 15 January 2019

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Great read, takes you through not only one of the most successful soccer clubs in the world but also some of the best practices from every type of business. Quick read with lots of great information.

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