How Cliff Illig helped Kansas City become ‘America’s soccer capital’ | Opinion
On the tomb of English architect Sir Christopher Wren, the inscription reads, “If you seek his monuments, look around you.”
Kansas City began hosting World Cup matches this week, the smallest of 16 host cities. We also boast the largest number of base camps: Argentina, England, Algeria and the Netherlands. As The Wall Street Journal wrote, Kansas City is working to become “America’s soccer capital."
As the world turns its attention to Kansas City, too few will fully appreciate that a principal architect of this moment is the quiet entrepreneur, Cliff Illig.
As Kansas Citians know, Illig and the late Neal Patterson co-founded Cerner Corporation, taking it from a picnic table idea in Loose Park to a Fortune 500 category leader.
Soccer, for its part, came later. In 2006, Lamar Hunt reached out to Illig and Patterson as Hunt was thinking through the long-term plan for Major League Soccer (MLS). The league was struggling and the Kansas City team needed local ownership and renewed life. The entrepreneurs stepped into the void.
A new vision, a new team name, and new kit followed. In 2011, a new stadium opened to rave review. When I walked into the stadium for the first game, and marveled at the Illig attention to detail, Patterson said to me, “This one is Cliff’s opus.” Illig was just getting started. Today, he’s a principal owner of Sporting KC.
With Sporting KC on solid footing, Illig, Patterson, Clark Hunt and others turned their sights to the transformative potential of the World Cup. Their initial 2010 shot to host the 2022 World Cup missed wide. Then, in 2018, the 2026 bid found the net.
Success, of course, has a thousand fathers. But in Kansas City’s climb we can see a leadership playbook for future regional efforts:
- Paint the future. Illig argues that every great company begins with the right “vivid description of future state.” He brought that mindset to soccer. As others started to call Kansas City the soccer capital of America, Illig looked beyond just the U.S. soccer of today to the World Cup of tomorrow. From that shared canvas of future state, leaders convinced FIFA and then four national teams to make Kansas City a World Cup centerpiece this summer.
- Show me. In the early days of Cerner, Patterson and Illig struggled to help hospital leaders see the value of integrated electronic medical records. They needed, Illig believed, to show clients physically how Cerner software could transform their delivery of care. In the FIFA bid process and base camp discussions, Illig and Cerner veteran Alan Dietrich put that “Show-Me” formula to work. FIFA and the teams could imagine being in Kansas City because they showed them — with clever details from kids passing soccer balls at the facilities to massive plates of burnt ends.
- Embrace the complexity. Illig contends: “Everything is hard until you understand it. Once you understand it, nothing is hard.” The big, important stuff is complex. Once you have a shared vision and help people imagine that future, you must get clarity and alignment on the intricate details required to win.
From stadiums to streetcars to 18th & Vine Jazz District renovations, success requires a vivid description of the future, showing people what that vision can look like, and embracing complexity so you can manage it. These leadership principles are a regional road map for the next set of generational memories beyond the World Cup.
And so, in the weeks ahead, “look around you.” The monuments that anchor this miraculous moment bear the leadership imprint of Cliff Illig. He is the quiet entrepreneur who helped put Kansas City at the center of the soccer world.
Donald Trigg is chief executive office of Veradigm. He has spent two decades in health care information technology, including as president of Cerner Corporation. He is co-author of the book “The New Health Economy”.
