THE Wood not the trees
Sir Alex Ferguson’s approach to scouting players for Man Utd was simple
He would have a few very good scouts around the world who he trusted
As well as an incredible network of contacts he had built up over his long career
When these people saw a player they thought was an incredible talent
They told Ferguson, who would get one of his assistants to have a look
If they liked the player, he would watch them himself
Judgement would be passed quickly and decisively
And a player signed or not
It wasn’t a sophisticated or analytical approach
Information on players is said to have been written on scraps of paper
Or just kept in the heads of the few people who had seen them
It’s also a system that relied heavily on the genius of the manager
So when he retired Man Utd decided to modernise their scouting operation
And they decided to do it quickly
In little over a year they more than doubled their number of scouts around the world
Growing to a network of over 150 talent spotters
All who fed into a single database of player overviews
Hundreds of players were ranked and graded
At one point the club announced they had analysed over 800 right backs
But as they were expanding and modernising their approach
Reports emerged of them being less and less decisive
They were missing out on player after player
All of whom they had ‘extensively scouted’
One employee describes the state of affairs as having so much information
That they couldn’t see the wood for the trees
And thus never felt ready to act
In their haste to add more data and analysis to their approach
Man United replaced a recruitment system with a reporting system
But the reports are useless if they don’t enable decisive recruitment
Data is only as good as the decisions it enables
It often feels like we make this mistake in marketing
Where we collect more information than ever
But aren’t using it to be decisive and single minded
Without someone making a leap
We’re always in danger of not seeing the wood for the trees
