#2 Michael Lombardi: Leadership on the Field

New England Patriots Coach Michael Lombardi and I discuss the four aspects of leadership, high stakes decision making, creating a winning culture at work and at home and much more. Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Thank you for calling New England Patriots. How may I direct your call?

• 0:04Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to The Knowledge Project. I'm your host Shane Parrish. I'm the author of the Farnum Street Blog, a website dedicated to mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. In The Knowledge Project, I host guests from a wide range of disciplines to better expand our minds and challenge our thinking. The guest on this episode is Michael Lombardi. Michael is the former general manager of the Cleveland Browns and current member of the coaching staff on the New England Patriots. He's widely regarded as one of the shrewdest evaluators of people in the NFL. And as we'll see in our conversation, a lot more goes into that than just measuring talent. Among other things, we explore the four elements of leadership, decision-making, game plans, and the role of systems and processes. Alright, so let's delve in. Where did your passion for football start?

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I think a lot of times, your passion grows from what you see. And as a kid growing up in New Jersey, and watching a guy with the same last name as you on a sideline achieve such notoriety and such success and become an idol, that, you know, his dreams and his path really became my dreams and something that I really wanted to become. Only because it was the same last name and it looked like he could have been at any one of my family reunions, I thought that. And so, you know, I just really got passionate about learning about him, learning about his life, about what he tried to do, and that set me on the path of football.

• 1:25Shane Parrish?

  That's Vince Lombardi, right?

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:27Shane Parrish?

  So, how did you translate that passion into, like, what was your first job in the NFL, I guess, or in football?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Well, you know, you start out and so you study the game and you play. I played at football at Hofstra. Before I graduated, I wanted to learn about football. So during my whole collegiate career as a player and a student at Hofstra, I would, in the winter, I would travel to these coaching clinics all over the Northeast corridor, whether one would be in Atlantic City, or, you know, North Jersey, or even Connecticut, or anywhere. I would go and sit down there and listen to coaches speak, pay the $40 fee, and go and spend three days listening to coaches speak about football. Learn football. So from doing that in college, I knew that my path to get to coaching

• 2:15Speaker 02

  or being involved in football required me to become a graduate assistant, continue my learning process at a school, basically getting the donuts, getting the coffee, you know, doing whatever you had to do. And so from those clinics, I was fortunate enough to meet a man named Harvey Hyde, who had just happened to become the head coach at the University of Las Vegas. He took a liking to me and he offered me a tremendously high paying job, but no money, as many bird and coupons as I had. And I went out there and started working and learning. Actually, I don't think I was working. I think I was learning. There's a fine line between work, producing work and learning. And I think that I was in the learning stages. There wasn't a lot of production of work, other than getting his car cleaned and picking up his dry cleaning.

• 2:56Shane Parrish?

  What's the learning curve like? Maybe you can take me behind the scenes a little bit in terms of what goes on.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  And that's a great question. I think that football is a unique sport. It's a sport that is similar to chess, that it requires the studying of prior games, prior moves, prior errors, to really understand where you are. And if you don't have a sense of all the games that have been played and you don't have that, it's a sport that you just can't come fly into and feel like you have a really great grasp of it. And so you have to really study the game from the single wing and to the T formation until the passing game and the running game. And so that education became really important to me. I understand the game, understanding how it works and the football element of it. And I think that's really what I did at those clinics. I learned the basics, you know, I could understand

• 3:47Speaker 02

  it, you know. And football's a game where, I tell this to people all the time from doing television, is you can play, you know, the offensive line in football, but you only play offense. In baseball, you play offense and defense. In basketball, you play offense and defense. In hockey, you play offense and defense. And so in football, you only play one side. So you do miss some elements of the entire game. Now, the quarterbacks are fortunate because they seem to know the entire game. And perhaps tight ends can because they block and catch and do all that. So you really have to force yourself to learn the entire game. And the only way to do that is by studying it in a complete manner. And that's what I try to do.

• 4:24Shane Parrish?

  How does that work with specialization? From my point of view, I mean, I don't see inside of NFL organizations. You have position coaches. How much does the role of the entire game play into what you're trying to accomplish as a coach and leader? And then your specific job? I mean, how much speciality is there? And then how do you broaden that?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Well, I think that's really the great question is, is the NFL is on the job training. So you get the job, you have to continue your education while you're here. And you can't really spend a lot of time on the continuation because the season's so busy. And I remember reading this years ago in Henry Kissinger's memoirs. He said, you know, when you come to Washington, you borrow the intellectual power you bring and you can't renew it once you're here. And I think a lot of that, that statement that Kissinger talked about in terms of Washington related to the NFL. You're in the league, you're learning the league. You really have to find avenues and time spent to study it and continually grow within it. Because if you don't, it'll pass you by as you're in it. And the last thing you want to be is a little bit old fashioned in the league.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  You don't want to be doing something that was done four years ago because it no longer works today. And so you have to constantly work at it. And your time is your only real element that you can challenge. And you have to make sure you use your time wisely. I mean, there's a, there's an element of kindergarten in this too, that you have to do it. So that's, that's kind of what we try to do is we try to spend as much time studying as we can and really try to grow from it.

• 5:47Shane Parrish?

  What would you say is the difference between a good coach and a bad coach?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Okay, I think the key here, now we're going to fall into the lines of leadership. I think coaching is leadership. So it really comes down to the four elements of leadership. Most great coaches have at least three of the four and they don't succeed if they don't. And so the elements of leadership is management of attention, which means you have a plan. Most coaches have to have a plan. The management of meaning, meaning you can explain your plan clearly and concisely and communicate it to the players or to the people you're leading. The management of trust, the players trust you to be consistent within yourself and within the people you're leading so that you don't have double standards. I mean, it's one thing to be a really hard, tough coach, but you're going to have to be hard. Tough on everybody, you just can't pick and choose. And then the management itself, which is probably the hardest area is to be self critical of when you make a mistake or when you do something that's not effective.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  You have to be able and honest to say, you know what, I made a mistake here. I need to correct that. And so when you have those four areas, then you become a better coach. And I think that's really the fine line. Coaching is leadership. Coaching is teaching. It isn't just a separate issue. It isn't just a separate singular vocation. It's truly about being a good leader, about being a good teacher. And if you have those two qualities, you certainly can become a successful coach.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  It's me, the

• 7:04Speaker 03

  We don't need the jingle twice.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights and rental cars.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Fine. No one deals more deals than Please stop. Touche. Priceline.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Tic Tac. Lace up and get your game on because the Tic Tac lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper Tic Tac. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mints. And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big. Try Dr. Pepper Tic Tac today.

• 7:53Shane Parrish?

  How much do you think that the role of leadership is the individual versus the system they put in place?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  You know, the system is a byproduct of management of attention. So it falls right into leadership. So the leadership is the system gets their attention. Bill Walsh introduces the West Coast offense to the San Francisco 49ers in 1979. It's the system, but really that was the that grabbed the attention. And then his ability to explain his system to them, captured and then propelled his leadership even further. So I think they go hand in hand. If you don't have a system or you don't have a belief. Of what you want to become as a team, as a leader, as a head coach, then it becomes very difficult for you to communicate that to the players. And then all of a sudden, you become an independent contractor and you have a bunch of independent contractors working for you. If the head coach doesn't come in with a philosophy and understanding and he has to set the contract all that out, then it's going to be very difficult for

• 8:44Speaker 02

  him to sustain leadership over a long period of time.

• 8:47Shane Parrish?

  Does that happen a lot?

• 8:48Speaker 02

  It happens all the time. We're in an industry of specialization, you know, so if you're a defensive coach, you want to hire the best offensive coordinator you can and when you become a head coach. And, you know, what we've learned is, is the guys that have had involvement in all areas of the football team as head coaches typically become the better head coaches.

• 9:05Shane Parrish?

  Do you just want to go out and hire the best coach? Or do you want to hire the best person that fits in with what you're trying to accomplish? And how do you kind of distinguish between that? And I guess on a player's sense, it becomes the talent versus fitting into the schemes and the systems that you're trying to use.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Let's take the players first. You can play third base for the Mets and get traded to the Yankees and you could have played the day game for the Mets and you could play the night game and play third base for the Yankees and you wouldn't miss a beat. But in the NFL, you could play offensive line for the Denver Broncos and you could get traded to the Cleveland Patriots. And those two line techniques and fundamentals and requirements that go within the fabric of the position are probably going to be very, very different. And therefore, it'd be very difficult for you to transition and play. So, systems and how systems relate in the NFL are really very important. And you have to draft players that can fit within the system and then you can develop the skills from the system. And I think that's one of Coach Wallace's greatest strengths was he was able to set a system in place, drafted players that fit the system, and then he

• 10:04Speaker 02

  developed those skills within the system. And that's why oftentimes, you'll see players that played well for the 49ers back in their day or played well for the Patriots, that may have gone somewhere else and have not played as well because perhaps it isn't the player's fault. Perhaps the system doesn't fit as well to the player's strengths. So, from a player's standpoint, that's really important. And from a coaching standpoint as a general manager, you know, you want the organization to have a philosophy that transcends time and understands. What we're trying to accomplish, it can't be on just a very narrow focus. It has to be a 10,000 feet view of what you want the organization to be and how you want it to react and how it's going to behave over time. And those standards and those beliefs and principles have to be time-tested.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  And then when they are, they can sustain any bump in the road and you can overcome it without having to dramatically change. There's a difference between change and modify. And I think you see the great organizations that have adapted to the change of believing by rules, have been able to modify their systems and play. And then oftentimes we see teams that haven't been successful and they change completely every two years and they're always wondering when they're going to catch it.

• 11:09Shane Parrish?

  When you're drafting a player, for instance, do you spend an equal amount of time on their pure physical talent? Like, how do you even determine if they'd fit into a system?

• 11:19Speaker 02

  It's what Coach Walsh used to talk about, scouting inside out, not outside in. So you know what you want as a football team. You know, the draft, it's a huge event, but it's really a very singular operation because if you focus on what you need and what you really want, and then you search for players that fit those needs and fit those wants, it becomes a lot easier. I'll often say the FBI doesn't start searching for serial killers by opening up the phone book. They have a profile on everything that they're looking for that might lead them to their suspect. And it's the same in scouting. Scouting's not about finding players, scouting's about eliminating players. And so when you have standards and you have requirements and you have beliefs in your system and player and things that you must have within your system, then you search for players that fit the criteria and you eliminate ones that don't. And that doesn't mean they can't go on to be great players, it just means that they

• 12:04Speaker 02

  don't fit what you do or how you want to play. That's part of the scouting process. And that's why it's very important as a general manager or director of player personnel is to really understand the coaching, what's being taught, the systems that are in place. Because when you do that, then it becomes a lot easier to find players that fit within the system.

• 12:21Shane Parrish?

  Is that why a lot of the coaches seem to work for people who they've worked for in the past? Like, when you're hiring a coach, for instance, because you have that sort of relationship with them already?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  You know, you have a philosophical belief in understanding, and so you have a relationship that's predicated on how you view the game. Football's different in that there's a lot of different styles of how to play, whether it's the 49ers' West Coast offense, or whether it's the Giants on your Bill Parcells and the power run game with, you know, Barry throwing the ball and Phil Simms as the quarterback 15 times a game. To the Miami Dolphins and their run game, to the K gun in Buffalo where they threw it all the time. So there's a lot of different ways to win. So what happens is, which the way you feel most comfortable with, usually those are your friends. Those are the people that you become friendly with because you see the game the same way, and it's like you should have conversations. I think that's why you see a lot of that.

• 13:07Shane Parrish?

  So how do you avoid surrounding yourself by kind of group thinking?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Nobody's thinking, yeah, that's right. That's the old saying. If we're all thinking alike, then no one's thinking. I think that's the challenge. And I think that that's where you have to stay on the cutting edge, and you have to be willing to be curious about what's going on in the league, and you have to be curious to understand that you need to modify and you need to adapt to the rules and find different ways to solve the problem. I mean, divergent thinking certainly plays an effect here. And so if you can be divergent in thought, then I think you can achieve what you what you need to achieve. But that divergency in your thought becomes much problematic in the NFL, because you've been successful, and so why would you get away from something that's been successful? When I first got to the Raiders, and, you know, we won two Super Bowls using the yellow legal pad, you know, the computer age was coming at. So if you don't change, you know, you're going

• 13:52Speaker 02

  to get... I used to have a sign in my office that said, if you're Eric Sheninsky of the United States Army, if you don't like change, you're going to make your relevance even less. And I think that that happens to be true. And so you have to force yourself to change, but change not saying, okay, one year we're going to throw the ball 70 times, the next year we're going to run it, throw it 12. Change within the the rules and how you're but fits to within the philosophy of who you are.

• 14:13Shane Parrish?

  So I think it would be fair to say the Patriots have adopted, in the Bill Belichick era, fairly well to change. Why do you think that that is? What what gives them sort of the ability to do that, whereas other teams don't seem to adopt as well?

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Well, I think that's who Bill is. I mean, Bill's very adaptable in terms of that as a coach. You know, I mean, from the time he was at the Giants to in Cleveland, he's always believed in instead of asking the question, instead of trying to play the game the way he wants to play it, the question is always asked, what it's going to take for us to win the game, how do we have to play it? And then you have to have a system in place that can play a lot of different ways. And I think that's why he's so successful. I mean, you've seen that the Patriots have won. I mean, this year, we were the only team in the NFL history to throw the ball over 50 times, twice, and won both games. And that's rare to do in a playoff game. But yeah, we did it. We did it well. So he's adapted to change. He's very good about understanding what it takes to play by the rules. And I think that that's part of the secret to his success as a leader. I mean, it all starts with his

• 15:10Speaker 02

  leadership ability and his understanding of how to lead.

• 15:13Shane Parrish?

  So you determine, I would imagine, through video and other evidence, you know, that you want to attack a certain weakness on another team. You identify a weakness and that's what you want to exploit. I'm coming from an outsider's point of view, but that's why you end up throwing the ball 50 times. Is that right?

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, look, you know, the way the rules are in the league, they also make throwing the ball more friendly. Back in that early 60s, when the offensive linemen could use their hands and they had to stick their elbow to out come pass protect. I mean, that wasn't an easy thing to do. Bart Starr got sacked at it nine times in the ice ball. Excuse me, I can talk radio if Bart Starr would have been sacked nine times in a playoff game. He had Hall of Fame offensive linemen in front of him, Forrest Gregg and Jerry Kramer's not in the Hall of Fame, but clearly there was a lot of great fuzzy thirst in those guys that had renowned names in front of them, but yet he was sacked a bunch by the Cowboys. So as the rules change, and what makes something a lot easier to do, throwing the ball, and then you have to adapt your team into that. And so you certainly look at a team's strengths and weaknesses, and you can accurately evaluate

• 16:11Speaker 02

  them. And then you have to have a team that can play right or left handed, meaning that they can adapt to the style that it's going to require you to play to beat them. And that's really what happens to most good teams. Good teams that win and advance, whether it's in secretly at basketball, it's in the NBA, is they can play different styles and still effectively win the game. But you can only play one style, and you have to play that style to win. You gotta be very fortunate and very lucky to maintain that and hit the right opponent all the time, or else, you know, it's going to get bad.

• 16:39Shane Parrish?

  You adopt week to week with the Patriots, right? Different game plans for different teams. How does that manifest itself in practice?

• 16:45Speaker 02

  You know, when we say that we were different, we are different, but we don't change the scheme. You know, we might emphasize something different when we're playing the Miami Dolphins as opposed if you're playing the Jets from one week to the next week. But it's in that emphasis or what that modification might be for that week becomes the emphasis of that week of practice. So it keeps the players fresher too in terms of, hey, this is what we're going to need to do this week to win the game. And if we can't, we're not going to win.

• 17:08Shane Parrish?

  How hard is it to keep the players engaged generally? I mean, I would imagine there's a ton of ego going on and the me first versus team first. How does that translate into the practice field and the leadership of the coaches?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  I think being part of success is more important than being personally indispensable. And I think that's really the creed here. I think everybody here plays a part. It's important and you know, nobody's more important as a team, you know, it's a team element here. It's very important to be reminded of the team. It's just not one person able to drive the engine. I think we all play a part in helping to build an organization and you can't get too caught up in how big a part or which is, as Bill would say very eloquently, every single day, just do your job. Your job is defined and you do it.

• 17:52Shane Parrish?

  I would imagine that you guys focus on process and not necessarily outcome, but competitive sports is the ultimate kind of outcome sport. How do you keep that focus on the process?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  I mean, again, it starts with the head coach. I mean, head ball, he focuses on is making sure you do the things that's going to take you to win. It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a lot of time on Wednesday worrying about what happened last week. You can only control what you can control, which is moving forward, which is the next week's game and making sure that you do all the things you have to do to prepare yourself to play that week. So the focus in the NFL is pretty sobering because it's always a game the next week. I mean, you don't have time to spend worrying about what happened the week before, win or lose.

• 18:30Shane Parrish?

  So when do you go back? Kind of at the end of the season to look back?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  You do it ongoing. I think that's the key question on most Mondays is why did you win or why did you lose? And if you can accurately answer those two, then you should keep doing the things that answer you why you won and you should try to figure out the things you need to do to stop you from losing. And I think that that self-reflection every Monday is the most important thing you could do.

• 18:51Shane Parrish?

  Starting Monday, can you give me a brief overview of kind of what the weekly game prep is like from a coaching point of view?

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Well, you know, from coaching, Monday mornings are spent on reviewing the game of the week before in three different areas. I mean, football's game of players, coaching, and team. It isn't just players fault that something happened or a coaching fault that something happened or a scheme fault. There's an element that has to be evaluated and all three. And so you spend most of the morning evaluating that, whether it's to personnel people. Whether it's the coaches, the head coach, so you spend most of the morning. And then, once you're done that, you can come up with a consensus on happen positively, negatively, or what needs to improve here if you want. Then you build the next week and start preparing and studying for the test that's going to happen on Sunday. And that test preparation starts on Monday afternoon. It goes all through Tuesday.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  And then the coaches spend Monday and Tuesday working on that. And then they get ready for practice on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as they prepare their team to practice things that they believe the way the game is going to go and how it's going to have to be played. And then Saturday is more of a reflection, kind of review, study, and then Sunday we play the game. And it just keeps repeating itself. And you have to make sure you break the game down and understand how you want to play it, what you want to do, and move on from there.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  It's me, the

• 20:09Speaker 03

  We don't need the jingle twice.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app. Fine. No one deals more deals than Please stop. Touche. Priceline.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Tic Tac. Lace up and get your game on because the Tic Tac lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper Tic Tac. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mints. And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  Score big. Try Dr. Pepper Tic Tac today.

• 20:57Shane Parrish?

  What role does technology play in all of this? From a decision-making point of view, from the coaches, from a input into how we practice?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's changed everything. I mean, look, the instantaneous ability to evaluate tape has done that. We've gone from, you know, we were on 60 millimeter tape. I mean, my day, I, the great Lloyd Gilbert, who was a guy who worked at the 49ers, we would have to wait for him to come back from Walt Torup's photo lab to bring the 16 millimeter tape back to watch practice. So the instantaneous ability to look That practice and tape allows you to evaluate the game and evaluate and study it. So there's more instant reflection and you can prepare. And so that allows you to get better and improve your technology and improve. So the video alone, I mean, you could sit in your office and pretty much watch every single game in the NFL if you want. Back in the day, you were just really subjected to your exchange of the tape from the opponent.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  But this really makes it so now you have more information at your fingertips, which is great, but it also requires you to understand what is urgent and what is important within that information. You have to be able to decipher that. You put your time and resources in those areas.

• 22:02Shane Parrish?

  So you're getting a lot more information than you used to have. Do you think the ability to filter that information becomes more important?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I think you have to be able to understand what's urgent and what's important and you have to study it.

• 22:12Shane Parrish?

  Would you say most of that is kind of intuition from a coaching perspective?

• 22:16Speaker 02

  A little bit. I think it's depending on who you're playing this week and how you handle that week and what you need to do for the week.

• 22:21Shane Parrish?

  From a broader technology perspective, do you see teams trying different things to do with technology or is everybody kind of just doing the same thing and doing more of it now?

• 22:31Speaker 02

  I think every team has different ways of handling it. It certainly hasn't worked for every team, but I'm sure every team's different. The team understands the value of having more information and how you discern the information is is critical. So I would assume that everybody has their own way of doing it and how they get it done and what they're doing is what makes them successful and maybe what does it. I mean, it's it really comes down to does it affect it on the field and does it help the field? And I think that's really what what's the great measure you stick.

• 22:57Shane Parrish?

  How do you think the role of evaluating players has changed? I mean, everybody's familiar in baseball with the Moneyball story and Billy Beane and the Oakland A's and kind of coming at it from a different approach. Can you give us any insight without revealing too much about maybe how that's changed over the course of your career in the NFL?

• 23:14Speaker 02

  When I first got in the league, you know, we were all subjected to 16 millimeter tape and you had to go to the college to really watch it. Nobody had it in their office. The college scouting was really a hands-on, on-campus job and you took the projector into the school, you sat there, you hoped they had 16 millimeter tape available for you. You got to watch it. You rolled it. If the tape was broken, you spliced it back together again and you put it back and you wrote your notes and you watched those three games and you wrote your reports. And now today, if you can sit in your office and watch Ohio State play Maryland this year and you can watch them play Illinois and you can watch them play Alabama and you can watch Ohio State play everybody without having to leave your office. And so you tend to view more tape, but now when you're not on campus and you're not

• 23:57Speaker 02

  about able to watch the players practicing around them as much, there's an element that you lose that perhaps you don't see how players, what his work habits are, what he does. So as much as you gain more information via the tape, you perhaps lose more information from the ability to be on campus, get the coaches, talk to them and have coaches available. You adapt to it, you study tape, but it's again, it's just one piece of the puzzle. So you have to go and try to evaluate the character. I would say today, character evaluation is probably more difficult than the actual film evaluation of a player.

• 24:31Shane Parrish?

  How do you go about doing that?

• 24:32Speaker 02

  It's challenging and it measures the good drafts and the bad drafts ultimately, like just making sure that you really know the player. The object of scouting is to know more about the player before you get them than after you get them. And so it's very difficult sometimes to do that because you're limited on how many times you can be on campus by the rules of the school. You're limited to who talks, who doesn't, where are you getting information from? And so it's very, very, very difficult to get that. So you just have to really work hard and to become more diligent and become a more time-consuming job than it was in the past.

• 25:05Shane Parrish?

  What percentage of time would you say that you're surprised by the player coming in and it doesn't line up either positively or negatively with what you had assumed kind of pre-draft?

• 25:15Speaker 02

  I think that's ongoing. I think when you can do that, there's a negative to a player not being what you wanted when you get them. But the positive is that helps you force you to evaluate your own system and see if you can get that back in a check and find out why do you miss that? So it does serve a purpose if you use it as a purpose. But I think it's ongoing and I think it shifts constantly. Character evaluation is going to be an ongoing evaluation and it's going to continue to shift.

• 25:37Shane Parrish?

  And putting them into a system, I would imagine, has a big influence, especially coming at rate out of school.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Right. And then exposing them to more money, exposing them to freedom, exposing them to responsibility. A lot of colleges are very good at making sure the players are taken care of in terms of their class schedules and they have people there that the support staff could do that. But when you're a professional athlete, the support staff isn't as large or isn't as available too.

• 26:02Shane Parrish?

  So you're more on your own in the NFL, I guess, then?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Well, it's a job. I mean, it's a job. I mean, always holding your hand. In college, you're a college student. You know, you have to go to class. You have academic advisory and you've got all sorts of different structures that are in place for you that can help you.

• 26:16Shane Parrish?

  And that's a big adjustment for players, I would imagine. So you've had the opportunity to work with Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, some amazing, amazing coaches, Hall of Fame coaches. What would you say is the common themes between them?

• 26:27Speaker 02

  They're both head coaches and they both believed in a philosophy, offensively, defensively, and in the kicking game. And they coached that way within the philosophy and they led the coaches to adhere to those philosophies. And I think that's what really separates them from everyone else that, you know, you can possibly see. And so they just didn't, and Coach Walsh called plays, but he still had a hand in the defense. George Seifert was the defense coordinator, but it was Bill's intellectual stimulation that challenged yours to become the kind of coach he became. So I think that that's the commonality between them. They're both head coaches. They both understand, both had all three elements of the game when it takes to win. And they both understand how to build an organization that adheres to that.

• 27:09Shane Parrish?

  What is the role of the head coach? Is it more to instill a philosophy and allow autonomy in terms of those coaches? Or is it more to push back? Or is it more authoritative? Or the styles vary, but what tends to work better?

• 27:21Speaker 02

  I think there's a fine line. I think coaches want to be able to do their job. They want to be able to adhere to, have, whether their expectations within the job. And there's the fine line, you know, it's the head coach's responsibility to make sure that things are being done the way he wants them to be done. And so their gray area, that always is constantly, you go back and forth on them. Because you get more comfortable as a head coach, you get more comfortable with the people around you. They kind of know what you want and they know, and you know how they operate. And so that becomes a lot easier to deal with. Tony Dungy, Tom Moore's was office coordinator for so many years. And it just becomes a comfort. Because I think people know what they want and it's very challenging.

• 27:56Shane Parrish?

  That's really interesting, but I mean, I'm coming back to kind of what we talked about earlier, about being exposed to new ideas and new thinking and that comfort level probably doesn't necessarily encourage that.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  But I think what happens is, you know, loss is staggering in the NFL. And so when you spend time studying why you lost and what you need to do to fix that, that forces you to get out of comfort and perhaps understand what it takes to win.

• 28:21Shane Parrish?

  How do you go about doing that? I mean, that must be humbling in so many ways in a league full of egos.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  You know, I think you have to be really critically honest with yourself. And I think you have to understand that the mistakes you make, if you don't correct them, they're going to bite you again. And I think you have to be really honest with that. And if you can, then you'll correct them and grow and move on. It's what you hope for is they don't get you fired because ultimately in this league, and if you make any mistakes, you're going to get fired and you're not going to grow from them. But I think if you read Pete Carroll's book about the success he had, I think a lot of it was attributed to his self-analysis of what he felt like didn't happen correctly for him, whether it was at the chance from New England. So when he became the head coach at USC, I think he was very self-aware and that self-aware allowed him to build a program at USC and it's allowed him to continue to program there.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  So if you're not, again, management itself, if you're not good in that area, it's going to affect your leadership.

• 29:14Shane Parrish?

  The environment plays a big role too, I would imagine.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Sure, you know, like in an organization with the owner's stability and confidence and those are the things that are very important. And that allows you to develop your job, develop your craft and work at it.

• 29:27Shane Parrish?

  Switching gears a little bit here, what would you say that you've learned from coaching and being in the NFL that you've applied to being a parent?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Well, I think the number one thing would be that you, you know, coaching isn't criticism. So you have to always convey to your children that you're not, you know, you're trying to help them, they're not criticizing them. And that's a fine balance, whether it's coaching players or whether it's talking to your children. Your criticism is really in coaching, you're not being critical of them as people. So you can break down that barrier where they'll take information and knowing that your goals... Your objectives are pure for their own success and you have much more success with your players and with your children.

• 30:02Shane Parrish?

  So there's three questions I usually ask at the end of these interviews and we'll go from there. So what book has most influenced your thinking?

• 30:10Speaker 02

  You know, different parts of your life are always changed by what you read. I mean, you know, as you grow and you adapt your life, I think you learn more about yourself and about what you need to improve on, about other people. And so I would say Life and Times of RFK by Evan Thomas is one of the books that I think, you know, when you learn about the struggles, the overcoming, you know, that kind of thing. I think those are great. When Pride Still Mattered by David Maranis was really a good book about Vincent Bardi. I think those books are really influential. You know, early in my career, I think anything you can get your hands on, Frank the Ford story about Bob Knight in Sports Illustrated, which was a runner at the run. It was an interesting analysis of the man and who he was and what he was trying to accomplish. I think those are impactful in your life.

• 30:54Shane Parrish?

  That just spurred kind of another question. You kind of mentioned that books are contextual with where you're at in your life and how they influence you. How much of leadership do you think is contextual?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  I think leadership is all about that and I think principles don't change. You know, Bobby Kennedy used to tell his children around the dinner table that guide your life with principles, not ambition. I think it's a great lesson for all of us to learn. I mean, I'm sure we've all made it. I know I have. At times where ambition becomes better than you. And so when you are in a leadership position, you have to constantly remind yourself of the principles that you're leading and don't let the other effects in your life kind of take away from it.

• 31:31Shane Parrish?

  So do you think a lot of leadership can be taught then?

• 31:33Speaker 02

  I think it can be developed and I think there's a level to where not everybody is going to be the greatest leader, but there's elements of leadership that need to be taught. So there's a difference between a manager and a leader. You know, managers do things right, leaders do the right thing. And so that fine line is always the balance. That's essentially what leaders are. They do the right thing. Managers do things right. And so you can't teach people what the right thing is to do, but they can do it well. But they'll do what you tell them to do. I think that that's a great.

• 32:04Shane Parrish?

  That's a really good distinction there. What book is on your nightstand right now?

• 32:08Speaker 02

  I just, In the Middle of the Wright Brothers by David McCullough.

• 32:11Shane Parrish?

  Are you enjoying it?

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating that their imagination and their curiosity to put something in the air with no real equipment and, and just a vision is really remarkable. I mean, the imagination it requires in the bicycle shop owners, they can repair things, their drive, their ambition and their thought. I mean, you know, they, I'm at the part of the book where the French wanted to buy the plane and become partners with them. And the Wright brothers were smart enough to realize that they weren't going to sell their, their ideas out. They were going to make sure that they held on to them and that they weren't looking for partners. They were looking for people that wanted to buy the plane, not a partner. It's a story of, of how their willingness to fail allowed them to succeed.

• 32:53Shane Parrish?

  That's a great lesson. And last question, you know what I'm trying to accomplish with Farnham Street and the Knowledge Project? Who else do you think I should interview?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Well, if you could get to Bill Clinton, I think Bill Clinton features something every single day about a, a myriad of subjects. That every time he's on the television, you stop and you listen and you think, wow, you've learned something. And for whatever he was explaining to you, whether it's North Korea and the nuclear arms program, or whether it's Katie and his involvement in the Clinton initiative. I think once you get past the politics, when you listen to the core of the world he's teaching, yeah, I think those are, are valuable lessons that I think you could never forget. I think the life of a writer, I think, you know, the, the John Irving, the, the, the Robert Carrows, the, the people that, that go into a room every single day and spend time on a thousand words,

• 33:40Speaker 02

  how they craft those words, I think are powerful lessons for all of us that live a life about a process, not about a result. And I think if you can become a writer, and still it's in as Robert Caro, who's only written four books, five books, four of them about Lyndon Johnson, one of them about Robert Moses, and how the diligence and a work ethic to continue his process in his eighties is remarkable. So I think anytime you can get a writer on there, I think you crave to learn about that and, and how they feel about their job. And, and you know, I think anytime you can find people out of how they work is always beneficial to me. And that's one of the reasons I read your site continuously.

• 34:18Shane Parrish?

  The Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parrish.