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Is The "New Manager Bounce" Real? | Nudge Newsletter

Published about 2 months ago • 1 min read

Do new managers give teams a "bounce"?

​Read online​

In sports, it's common to hear about the "new manager bounce".

It's an immediate improvement in performance following a change of manager.

Like most sporting clichés, it's made its way into the working world.

An old boss of mine justified a managerial replacement. by citing the need to quickly hit that quarter's KPIs.

But is the new manager bounce real?

One detailed study¹ on Polish football managers found that players initially ran faster and farther after a manager was fired.

But this was just a return to normal effort levels prior to the underperforming old manager.

Long-term results didn't improve.

A Norwegian study² compared NFL* teams that fired managers vs. those that hadn't.

Despite having similar performance declines, teams that kept their coaches actually recovered faster.

Those who fired the manager improved far more slowly.

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Turns out, replacing a manager rarely provides lasting performance gains — Phill ​

P.S. This insight is taken from Colin Fisher's great book The Collective Edge.​

¹Radzimiński, Ł., Chmura, P., Chmura, J., Kowalczuk, E., & Konefał, M. (2022). The effect of mid-season coach turnover on running match performance and match outcome in professional soccer players. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1–10.

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²Arnulf, J. K., Mathisen, J. E., & Hærem, T. (2012). Heroic leadership illusions in football teams: Rationality, decision making and noise-signal ratio in the firing of football managers. Leadership, 8(2), 169–185.

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*Norwegian Football League, not the American National Football League.

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As a behavioural science practitioner, I believe in the peak-end rule.

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Nudge Newsletter

Phill Agnew

I spend 18 hours each week turning marketing psychology into readable newsletters.

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