April 01, 2023 | Read Online

'What Assets Do I Have that I'm Not Using?'

The Daily Coach talked to co-founder and former NFL General Manager Michael Lombardi about how leaders can better develop a vision, identify prospects and draw creative inspiration from artists.

Coaches, scouts and executives are methodically evaluating prospects and conducting interviews in advance of the NFL Draft later this month.

But despite their extensive research and painstaking efforts, plenty of poor selections will be made.

Why?

Because NFL executives, like so many leaders across other industries, often fail to establish criteria and standards for those they want to bring in — and as a result, do a poor job in vetting talent.

For this week's Saturday Blueprint, The Daily Coach talked to co-founder and former NFL General Manager Michael Lombardi about how leaders can better develop a vision, identify prospects and draw creative inspiration from artists.

This interview has been condensed and edited for brevity.

Mike, you have some interesting thoughts on why leaders often misevaluate or overlook talent. What do they get wrong a lot?

The most important thing in acquiring talent, whether it’s in the office, on the field, on the court, is to know what you’re looking for. If you know what you’re looking for, the search begins inside-out, not outside-in. But you can’t find talent until you know what you’re looking for. I learned from Bill Walsh that you have to begin inside-out and first have an idea of what you’re looking for.

In your NFL front office career, how did you go about finding appropriate fits?

In business, it can come down to simply “We want somebody who’s really good in these four areas.” In Cleveland, when we wanted to hire people, we set a criteria. We wanted people who came from a military background, Air Force, Navy. Or we wanted someone who had been trained in high school or college and taught Jesuit, not from a religious standpoint but from a writing and communication perspective. You find that niche and what fits your profile. Instead of searching the world, you eliminate before selecting.

Can leaders get too consumed with fitting their system and overlook talent?

It’s interesting. There are two kinds of ways of doing this. Picasso, for example, would take time and really lay out everything he was going to paint in detail before he actually painted. Cezanne would just start painting and adapt as he went along. Both approaches can work.

When you’re trying to find talent and you find unique talent, you can’t be so restricted that you can only run one system. You can say, “Well, what are you looking for?” Yeah, but sometimes you find what you’re looking for and they’re better than what you thought, and you have to be open to that and be able to highlight that.

Bill Walsh always had a note attached to his desk that said, “What assets do I have that I’m not using?”

How do talent and character go hand in hand?

I think a lot of the misjudgment of talent is really a misjudgment of character. As Belichick says, “Talent is the floor. Character is the ceiling.” If you don’t have great character to go along with your talent, it’s really hard. When you’re hiring, you have to really make sure the character matches the talent.

What else has caught your eye in leadership recently?

I just finished the book by Malcolm Gladwell on Paul Simon. I think as leaders, we have to read about people who create. Leading is often viewed one way and creativity another, but I think a leader’s ability to create is what makes him or her more impactful.

Peter Kaufman, the CEO of Glenair, used to tell me all the time: “Read more books about artists and musicians. They have to constantly create.” It really helps them. And I think it’s the same thing with leaders.

Q&A Resources

Michael Lombardi ― Twitter | Instagram | Book: Gridiron Genius