In his 70s prime Billy Connolly used to perform a skit called Late Call mocking the tendency of church ministers on the eponymous late evening Scottish TV programme to find connections where connections there were none: “life is like an ashtray – full of little doubts” or “life is like a tin of sardines – we’re all jammed in together and nobody can find the key”, and so on.

Though Late Call is long gone, that tendency lives on – see for example the whole industry that exists around exploiting the parallels between sport and organisational life. Some of these books are interesting (Bill Walsh’s The Score Takes Care of Itself is a fun read) but most are thin in the extreme, grasping for parallels which don’t really exist.

That all said, now that Arsene Wenger has finally announced his retirement from Arsenal after 22 years and 1215 games as manager, I think there are three salient lessons from his story.

Success breeds power. My view on organisations (and indeed any institution) is that they are all characterised by a struggle for power. By all accounts, Wenger’s initial success on the pitch and off it (his sound management of the transfer budget during the construction of their new stadium) enabled him to build such a strong power base that he was impregnable. As an example, look at his failure to bring through a strong successor – someone who could displace him from the top job.

Every leader has a shelf life. People get stale. It’s easy for a new manager to come in, shake things up and define themselves as a vibrant alternative to the outgoing management team. When you become the incumbent, things get a lot harder. Now you’re the status quo – and other people are defining themselves in opposition to you. Unless you’re able to keep projecting a fresh enthusiasm for the job at hand, it’s probably time to bring your successor in. Arsene Wenger’s peak was the European Cup Final of 2006 – that’s 12 years of decline since then.

Boards are weak but money talks. If we take the first two points together, we get a picture of Arsenal in the last five years: a strong and powerful individual delivering weak performance outcomes. The board had plenty of opportunities to do something about – after the 10-2 aggregate defeat by Bayern Munich and the failure to finish fourth last season, for example. Yet they didn’t. There’s a nice parallel here with the Barclays CEO, Jes Staley. On Friday (the same day as Wenger’s retirement was announced) it was reported that he has received an undisclosed fine from the UK regulator for his attempts to identify an internal whistleblower. This is a serious breach of governance – yet his board has taken no action against him and has recommended him for re-election at next month’s AGM. The only difference between Wenger and Staley in that in the case of the former, his under-performance had started to have negative economic effects – fans were staying away and season ticket renewals falling way. That, and only that, shook the Arsenal board into action.