Creating the vision is just the beginning; aligning the organization around the team’s vision can pose an even larger challenge. In an executive briefing, consulting firm Korn Ferry, who handles many general manager searches, states
[T]he single most important element for winning in professional sports today is the alignment between ownership, the front office and the coaching staff.
Anyone who has worked for at least a medium-sized company knows that different departments often have different ways of doing things. The same is true in NFL organizations, which contain dozens of behind-the-scenes employees, all with individual minds and thoughts that may differ from whatever the boss is telling them. “I’ve always believed the biggest dysfunction in NFL buildings is an inability for the coaching staff and the scouting staff to be philosophically on the same page consistently,” opines former Raiders GM Mike Mayock. According to reporter Michael Holley, Belichick found such disturbing disconnects when he took over the Cleveland Browns in 1991:
He quickly noticed that the Browns’ pro and college scouts were not speaking the same language. There was one grading scale for evaluating the pros and an entirely different one for analyzing collegians.
Without concerted effort by the top levels of the organization to ensure various groups are communicating, it’s easy to separate into “silos” that each have their own way of doing things. This is especially a risk between the scouting and coaching groups. The coaches are worried about winning on Sunday; the college scouts are watching for next year’s draft. The coaches are in the building; the scouts are on the road, all over the country. Former Denver Broncos general manager Ted Sundquist stressed the need to align these departments, saying “I don’t want personnel trying to cram square pegs into round holes, and I don’t want to hear from the coaching staff that we’re asking them to.”
The demands of the respective positions create an inherent tension between the coaching staff, who can rarely afford to look past Sunday’s game, and the front office, which bears responsibility for the long-term future of the franchise. The general manager cannot be too reckless with long-term assets like draft picks in the pursuit of short-sighted goals, but at the same time, if the front office thinks, “we don’t care what the head coach wants, he might be gone in a year anyway,” that’s a one-way ticket to dysfunctionville— and failure.
Longtime Baltimore Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome addressed this by carving out a role as something of a liaison between the scouts and the coaching staff. Head coach Brian Billick wrote:
It didn’t take long for me to recognize the value of Ozzie’s staying at home. He was at every practice, allowing him to critique the progress of every player, young and old, and where they fit into the needs of the team. When scouts came off the road and expressed frustration that “their” young draft choice was not being used more, Ozzie was that credible source who could give them the reason, having seen the player every day and knowing exactly where he was in his development.
Few organizations have done a better job than Baltimore in marrying personnel, coaching, and player development. Newsome’s successor, Eric DeCosta, described the key to integrating these units: “It’s a little bit of give and take. The biggest thing is understanding who you are as a team, having a great relationship as a scouting staff with your coaching staff, being on the same page, and really working together to build the best team you can.”
Whether the head of football is a coach, general manager, or team president, he must take an active role in establishing processes and language so that the various departments are all aligned to the team’s vision. Otherwise that vision is barely worth that paper it’s printed on.