No one is irreplaceable – but some are invaluable

On Sunday passed, in my opinion, the worst football match of the season: Arsenal vs Tottenham Hotspur at Emirates Stadium. As a Tottenham fan, I’m glad it’s over.

The North London derby is such a tense, angst-ridden affair that it’s always to be endured, never enjoyed. The pain if you lose is not compensated for by the possible euphoria of winning. Small wonder that of the past five such meetings, since we signed our super-manager Mauricio Pochettino, four have been draws. (We won the other.)

Over the years, especially the past 20 years under their manager Arsene Wenger, they (the team that begins with A, I’m not going to publish their name twice) have had the better of it against Spurs, and I recall a couple of painful 5-2 defeats at the Emirates.

So the 1-1 draw we got there was very welcome, coming after some indifferent form from us in recent matches, and leaves us in touch with the top of the league table.

Applying a bit of executive-style spreadsheet analysis to the game, there was a simple reason Spurs avoided defeat: the presence on the pitch of our two players, the forward Harry Kane and midfielder Mousa Dembele.

Harry (no relation) has scored in each of those past five games against the team that begins with A. With Mousa, the record is even more impressive: Spurs have not lost a game he has started in the past year. When they play together, the effect is magnified.

Since October last year, in the 25 games in which the two of them start, we have won 16 and lost none, a win rate of 64 per cent. When they do not start together, that rates falls to a mere 29 per cent.

Wrap them in cotton wool and tuck them up for the next game, I say. But that must be the way many corporations feel about senior, game-changing executives. In business life, and in the office, there is often that one person without whom the organisation ceases to function, or at the best functions at a much-reduced level of efficiency.

The concept has even been formalised in the business world with the idea of “key man” insurance (although, of course, it could just as easily be “key woman”), a policy taken against the risk of losing that one essential person without whom the whole thing falls apart.

In the office, it could be the department head who makes the whole thing work, or it could be a more lowly cog in the mach­ine, but still essential to its smooth running. I’m sure we all know the type: “I’m so glad X is on today, it’s going to be hectic” or “I wish X had been on, he/she would have prevented that nightmare”.

In big business, the “key man” is often the founder or founder/owner, who may or may not also be the chairman or chief executive and who is of often incalculable value. Many observers argue that Apple has never been the same since the departure and subsequent passing of ­Steve Jobs.

The question of who will replace Warren Buffett as head of Berkshire Hathaway is on the minds of fellow directors and shareholders alike; it’s hard to think of Tesla without Elon Musk, or Amazon without Jeff Bezos.

Indeed, succession planning has become a whole self-contained executive discipline.

In the long run, I suppose, nobody is irreplaceable. But some are just invaluable, like Steve, Warren, Elon, Jeff – and Harry and Mousa.

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