COVER STORY


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IT CAN BE DIFFICULT IN AN OFFICE FOR PEOPLE TO ADMIT THEY DIDN'T DO VERY WELL, OR HAVE FALLEN BELOW STANDARDS


brought to an end through injury, Neville decided to take action. “I invested in a mechanical and electrical design consultancy and that was my first business,” he said. “I sat on every single board meeting. I used to go into the office in the afternoon as footballers used to train in the morning. I really started to get the bug. I liked the idea of working in a different type of team – the team in the morning and then the team in the afternoon. “Sport and business is quite similar.


You have to motivate people; people in the office have to be happy, they have to want to come to work, there has to be a level of passion about what they do. I started to enjoy it a lot and we started to see the results. We made a little bit of profit – we were enjoying it, we were increasing our team from four people to about 12.” So did the boss of the morning team


– Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson – know about the afternoon team? That you were leaving training and going off to your other business? “No. No, no, no, no,” said Neville. “It was a secret. The idea of distraction in Sir Alex Ferguson’s world doesn’t exist. But, for me, the idea of going home in the afternoon and just sitting there seemed ridiculous. As a footballer you needed your rest but, mentally, I needed


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to be stimulated all the time. I wasn’t wired as an individual just to go home and sit there so I carried on doing things.” Now, after his first


experience in the business world at the age of 23, Neville holds directorships in more than 30 companies which employ more than 500 people. “Towards the end of my career I had multiple businesses and was on the phone all the time, sneaking into the toilets or the showers. Between the ages of 32 and 36 I’d really transitioned into business where I had hospitality and property interests. I was looking at the media, coaching and business. I knew my playing days were coming to an end so I did all my coaching badges, trained in the media and had set up businesses so I had three possible areas I knew I could pursue but I didn’t know which way I was going to go.” Even though he knew it was coming.


Neville had no doubt that the end of his playing career was going to be a shock. “I always say it’s like falling off the edge of a cliff,” he says. “You do the most incredible thing; you are walking out in front of 75,000 people; you have this adrenaline, this passion, this wonderful


thing that you are doing and, all of a sudden, you cannot do it anymore. I have seen too many people who have struggled because they hadn’t prepared for the end of their careers. They wake up three months later and say to themselves: 'I’ve got 30 years, what am I going to do'?” One area in which Neville feels


football can teach business a lesson is in peer group analysis. "It can be difficult in an office for people to admit they didn't do very well, or have fallen below standards," he explains. “Accountability is critical. In a business place, try to get to that point where people can say to a colleague: ‘I don’t think you did very well today’. People are quite sensitive and to have people stand up and say: ‘I didn’t do very well today and I need to do better’


SME 21


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