I need to start with a confession that has absolutely nothing to do with recruitment.
I am a die-hard Arsenal fan. Have been my whole life. And this week, after seven years of following this particular journey, after the near misses and the heartbreaks and three consecutive times finishing second, Arsenal were crowned Premier League champions for the first time in 22 years.
I am not going to pretend I did not have a moment.
But here is the thing. As someone who works every day in leadership, finding it, assessing it, talking about it with some of the best operators in the ECE and OSHC sector, I have watched Mikel Arteta build something at Arsenal over these seven years that is not just a football story. It is one of the most instructive leadership case studies I have seen anywhere.
And it translates almost perfectly to running a children’s service.
Where It Started: The Mess He Walked Into
When Arteta arrived at Arsenal in December 2019, the club was 15th in the table. The dressing room was fractured. Confidence was gone. Senior players were disengaged. The fanbase, me included, had largely checked out.
He walked in young, unproven as a manager, with no guaranteed results. And the first thing he did was not tactical. It was cultural.
“If you don’t have the right culture, in the difficult moments, the tree is going to shake. My job is to convince everybody that this is how we are going to live and if you are going to be part of this organisation it has to be in these terms and in this way.”
Mikel Arteta
The Non-Negotiables
Arteta set standards. Not vague values on a wall, but actual non-negotiables. How you train. How you behave. What effort looks like. What respect sounds like. What is acceptable and what simply is not, regardless of how talented you are.
And he enforced them. Without exception.
High-profile players who did not align were moved on, regardless of ability. It cost him in the short term. It looked risky. People questioned it. In the end, it was the single most important thing he did.
“A good employee who does not align with your culture is not neutral. They are actively working against everything you are trying to build.”
The cost most leaders underestimate
In HR, we use a framework called the performance-values quadrant. You have your high performers who live your values: your stars. Your lower performers who still align: they can be coached and grown. And then there is the fourth quadrant, high performers who undermine the culture.
They are sometimes called terrorists.
It is a confronting word. But it is accurate. Because what they do is terrorise everything you are trying to build, subtly, consistently, often with a smile. They might be brilliant with children but passive-aggressive with colleagues. They might put in the hours but whisper negativity into every new educator who walks through the door. They perform on paper while quietly dismantling the culture you are working so hard to hold.
Arteta understood this instinctively. A talented player who poisons the dressing room is a net negative. Removing them, even when it feels like a risk, is usually what frees everyone else to grow.
As a Director or leader in this sector, you probably already know who this describes in your service.
The Performance-Values Quadrant
Every team has all four. The culture you build depends on what you do about each quadrant.
Where do your team members sit right now?
Low performance, high values. They care deeply and try hard. With the right support and time, these team members flourish. Invest in them.
High performance, high values. They lift everyone around them. Protect them, develop them, and never take them for granted.
Low performance, low values. Address quickly or move on. Every day you delay sends a message to your whole team about what you accept.
High performance, low values. The most dangerous person in your team. They undermine your culture while appearing to contribute. Arteta removed them. You need to as well.
Aligning the Whole Team
Here is what Arteta did not do: he did not just align the first eleven. He aligned everyone. Backroom staff. Academy players. Analysts. The kit team. The whole ecosystem.
“Then you have to convince the players and get them on board with what you are doing, and after that you can start to build. But the identity is the foundation for everything.”
Mikel Arteta
In an ECE or OSHC service, that means your casual educators matter as much as your room leaders. Your kitchen staff matter. Your admin person matters. Culture is not built in team meetings. It is built in every small interaction, every morning handover, every time a new casual walks in and sees how your permanent team behaves with each other.
The question worth asking yourself
If someone followed your team around for a full day without you there, would they see the culture you talk about? Or would they see something else? The answer to that question tells you where the real work is.
Strategy First. Patience Always.
Arteta’s second year at Arsenal? They finished eighth. His third year? Fifth. The criticism was relentless. He kept being asked the same question: why is it not working faster?
He never changed the strategy to chase short-term results. He trusted the process.
Three consecutive years finishing second. Three. I lived every single one of them. The two-point loss to City in 2023/24 nearly broke me. But it did not break him. And it did not break the team. Because the culture was strong enough to absorb the pain and come back again.
“The challenge is how to be better than the day before, than the previous game.”
Mikel Arteta
This is one of the hardest things about leading a service, especially under compliance pressures, staffing shortages, parent expectations, and the constant weight of regulatory requirements. The temptation is to react. To patch. To do whatever it takes to get through this week.
But the services with the strongest cultures, the ones consistently rated Exceeding, the ones with low turnover and high morale, almost always got there through a well-set strategy held steady even when it was uncomfortable.
- Set the strategy clearly
Where are we going? What does great look like here? What are the non-negotiables? Write it down. Say it out loud. Say it again six months later when things get hard. - Be patient with people, not with culture
People grow at different speeds. That is fine. But behaviour that undermines the culture cannot wait. Address it early, address it kindly, but address it. - Measure improvement, not perfection
Arteta did not demand Arsenal become title contenders overnight. He demanded they get better every week. That is the same energy that underpins a great QIP. Always improving, never arriving. - Celebrate progress publicly
Arsenal’s culture shifted partly because Arteta was vocal about what was working. In your service, catch people doing things right and say it out loud in front of the team. It costs nothing and builds everything.
Believe It Before You See It
This is the one I keep coming back to.
When Arteta told Arsenal in year one that they were going to be champions, they were 15th. There was no evidence for it. He was asking his players, his staff, a tired fanbase, to believe in something they could not yet see.
“Self-belief is the most powerful tool a player can have.”
Mikel Arteta
That is what great leadership requires. Not blind optimism. Not pretending the challenges are not real. But a genuine, steady conviction that the direction is right, communicated so consistently and so calmly that eventually the team starts to believe it too.
In ECE and OSHC, this plays out every day. The Director who tells her team during a hard stretch: we are not there yet, but I know exactly who we are and where we are going. The Coordinator who holds the standard when everyone is tired and understaffed. The Educational Leader who keeps championing quality programming even when she feels invisible in her own organisation.
That is Arteta energy. And it works in a school hall in Geelong the same way it works in North London.
“The team will not believe in the vision until the leader has believed in it, visibly, consistently, and through the hard moments, for long enough that it becomes real.”
Mikel Arteta
Inspiring Beyond Your Four Walls
Something else happened at Arsenal under Arteta that took a few years to notice. The external environment changed. Parents of players wanted their sons at Arsenal. Top coaches wanted to work there. Young players across the world started pointing to it as the place they wanted to be. The culture became the magnet.
“You like more the people that you work with, you believe more in them, you share some fantastic moments and that habit of winning, winning, winning. After you win, you don’t want to stop winning.”
Mikel Arteta
The same happens with services. When you build a culture that is genuinely excellent, when your team talks about work like they mean it, when your families feel it the moment they walk through the door, when your educators recommend the service to their friends, you stop having to work as hard to attract people. The culture does it for you.
Great educators do not just want a job. They want a service worth being part of. They are looking for leadership that is real, development that is genuine, a culture they are proud to show up to every day. That is the competitive advantage no job ad can manufacture. You build it, and then it pulls people toward you.
What Does This Look Like on Monday Morning?
Not a grand strategy session. Not a values workshop. Here is what it actually looks like in practice:
→ You address the behaviour in your team that you have been tolerating for too long. Kindly, directly, this week.
→ You have one honest conversation with a team member about what great looks like. Not what the policy says. What great actually looks like in your service.
→ You catch someone doing something well and say it out loud in front of the team.
→ You hold the standard when it is inconvenient. Because that is the moment that actually counts.
→ You remind yourself and your team: we are not just filling a room. We are building something worth coming to work for.
Arteta did not transform Arsenal in a week. He did it over seven years. One decision, one conversation, one non-negotiable at a time. Three times second. Years of criticism. Years of people saying they would never get over the line.
And then, this week, they did.
If that is not a leadership lesson worth carrying into your service, I do not know what is.
Come on you Gunners. 🔴⚪
At Firefly HR, this is what we look for.
We work with leaders in ECE and OSHC who are building cultures, not just filling rosters. If you are looking for your next role, or looking for a leader who gets it, we would love to talk.
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