Biscuits with the Boss

What happens to an organization the moment its strongest personality walks out the door? This series, Lessons From a Fictional Football Club, turns to Ted Lasso as an unlikely case study, treating it as a structural experiment in what actually holds an organization together under pressure, versus what was just one person's charisma wearing a disguise. Across this series, I'll pull leadership lessons from specific scenes, ground them in research where it exists, and close with structural reads through the Loadmap framework, all in service of one question worth asking about your own team: when you leave the room, what keeps running?

I’m beginning to think that every one of these needs to have ‘spoiler alert’ every few sentences.  If you don’t want spoilers, perhaps don’t read this series?

You’ve been warned.

Every morning, a pink box appears on the team owner’s (Rebecca’s) desk. No spoilers there, but the next line has one. The coach bakes biscuits for her himself the night before. He sets the box down, chats for a minute about nothing in particular, and leaves. From the start, she wants none of it, and yet he does it the next morning, and the morning after that, and every working morning for the rest of the season.

She never asked for biscuits. And she didn’t want Lasso either. She hired a guy who had never watched or played soccer to run her English football club, planning on having him fired and the team demoted by spring. The biscuits arrive anyway, coupled with a little small talk, and no big asks. 

The show develops their relationship box by box. She starts by tolerating the ritual, then accepting and expecting. Eventually she looks forward to it. Months later, when she finally needs to say something meaningful and difficult, that conversation is possible because Coach had literally shown up and been there for her every... damn... day. The boxes paved the path that made it possible.

Anyone can be generous once, particularly if they want something in return. Frequency plus consistency over time is something more. Do the same selfless thing hundreds of times and the sense that the gift comes with a cost or obligation goes away.

A single generous act tells you almost nothing about a person... anyone can do that, especially when they want something. Repetition is more difficult, and harder to resist. Sociologists call it the norm of reciprocity - coined by Alvin Gouldner, I’ve just learned - and Gouldner’s own writing points back to Cicero, who wrote, “There is no duty more indispensable than that of returning a kindness. All men distrust one forgetful of a benefit.” 

Receiving help creates a feeling of obligation in every culture and society that’s been studied. But these biscuits are even more powerful, because Coach never overtly calls it in. Receiving help creates obligation, but when nothing is asked in return - it’s doing something more.  

Look at it cynically. Being kind because you want something is a bribe dressed up in good manners. Look at who the show keeps putting in front of Rebecca throughout the first season... Rupert, her ex-husband and the team’s former owner. A man who oozes calculated reciprocity from his pores. If he gives you something, he damn well expects to  have the ‘favor’ returned. And clearly Rebecca can tell the difference. Transactional kindness comes with a real cost for anyone who accepts it, and reduces the value of what was offered. The biscuits deposits are invaluable because the repayment demand never comes. 

If you think this is undefinable and squishy, think again. Boiled down to its most basic components, it’s math.

Trust = Σᵢ [Observed Alignmentᵢ × Observation Weightᵢ × Recency Decayᵢ]

My own eyes glazed over just typing it. But that’s fine. It’s what the math represents that’s important.

Trust, in the way this series will keep using the word, is a record... everything the other person has watched you do, weighted by how often and how recently. It accumulates the way the biscuits did, or it doesn’t exist. Which means the system that produces trust in an organization is repetition, small and daily, and a leader who relies on charisma to generate it is running the allstar-led play from the last post at small scale. The last post was about a team that collapsed because nothing underneath the winning ever changed. This post is about what’s actually underneath. The things a leader is proudest of, the rituals and ways of working the rest of this series covers, all of them have to be built on something. That thing is basically just trust.

Given a specific situation, I can count this person, team, or organization to respond in a small set of predictable ways. 

The drill this week is the biscuits. Pick someone above or beside you, someone with whom the working relationship isn’t horrible, but also isn’t great. Start a small daily deposit: a piece of useful information, a two-line check-in, whatever fits, as long as it costs you something small and asks for nothing back. The nothing-asked rule is the point. Judge the result after thirty days. Don’t even think about it before then. Compounding results aren’t visible until they’ve established momentum. 

Set a calendar event each day so you remember to get your touch in. And an alarm at the end of the month to ask yourself what’s changed.

I’m still working out how to describe the thread running throughout this developing series, but here’s what I’m seeing right now. The way our organizations operate creates culture, whether intended or not. That culture carries load - making the organization better or worse at managing whatever is thrown at it. Every structure needs a foundation before any of the good parts can do anything meaningful and lasting.

I often talk about awareness as being the foundation, and still think it applies, but mixed in with that awareness - and perhaps the result of it - is trust. You can’t pour trust or awareness during a crisis. If you haven’t put in the work beforehand then you’ll be unable to see what the problem is, and without the support you need to fix it. You can only withdraw what was deposited before the crisis started - during the long and boring between times when nothing seems at stake.

A change made inside a trusted relationship has an opportunity to stand. The same change made into a cold one usually doesn’t. It’s true between people, and within or between organizations.

This is where the biscuits become more than food. Each box is proving repeated, observable alignment. If Ted says he’s there, then he is there. He acts like the relationship matters before the relationship gives him anything back.

That may be the reason Rebecca quickly learns to  tell the difference between him and Rupert. Rupert gives in order to get something return. Ted just gives, and lets the evidence represent the value.

And evidence is what trust is made of.

Organizations aren’t much different. The method isn’t complicated, but it’s rare. Show up before the crisis. Tell the truth before you have no other choice. Admit the miss while it is still small. Then do it again tomorrow. And again after that.

I’m beginning to think that we shouldn’t worry so much about whether people like us. In business and life it seems like it’s healthier to focus on whether they have enough evidence that they’re willing to rely on us (for things we’re capable of) when that reliance could cost them something. 

I don’t know many leaders who look at things this way. Most (including me) tend to try to borrow trust in the moment when they need it most, then are surprised when no one takes out their wallet. Trust doesn’t work that way. You can’t invoice people for biscuits you never baked.

So, tomorrow, bake some proverbial biscuits and see where the next thirty days takes you. I’d love to hear how it goes.

Lessons from a Fictional Football Club is a series of unofficial analysis and commentary. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Apple, Warner Bros., or anyone connected with the television series Ted Lasso. Loadmap is the framework I think with in these posts. Loadmap, by Tate Linden, is offered exclusively by Stokefire.

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