The more I look around the world, the more aware I become of how vital a role culture plays in the success or failure of organizations and entire societies. Physical assets such as human and natural resources, money, and other forms of wealth are essential ingredients for organizational and social development. But there is abundant evidence across the globe to show that without the proper culture to serve as a driving force, almost nothing else matters.

Due to the multitude of ethnicities in the rather complex world we live in, it is quite difficult to determine what constitutes “proper culture.” Nevertheless, there are some universal principles that should apply everywhere. A culture that is formed around the values of honesty, discipline, hard work, excellence, humility, empathy, and accountability is one that should have global appeal.

This ideal culture is also one of the most difficult things to create in any organization or society. It almost always requires a strong, competent, and respected leader who sets the tone from the top. But the problem is that such individuals are extremely rare. The most prosperous nations and organizations happen to be those that, at some points in their histories, have been lucky to have that kind of leadership.

The complexion of societies changes over time as new generations of people are born or introduced into them. Therefore, having that leadership luck at some juncture is never enough by itself. Once the desired culture has been established, it has to be carefully nurtured and woven so tightly into the social fabric that it won’t easily fray over time. Without that, when the architects eventually exit the scene, cultural erosion tends to occur, leaving organizations and societies floundering and unrecognizable from their previously glorious selves. There is no better illustration of this than the story of Manchester United Football Club and its legendary former manager, Sir Alex Ferguson.

Manchester United was a struggling team in the English soccer league when Ferguson was brought in as manager in 1986. Through his disciplined management style, demand for excellence, and a combination of determination and humility that he instilled in his players, he turned Manchester United into the most successful club in England, and one of the very best in Europe. By the time he retired in 2013, he had won 38 trophies with the club. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in June 1999, days after his team beat the giant German club Bayern Munich in dramatic fashion to win the European Champions League trophy. It was arguably Ferguson’s most famous victory. Manchester United trailed by a single goal for much of the game before scoring two quick-fire goals in the last two minutes of injury time to beat Bayern.

In my memoir, The Boy from Boadua, I wrote about the mentality that I developed from playing and watching soccer as a young boy. That acquired character played a huge role in helping me overcome some of the many obstacles I faced in my youth. Naturally, I became an ardent follower of Sir Alex’s Manchester United throughout the 1990s and 2000s because of their intensely passionate way of playing.

As Bayern Munich found out painfully in that 1999 final, Manchester United under Sir Alex were most dangerous when they were down by a goal or two in the dying minutes of a match. Their will to win was so strong that the pressure they applied on teams in those moments caused panic and mistakes within the opposition. More often than not, they tied or won such games with essentially the last kicks.

Sir Alex had so much faith in his players that he viewed time as his greatest asset during matches. As a game clock wound down, he was often seen standing near touchline officials and pointing at his watch to them to ensure that the referee was keeping accurate time. Seconds mattered greatly to him. He would then make the same gesture to his players, conveying the sense of urgency to them. His tactics, and the winning results they so often yielded, led one opposition manager to quip that “Manchester United are never beaten. They just run out of time.” His point was that on the rare occasions that they lost, it wasn’t due to lack of trying.

Manchester United team performances went downhill rather quickly after Sir Alex retired in 2013. The club hasn’t won the English Premier League title since then. Failure to be crowned domestic champions for such a long period of time would have been unthinkable when he was in charge. The post-Ferguson teams have often played in a disjointed fashion and with insufficiency of passion that have mystified lots of people in England and across the world.

The club has always been one of the wealthiest in the world so the trophy drought is not due to lack of investment. Since Sir Alex’s departure, Manchester United has reportedly spent nearly $1.9 billion (in current dollars) on player acquisitions, and has hired a succession of some of the game’s best known managers. But on-field success remains elusive.

Most observers have attributed Manchester United’s lackluster performances in the last decade to a broken culture at the club. Sir Alex was one of those rare leaders who deftly wielded both “soft” and “hard” power and used that aura of competence to get the best out of his players. He was a strict disciplinarian, but his man-management skills were said to be unparalleled. An old-school coach, those who played for him said he ceaselessly emphasized adherence to the basics and doing them well. He was also known to abhor flamboyance, and was unafraid to part ways with players who didn’t strictly abide by the club’s culture, even if they were superstars.

Rio Ferdinand, a club legend who played for twelve years under Sir Alex and retired in 2014, recently revealed his reaction to an incident he witnessed a few years ago. With Manchester United sitting in sixth position in the Premier League, something unthinkable in the Sir Alex era, Ferdinand saw a video of two of the team’s younger players dancing in the dressing room after a game. He was so shocked by it that he called his former teammate Wayne Rooney, also a club legend, who was still playing and was then captain of the team. Ferdinand asked him how he was allowing that behavior to go on in the dressing room. Rooney’s reply: “You can’t say nothing man, it’s not the same anymore.” He added: “It’s not just those two, there would be a big group looking at me like I’m mad if I said anything.” Rooney’s point was that something was broken at the club.

According to Ferdinand, in his days at the club, they were so used to winning that even a single loss was considered a crisis. After a defeat, senior members of the squad would call a players-only meeting for the team to do a post-mortem to figure out what went wrong and discuss how to fix whatever needed to be addressed. Such was Sir Alex’s influence on his players. They not only demanded excellence of themselves, but also accountability. They knew what to do even without the boss saying anything. That is the mark of a true leader who has successfully set the tone from the top. It is no wonder that after he retired, Harvard Business School, of all places, hired Sir Alex to teach a course on leadership to its students.

As the current struggles of Manchester United demonstrate, there is never a guarantee that an excellent culture, once created, will automatically endure. The other lesson is that it is extremely difficult to fix a broken culture. For those reasons, any organization or society that has had the good fortune to be led at some point by a Sir Alex-type figure should never take life for granted. I know one prosperous but dangerously complacent nation that should be heeding that advice right now.