Posts Tagged ‘NFL’

Thoughts on Leadership: Al Davis – The Leader behind the Silver and Black

By Gino Blefari | October 20th, 2011 0 Comments

“Just win, baby.” –Al Davis

Controversial and combative are two words often used to describe Al Davis, the principal owner of the Oakland Raiders who died Oct. 8. He was much more than that – a creator, a builder and a dedicated believer in his team. His story as he described it was a “tunnel life” focused on football.

“He was my best friend,” said former Raiders Coach John Madden. “It’s Al Davis. Al Davis doesn’t die. Just the shock of it. Even though you could see him and knew he was sick and he was failing, he is a fighter, he fights that, you know he was gonna beat it.”

Davis died a legend, even as he led a struggling organization. His Raiders, a dominant force from the mid-’60s through the mid-’80s, hadn’t recorded a winning season in 10 years. Their last Super Bowl victory occurred when he was a “mere” 54 years old. At 82, many fans and critics felt he’d lost his touch, that he had held on to his power for too long.

Davis led the Raiders for all but three of the team’s 52 seasons as coach, general manager or owner. Under this leadership, the Raiders won three Super Bowls and 15 AFC-West divisional titles. He was an ambitious and driven leader who pushed for greatness, victory and dominance. He could be abrasive and demanding, and always expected blind loyalty. His well-known catch phrase was “Don’t adjust. Just dominate.”

Davis took on the established order, attacking the NFL. He created an image of the Raiders as aggressive, nasty and powerful. He was behind the selection of a pirate logo and silver and black color scheme. Davis is also credited with hiring the first black and Hispanic head coaches in the NFL. He also recently appointed the first female CEO.

As a pro football team owner, Davis was often involved in details and decisions atypical for such a figure. This appeared to some to work poorly later in his career as he was criticized for poor personnel selection, feuding with star players, and an inability to retain head coaches. He was thought by many to be a stubborn, eccentric old man who couldn’t accept that his best leadership years had passed.

Nevertheless, as argumentative as Davis could be, his career as outlined in his New York Times obituary holds lessons for any manager looking for an example of how and how not to lead change.

Leadership lessons:·

  • Be clear in your mission. “Just win, baby!” was the Raider’s motto. Respect was not something Davis craved for his team. He wanted others to fear him, and in part it led him to design the Raider’s colors and logo.
  • Know the game. Davis played football in college and began as an assistant upon graduation. He served as an assistant to the legendary Sid Gilman who coached the San Diego Chargers and from 1963 (except for a short time in 1966 when he was commissioner of the American Football League), he was either coach or owner of the Oakland Raiders.
  • Promote talent. Al Davis was a shrewd judge of football management potential. He promoted John Madden to head coach and he piloted the Raiders to their first Super Bowl title. Such was his push for talent that Davis hired the first Hispanic coach, Tom Flores, and the first black head coach, Art Schell.
  • Stand up for what you believe. Davis was head coach of the Oakland Raiders from 1963 to 1966, but gave it up to serve as the commissioner of the American Football League, which was the upstart to the lordly National Football League. Under his watch, the AFL gathered NFL stars and drove up signing bonuses for college players.

Like all leaders Al Davis was not perfect, and very often his imperfections were more evident, but he built a sustainable football franchise and its value has only risen with the times.

“He was a pioneer,” said Jim Plunkett, who won two Super Bowls with the Raiders. “He did so many things. He was a coach, he was the commissioner of the AFL, became the owner of the Raiders and he ran that club the way he saw fit. He brought in players that everyone else was discarding, including me, and he made it work.”

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Thoughts on Leadership: Lessons from a Legendary Sports Franchise Owner

By Gino Blefari | June 9th, 2011 0 Comments

It’s been said that the most important position in a sports franchise is the owner; and I tend to agree.

My all time favorite owner that I’d like to talk about in this week’s Thoughts on Leadership is, Edward John DeBartolo Jr., an American businessman, who is perhaps best known as the former owner of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.

DeBartolo is the son of legendary entrepreneur Edward J. DeBartolo Sr., who pioneered the shopping mall concept and built some of the most well known retail landmarks in the nation. DeBartolo Jr. developed shopping malls as part of his father’s company, the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp., which became one of the largest public real estate businesses in the United States. At one point, the company controlled over 2 billion square feet of retail real estate space nationwide.

For more than six decades, the DeBartolo name has been legendary in the real estate industry. Following in his father’s footsteps, Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., has maintained the family tradition working in real estate, and has earned recognition as one of the most successful and generous owners in the history of professional sports.

Beyond his real estate background, DeBartolo was actively involved in franchise ownership and sports management. His ownership of the San Francisco 49ers proved especially notable. During his 23 years owning the 49ers, beginning in 1977, “Mr. D,” as his players call him, won an unprecedented five Super Bowls under coaches Bill Walsh and George Seifert, Super Bowl XVI, Super Bowl XIX, Super Bowl XXIII, Super Bowl XXIV, and Super Bowl XXIX. From the early 1980s through the 1990s, DeBartolo presided over a team that had the most wins in one decade in football history.

Just yesterday I met up with Dwight Clark, All-Pro Bowl wide receiver for the 49ers (1979-1987), most famous for “The Catch” on January 10, 1982. He played under the leadership of Bill Walsh and Edward DeBartolo Jr. In speaking with Clark, his admiration of DeBartolo Jr. was clear.

“He was one of us and was so good to us. He treated us all first class, but in return he had incredibly high expectations for us and made those expectations very clear to each of us. He was more like a father figure instead of an owner. We wanted to win for Eddie D.” said Clark.

DeBartolo Jr. has built his career around the same principles that helped his father make the DeBartolo name a real estate icon. He has a reputation for being one of the most passionate, well-liked figures in the league. It’s the same commitment to passionate leadership and strong relationships that has led him to success in everything he touches.

I think the strong leadership lesson in looking at a success like DeBartolo is not only the high expectations he had for his team and the passion that drove him, but also his ability to connect with the people he was leading, to motivate them and give them clear goals to work toward. This is leading from within. When you have passion that is evident and extend it to others, they will follow and succeed.

As leaders, each day is an opportunity to learn from Edward DeBartolo Jr. and ignite passion in those we lead. Each day is a chance to build on our relationships, setting expectations and igniting excitement to achieve our team goals.

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Thursday Thoughts: No Mystery to Mastery

By Gino Blefari | July 16th, 2010 0 Comments

Want to hear a secret that the world’s greatest business leaders, athletes and musicians all know and live by? Here it is:

There is no mystery to mastery. Hard work and dedication are what distinguish the masters from the masses.

Notice anything missing there? What about talent?

In his bestselling book, “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell dives into this topic of mastering a skill. He says it takes a minimum of 10,000 hours for a musician to gain mastery over an instrument. In the book, the debate is over whether talent plays a role in mastery. Is there such a thing as innate talent?

Gladwell explains:

“Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.”

Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues conducted two studies to further explore this question of talent. One study compared star violinists with good violinists and those who were unlikely to ever play professionally. The violinists who ended up in the top tier were those who had increased their practice time and who, by the age of 20, had reached a total of 10,000 hours of practice.

In the second study, Ericsson compared amateur pianists with professional pianists. The amateurs never practiced more than three hours a week. The professionals, however, steadily increased their practice every year until the age of 20 and like the violinists, had reached 10,000 hours of practice by that age.

Here’s what Gladwell noted in “Outliers” about Ericsson’s studies:

“The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any ‘naturals,’ musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of time their peers did. Nor could they find any ‘grinds,’ people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”

This appears to be the case with top athletes as well.

In his book, “The Score Takes Care of Itself,” legendary San Francisco 49er head coach Bill Walsh explains the reason behind the glorious success of Jerry Rice and Joe Montana, perhaps the greatest receiver and quarterback in NFL history:

“…they understood the absolute and direct connection between intelligently directed hard work and achieving your potential. We all do; you do; I do. Everyone who’s a serious player knows what it takes. The difference is how much you’re willing to give to get there.”

So does talent count? Sure. The point, though, is that talent is not whole game nor is it the deciding factor. And this is true not just in music or sports, but also in business.

There is no mystery to mastery. Most of us know what it is we have to do to win. It comes down to how much time you’re willing to put in to beat out the rest.

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Thursday Thoughts On Leadership: How Leaders Create Something Out of Nothing

By Gino Blefari | March 25th, 2010 0 Comments

In his book “The Score Takes Care of Itself”, Bill Walsh asks the question, “Should desperation be the primary determinant for seeking new direction, innovative solutions?” He asks this because when he found himself as the quarterbacks coach of the Cleveland Browns, in charge of an offense with no ability to run the ball and a backup quarterback with a weak arm, he had to think of something. He couldn’t change the calendar. They had to play on Sunday. They couldn’t move up the player draft and restock players. He had to face the challenge each week of figuring out how to move the ball on offense with limited options. His answer…creating a short precision pass-oriented offense that would take advantage of the entire field and five receivers, led by a quarterback, Virgil Carter, who, while not able to throw hard or very far, was extremely accurate. He created something out of nothing. The West Coast Offense.

In fact, it wasn’t really created from nothing. He was forced by circumstance to re-evaluate the situation he faced and all the assets available to him and find a solution to his problem. As he put it, “… it was created out of existing assets that only needed to be ‘seen’ and then capitalized on in new ways.” In his book, Walsh outlines four main concepts that can be used to model your own progression in any endeavor:

  1. Success doesn’t care which road you take to get to its doorstep. Walsh did not let it bother him that many traditionalists looked down at his new style. In a manly game like football, you had to run the ball. As one executive sneered, “It’s not real NFL football”, but in football as in life, we only remember the result and after a while, those naysayers had to figure out how this new offense was beating them and in fact how to copy it.
  2. Be bold. Remove fear from the unknown – that is, change – from your mind. Try new things, even if it is just a new wrinkle on the old. One of the secrets of Walsh’s offense was that he simply moved the point of attack from behind the line of scrimmage, where the defense was concentrated, to down the filed where there was only one or two defenders at most.
  3. Desperation should not drive innovation. Don’t wait until you run out of options to try new innovations. Although he installed his offense only after losing his starting quarterback. In hindsight, the team would have been better off starting the back-up and running the new offense from the start as that system ultimately proved more successful than the traditional offense they ran before the change.
  4. Be obsessive in looking for the upside in the downside. It would be a mistake to think that Walsh thought of his new offense after their starting quarterback was hurt. In fact, it was born by watching Virgil Carter in practice and on film before he knew he had to turn the offense over to him. He new that Carter did not possess a strong enough arm to make the throws the current offense called for. Because Carter was smart, agile and accurate, Walsh started to design plays that took advantage of those skills. Of course, once he became the starter, he had to change all the plays. But because he had already started to look for the upside in his backup quarterbacks limitations, he was ready.
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Thursday Thoughts on Leadership: Post-its® – why didn’t I think of that…

By Gino Blefari | February 18th, 2010 0 Comments

Opportunity often comes suddenly. Great ideas sometimes come from an unexpected place.  And every once in a long while breakthroughs emerge in a manner that makes you think, “Why did I never think about that before?”

These things can’t be forced, but good leaders know to recognize – and act – on them quickly.

Here are three examples:

#1. The Post-it ® note story

Spencer Silver, a researcher at 3M in the early 1970’s, was working to develop a strong, lightweight adhesive. He failed. His work remained on the shelf, never reaching the market.

A few years later, Arthur Fry, another 3M researcher, became frustrated that the markers he placed in his church hymnal to keep track of each Sunday’s selections kept falling out.

Then he remembered Silver’s “failed” adhesive.

Fry coated his markers with the stuff and, well, you can guess the rest. Post-it Notes® hit the market in 1980 and became an office staple.

#2. Tight end in motion

The great Forty-Niner Coach Bill Walsh tells his own “Post-it story” in his book ‘The Score Takes Care of Itself.’

It happened when Walsh was an assistant coach with the Cincinnati Bengals, in a game against the Oakland Raiders. Bob Trumpy, the Bengals tight end, mistakenly lined up on the left side of the line of scrimmage. Trumpy realized his mistake and went in motion to the right side before the ball was snapped. All hell broke loose in the Raider defense. The tight end had never gone in motion in the NFL. Three of the Raiders actually collided in the middle of the field trying to adjust to this move.

Soon every team in the NFL started putting the tight end in motion.

#3. The triplicate file

My own Post-it story came early in my career. My assistant John Thompson (yes, that John Thompson) was just out of college. He had no experience in real estate. He also did not have what we referred to in those days as a “Brag Book,” a book filled with client testimonials and listings you had sold that you brought with you to listing or buyer presentations.

So John, lacking a Brag Book, took along a triplicate file  – one of those nice looking file folders lawyers use. He would fill it with the contract and other forms used in a transaction. Although he was very inexperienced I observed sellers’ reaction to John improved simply by virtue of this rather impressive looking prop. Soon, I started inserting the triplicate file into my presentations and it was one of the biggest factors in me closing 50+ transactions in a single year.

Brian Crane, our Los Gatos Manager, refers to this as an “X Factor,” that small thing that makes a big difference.

What is your Post-it® story?

I suspect you have your own version – that moment when something that profoundly changed your life or business came unexpectedly.

Email me with your story and I may share it in future installments of this newsletter.

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What Is So Special About Leaders?

By Gino Blefari | January 5th, 2010 0 Comments

What is so special about leaders? Do we ever really stop to ask ourselves this question? There are a million different responses, but consider this one … they bring out the best in us. Leaders recognize what is possible before we do. They recognize the potential in an individual and perhaps more importantly, they know how to bring it to the surface.

Consider, Joe Montana. We all know how his story ends, but do you know how it started? As a freshman at Notre Dame in 1974, Montana was the seventh string quarterback. The following year Dan Devine, the newly hired coach stated to his wife after being impressed by Montana’s performance during training: “I’m gonna start Joe Montana in the final spring game.”  When she replied, “Who’s Joe Montana?” Devine said: “He’s the guy who’s going to feed our family for the next few years.” Today we all recognize what Dan Devine recognized in that spring training game in 1975. It is a difficult task to find six better quarterbacks in the history of football than Joe Montana, much less on one college football team. It took a leader with vision to see that.

Montana did go on to have a very good college career at a highly regarded college program, yet when he entered the NFL draft in 1979 he was once again overlooked. He was selected in the third round by the San Francisco Forty-Niners because Bill Walsh, like Dan Devine before him, recognized the potential that everyone else missed.

Walsh knew that in Montana he had found the perfect understudy to lead his team and execute his plans. As Montana related years later in the foreword to the book, The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership, “He (Walsh) had in his mind this ideal – an image of perfect football – couple with the nuts-and-bolts details of how to accomplish it, which he then taught … the place you dreamed of but didn’t know you could reach? Bill Walsh taught me how to reach it. He taught all of us how to reach it.”

I do not have any doubts that Montana believed he could make it in the NFL, but having a leader like Walsh who believed he could be one of the best ever played a vital role in Montana achieving that status. When others see potential in our abilities and they believe in us, and they reinforce that belief every day through their interactions with us, we are strongly influenced by that support. Our Chairman, Bob Moles played that role for me. If the potential exists within us, it will come out when a leader takes the time to bring us along.

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