TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

SECRET #10

SECRET #11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Preface

• Chapter 1. Determine the Essence of the Job

• Chapter 2. Value Character

• Chapter 3. Welcome Eccentrics

• Chapter 4. Recognize That Ability is Hard to Measure

• Chapter 5. Accept That You Can't Teach Desire

• Chapter 6. Pay for Production, Not Potential

• Chapter 7. Don't Try to Fix All Your Problems With One Hire

• Chapter 8. Don't Hire by Habit

• Chapter 9. Learn to Hire Gamechangers

Preface

Every year, football fans dream that their team will draft the next Lawrence Taylor or Alan Page. Some years they are rewarded with stars, some with stiffs. The NFL drafting process is at least as sophisticated as the corporate hiring process these days, with psychological assessments, IQ tests, breakdowns of college performance and examinations of physical ability.

How can football teams and companies maximize the chances of selecting future stars? This book is an attempt to define the rules of success for talent selection in the NFL and corporate ranks.

The origins of this book are interesting. It did not require much research or interviewing, but sprung nearly fully formed based on my work and interests over the course of my career. I am an executive recruiter, a headhunter, who has spent twenty years experience consulting to advanced technology businesses on executive search, organizational design and strategy.

As for sports, I was a rabid fan in high school and college, but as the years went on found myself following sports less and less. Hockey, baseball, and college basketball each fell to the wayside. Even my NBA obsession dimmed, as the NBA draft came to resemble a High School prom. Yet my fascination with the NFL draft grew. Between recruiting calls, I found myself surfing web sites dedicated to NFL Mock Drafts and prospect evaluations several hours a week, first in the months before the draft, and after a couple of seasons, all year long.

Occasionally I would admonish myself for wasting time. Why not choose to analyze balance sheets in my spare time, like Warren Buffett? I hardly watched NFL games on TV anymore, yet was fascinated by the interplay between pre-draft projection, draft selection and career performance.

One day it hit me: trying to predict the performance of NFL prospects feels familiar because it has so much in common with my day job, helping companies hire executive talent. I specialize in searches for executives who can help companies in rapidly changing industries, particularly those attempting to leverage Information Technology for strategic advantage. The business model and/or position are often new, and predicting success is even more difficult than usual.

Football has much in common with the corporate world. Success in both results from complex plans aggressively and precisely executed. In both, it is challenging to select personnel with the appropriate balance of raw ability and accomplishment, and difficult even to conclusively define what experience is critical to success in the position. Yet mistakes are costly in both football and corporate human capital.

The corporate talent selection process has more in common with football than with baseball or basketball. As described in Moneyball, Peter Lewis’s bestseller on the Oakland A’s, a baseball player’s statistics are easier to define, lending themselves to analysis more than the human talent selection and assessment process in business, or football. The NBA is a poor analog to the corporate world, because in the NBA superstars are indispensable and rare. The concept prevalent in football and business that no one person is indispensable doesn’t apply as much in the NBA. Teams do win championships without a Shaq or Michael Jordan, but they are the exception.

Of course, there are significant differences between the NFL and business. A business career can easily span 25 to 40 years, while NFL careers are far shorter. Even stars rarely play much more than twelve years, and careers are routinely ended by injury. Using football as a metaphor for business organizations has limitations, given the violence inherent in the game, and the ruthlessness with which personnel decisions are made.

This book is about how to build champions, in football and business. The first eight chapters each focus on a critical success factor for selecting talent in the NFL and its application in business. The final chapter outlines a model for applying these principles in business to improve the efficiency, speed and results of corporate hiring.

Let's get started!

“[I’d like to play] Robin Hood…I’ve always wanted to wear a pointed green hat with a long feather in it. —Alex Karras

Knowledge workers who create, analyze, and synthesize information are central to today's global economy, and unusual creative ability is a powerful competitive advantage.

Great talents and high achievers often are eccentric people with outsized abilities, usually with outsized quirks and imperfections. They resemble a high-powered but badly wired sports car, like a 1970s Jaguar, whose electrical system was so unreliable it was nicknamed by detractors the "Prince of Darkness."

Elite talent will usually beat ordinary talent if it can only stay on the racetrack. It is pointless for the Jag (or the Jag’s supervisor) to envy the Toyota Camry for its reliability. The race car doesn't have to be as reliable as the family sedan; it will win races if it is more reliable than other race cars.

In the NFL, teamwreckers may not be worth the trouble, but talented nonconformists are. The Oakland Raiders won multiple Super Bowls by collecting talented oddballs with a deep desire to win, after they were discarded by other teams.

Two of the greatest defensive tackles in NFL history, Alex Karras and Warren Sapp (in his prime), were deeply eccentric, brash, and anti-authoritarian, while leading dominating defenses. Andy Grove represents a counterpart to them in business. Here’s evidence for all three.

Alex Karras
Alex Karras was one of the dominant defensive players of the 1960s. He was a squat, powerful, and absurdly fast defensive tackle, nicknamed "The Mad Duck" for his devastating quarterback rushes. He was thoughtful, eloquent, and funny, with the timing of a stand-up comic, yet unapologetic about occasionally cheap-shotting opponents.

Karras was a disciplined player on the field but went out of his way to play the role of rebel in public, achieving off-field notoriety when he was suspended by NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle for the 1964 season for gambling on football games (he spent the year moonlighting as a professional wrestler). Later, as an actor, he achieved fame for his role as Mongo in the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles, in which he knocked out a horse with one punch.

Warren Sapp
A 6'2", 300-pound defensive tackle, Warren Sapp was an All-American at the University of Miami, with an unusual combination of power and speed. He was the top-rated defensive tackle in the 1995 draft, but a positive test for marijuana and a reputation for wildness gave him the collar of a potential draft bust.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected Sapp with the 12th pick in the draft, based on extensive research that convinced them that he was in fact deeply dedicated to the game—and to winning. “Sapp, though a bit of a handful, was a true talent and a student of the game. He could talk at length about teams that thrived before he entered grade school, especially such dominating defenses as the Pittsburgh Steelers' “Steel Curtain,” the Minnesota Vikings “Purple People Eaters,” or the “Doomsday Defense” of the Dallas Cowboys.”

Sapp quickly became the anchor of the great Tampa Bay defense, which dominated the NFL for the next decade, and won the Super Bowl in 2003.

Andy Grove
Andy Grove is considered one of the great modern CEOs for his leadership of Intel Corporation in the 1980s and ’90s. But for much of his career he was considered an eccentric by corporate standards. In a1983 essay on Intel founder Robert Noyce, writer Tom Wolfe described how unusual the laid-back corporate culture at Intel seemed to East Coast businesspeople, and how Grove in particular dressed more like a disco dancer than Noyce’s lieutenant responsible for Intel's operations.

Secret 11: Distinguish Eccentrics from Team Wreckers
It is critical not to confuse eccentricity with dysfunction. Unfortunately, eccentrics and teamwreckers are often both resistant to authority, insisting on marching to the beat of a different drummer. How can you tell them apart?