32 Thoughts: The Podcast - Reorganizing Your Organization

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Jeff and Elliotte are joined by Mike Forde, Executive Chairman at Sportsology — a company that advises sports franchises on talent management and the creation of high-performance cultures. They discuss his scope of work in world sport (particularly in hockey, soccer and basketball), understanding the needs of an ownership group, their process in finding inefficiencies within an organizational structure, and some of the challenges that come with managing expectations in multilingual environments.Here is the article Elliotte talked about from The RingerThis podcast is produced and mixed by Amil Delic, and hosted by Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman.The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Sports & Media or any affiliates

welcome once again to 32 thoughts the podcast as always the show is brought to you by the all-new gmc at4 lineup and elliot today on the podcast we will be joined by the executive chairman of sports ology mike ford someone who very much behind the scenes in a lot of ways is a pretty influential guy and a really creative and innovative thinker as well a lot of ways. He's a pretty influential guy and a really creative and innovative thinker as well. A lot of different parts in this conversation that we recorded on Monday morning. First of all, how did you come across the name Mike Ford initially? Jeff, the last time New Jersey did its GM search where Tom Fitzgerald was promoted and given the full-time job, I had heard rumors that they had used some kind of a

search firm or looked for some help. And that was partially true. It wasn't that they in particular hired anyone. We now know, and you'll hear from it in the conversation, that the organization as a whole, Harris Bootser Entertainment, which also owns the 76ers, for example, Crystal Palace, the soccer team over in the Premier League, for example, they had hired Sportsology to just kind of look at their overall business. And I made a note about it and wanted to pursue it. And I just didn't get a chance to really pursue it and act on it at the time. And now I was having this conversation this week with someone that how difficult is it, do you think it's going to be to hire now in the NHL? All of these teams, as they make changes,

some of them for hockey reasons and some of them not you're going to be looking at things and saying boy i can't afford to be wrong and somebody reminded me of sportsology and they said remember this group that you know you were kind of asking about a couple of years ago well here's this article and they sent me the ringer article that I sent you and Amal, and we'll put that in the show notes. So everybody's familiar with that. And they said, this is someone you should really familiarize yourself with. So, you know, normally in the NHL, the league office has a lot of control over these kinds

of hirings. And I don't think that's going to change a ton, but I do think that you're going to see some teams say, you know what, we need to take an external look at things. And an organization like Sportsology is going to be one of those that gets consulted. You know, you and I have talked about this a couple of different times as well, whether you're the Chicago Blackhawks or you're the Anaheim Ducks or really any other team that's looking to make changes in their organization, we're at a point now, agree or disagree, where you can't afford to make a bad decision, specifically when it's something that you can control,

whether it's doing background checks, whether it's, you know, looking at, you know, the, the right candidate, instead of just deferring to someone that's done it before and crossing your fingers and hoping that it works out. I mean, these are, we've talked about this before. These are very, very prestigious organizations worth a lot of money. And it seems as if, and not to sound too frivolous when I say this, a lot of the hiring decisions that have been made probably haven't gone through the most sophisticated process. Elliot, would you agree or disagree with that? I would agree with that in the overall grand scheme of the world.

I think about some of the processes of how I'm hearing companies hire people now. I mean, there's always an interview process. There's always a process where you have to sell yourself. You know, for example, I was talking to somebody about the Maple Leafs and the amount of people they talked to for the position that Spencer Carberry got hired for and just how many people the Maple Leafs spoke to and the process how they went about that and I think that on that level I do think they do a lot of things to try to say who's the best person out there but it's not like things get expanded beyond quote unquote, the obvious circles. And also I really do wonder how much of a background check and those kinds of things people do. I think a lot of times that someone gets hired, it's about, okay, what's your hockey plan? There's not necessarily a lot about

what's your overall philosophy, organizational operating plan? And that's what a person like Mike Ford is about. I think you're almost wasting your time with him, and people will hear him talk about it and say, who should we have as our GM? He's talking about overall organizational philosophy. And I think in hockey for a long time, the owners have been kind of hands-off on that. No, no, no.

This is the way it gets done. And we leave our hockey person to handle all of this. And I just can't help but wonder about everything that we're going through right now. And look, no one's perfect. We all have our issues, right? But there's a difference between some of the issues that we all have as people and obviously some of the issues that we're seeing right now. And all of that has to be addressed. And that's why I wonder if we're at a point now where these teams are going to say, we have to look at this differently because the way we were doing it, it clearly wasn't working as well as it needed to be.

I want to get to the interview here. Elliot, it's safe to say you enjoyed this as much as I did. When this conversation was over, I remember saying to myself, that's one of my favorite podcasts that we've done. We really hope you enjoy it. This is really educating and enlightening as well. And it's a different

perspective and a different way to think, as Elliot just mentioned a second ago, about transforming human capital, I suppose is one way to put it. This is Mike Ford, Executive Chairman at Sportsology, a consulting firm for sporting teams. And as I, first of all, Mike, thanks so much for doing the podcast today. What you do in wide brushstrokes is internal analysis of sports organizations. That is one sentence. I'm sure you can color that in a lot more than I can. Mike, what is it that you do in your own words? Definitely. Thanks so much, first of all, for the kind invitation to join you. I'll give you a little bit of my background. I spent 15 years in front office in European

soccer, a couple of teams. One was a team called Bolton, one was a team called Chelsea and enjoyed a really interesting journey there to get to this business which we created back in start 2014 but essentially at the heart guys we're an advisory an advisory business that works with federations team owners private equity firms in this sort of new 2.0 world of professional sport over the last sort of five to seven years where the demand for professionalizing the demand for high levels of talent demands for different ways of thinking have sort of blown the doors off really so at the heart

of what we do 78 of our clients is a b2b relationship with direct with the owner or the ownership group and in there we go through different phases of transformation it might be reimagining strategy reimagining the front office reimagining the type of people that could work for that franchise it might be reimagining a target operating model or different processes it could be reimagining anything to do with data and technology so we find ourselves in a very unique position a very privileged position as this as the world of sports changed dramatically on the team front. To play across the global landscape, we're operational in five continents,

working at any one time with nine different sports at any particular time. And we find ourselves in a nice sort of, as we call a Switzerland view of the world, where we can look at a lot of different ways of how teams and how federations operate on a daily basis. So the way we found out about you, Mike, was I was sent an article from the ringer and the title was called the NBA's GM Kingmaker. And there's a picture of, it's an illustration, it doesn't show you, it's an illustration of someone with a basketball in their hands and it spins and he's almost in the position of an oracle.

Now, I know there's no way you would portray yourself as such, but there is no question that people see your influence and other firms' influence in sports now, especially outside of hockey, finding new organizational structures. And it seems pretty clear that a lot of people are seriously committed to hiring firms like yours to look at their organizations. It's very kind of you to sort of illustrate us in that way. I would say, you know, as we've grown the business, we've grown it very much from a point of curiosity, Elliot, in the sense of, you know, not coming with the answers. And that doesn't mean that you're not accountable for the things that you offer up as suggestions or roadmaps and that.

But the world of sports is changing every day. And, you know, we talk about other industries and the quantum shift in operating models and types of people and that. And I think there's been isolated cases in sports. And I use examples like you just referenced the NBA. The NBA has gone through a paradigm shift in the way it operates and the type of people who are running them teams, even in the space of three years, it's done it. And I think a lot of that's driven by sometimes the external forces and the pressures to grow as a global sport like the NBA is, like European soccer is.

But also the curiosity and the profiles and the backgrounds of some of the owners that are now coming into sports like the NBA, whether it's Steve Ballmer from the tech, whether it's Ted Leonsis from his AOL background, whether it's the private equity guys or financial services like Josh Harris, David Blitzer, they're coming into this world asking different questions, expecting different answers. And I prepared to challenge the status quo. We found ourselves, whether it's on the human

capital executive search, which is really an output of transformation, or it's about how can we reimagine how we operate on a day-to-day basis. They're coming with a, not hamstrung by the past, Elliot, is probably the best way, and they're curious about how they grow. But I think there's been some interesting new people come into the leadership roles at the level of ownership that are now on a critical mass forcing a different way of thinking. I'm curious about that a bit more.

What kinds of, I don't know if new ideas is the right phrase, but what kinds of shifts have you seen since you started doing this? What maybe has become more valued than maybe was before? I'm kind of curious about the shifts that you've seen in terms of the way teams organize themselves or organizations organize themselves. Yeah, I think it's a great question. You know, one of the things that operationally we try and do is, you know, we play an interesting role at the center of the change. And that's less about coming with the latest piece of wearable tech or face recognition technology that allows a player to see whether

he wants to go left or right. Okay. First of all, it's about suspending judgment. You know, if you look at transformation on a human capital side within front offices, a lot of the time is people have a difficult time, Elliot, suspending judgment and suspending time. So what I mean by that, if you go to the NFL, which is obviously in the heart of the season now, the average time to hire is about 17 days, okay, for a head coach or a GM. And in 17 days, it's pretty impossible to sort of suspend judgment, do a deep dive, learn from best practices, next practices, etc. And then come out the other side. So what happens is people go, I want to move past move past x individual i think i'm going to take some time and then they get pushed into this next thing which is to go to a super bowl winning

program and find the number two okay and i hope by osmosis that that creates success there so that's often been the the go-to model and some of them if you're a head coach in the nfl there's time pressure to build a management team or to build a coaching team, find the coordinators, et cetera. But when you start going into front offices, you have actually more time than you think is what our experiences are. So the first thing is, can you just allow the owners to take a deep breath? Okay. So not listen to the media, not listen to agents, not listen to other executives to say you have to hire someone in three days and then start to be curious about what's out there. What are the different sports? Now I use an example that's been written about publicly and you know the work

that we did with ted leonce who i think is a game-changing owner in world sport and he took 127 days to go through interviewing over 80 people from different sports different backgrounds just to understand what the future could look like before he decided on the front office of the future and that. And not everyone has the luxury of that time, but they certainly have time. And one of the things that we'll do is just trying to encourage ownership groups,

stop, stand still. Don't think that there's a unicorn at the end of this, it's one person who's gonna radically change the future of your franchise. That it's probably gonna be built around several people in the brains trust, and then several people, including the cognitive diversity of people, might come from someone from soccer, going to be built around several people in the brains trust and then several people including the cognitive diversity and people might come from someone from soccer someone from baseball

someone from the nba someone from outside the world of sport that when you put them together it gives us a different deliverable and different capacity so we've seen different organizations globally take that plunge elliot and we've seen some great results as a function of that. And great results are different ways of working, different processes that also can lead to a different level of output on the field or on the court or on the ice. I want to ask you, Mike, about owners. And again, this will be a wide brush question here, but we've talked about this before. Owners don't amass their wealth by owning sports teams. They become wealthy and then they buy sports teams for various reasons.

In your experience, how much do owners actually know about the sports that they have bought into? I think, again, it depends individual by individual. The great thing about global sport now, it's very public. It's, you know, you can access a lot of, you know, reading material, games, et cetera. So people can build a pattern section of their knowledge of the sport. But, you know, when it's like when an assistant GM becomes a GM or an assistant coach becomes a head coach, you can only know so much by reading or researching. It's only when you get the keys in whatever that design is that you really start to understand it. But I've seen ownership groups around the world.

I'll give you an example in the world of soccer. John Henry, Mike Gordon, who were in Liverpool, obviously done tremendously well in the Red Sox, came in to didn't know anything about soccer, but applied a knowledge of global sport and applied good operating principles to get transformational success, right? That we see on a regular basis.

Now, do they need to know the nuances of the sport? Yeah, it helps, but sometimes they create confirmation bias that are not beneficial to actually creating a new operating model because they have a view of the world that may be timestamped or not accurate. So I think a healthy understanding of the nuances of the world from that may be time stamped or not accurate so i think a healthy understanding of the nuances and the of the sport is helpful but it's not mission critical for future success what you are looking for is sensible disciplined patient owners who are prepared to understand and learn about the sport to become better owners you know we don't want same day

owners a guy who owns a team or a lady who owns a team day one and they think and operate 10 years later in the same way we want them to be learning owners as we talk about in our business so how do we help them in a non-patronizing way educate themselves about the sport and the nuances and where they can find competitive advantage because there's no doubt there is no doubt good owners are a huge competitive advantage for a franchise in the attraction of talent and the retention talent, in the relationship in the community, etc. Good owners are a huge competitive advantage on every level for every franchise. I'm going to ask you about a couple owners in the NHL a bit later because I know you've done some work with them.

But one of the things I wanted to ask you about was I've heard that one of the things you do discuss is bring people in, you kind of alluded to it there, bring people in who don't necessarily know anything about your sport or your previous process. And for example, I saw a posting last night for a Mets job. And in the writing, it said said you don't need to know anything about baseball for a long time in hockey that has been sacrilege but I understand that's one of the kinds of things you look to to say you need to have people who see things differently would that be correct yeah I think Elliot I think it's a very a very good observation. And again, let's qualify this. Do I think there's a baseball president who could run an NBA team at a leadership level? Yeah, I do. I absolutely do. I think there's a leading NFL person who could create value at a leadership level in European soccer. the mechanics of the job are very similar, right? You know, you're building teams, you know, you're hiring people, you're managing a process and you're managing up with owners,

you're managing the media. There's a lot of similarities. Now there is sort of thunderbolt moments in every calendar year in each sport where you are required to have contextual knowledge that creates competitive advantage. But I do believe that building this cognitive diversity into the management is really important. So if we had 10 people, do we want the top four ranked people

to be from outside that sport? Probably a bridge too far, but could we add one or two people into them for leadership roles that have got experience in potentially another sector or potentially another sport or within the ecosystem of sport? Absolutely. But the challenge is this this is biased i think which is unless you know and have put the time in unless you grind it around the league that you

can't add value and that is that is not true in our experience in our view because we've seen people move between sports we've seen people come from outside of sport and come in and add huge value can you walk us through what your process is? Random NHL team calls you, look, we're thinking about making a change at the managerial level, Mike. Can you walk us through what you do after you take that phone call,

negotiate your business side of the operation and then get to work when you roll up your sleeves? How does that work? Can you walk us through that? Yeah, sure. I think the first thing on that is understanding that people change is only part of the solution. It's easy to go, hey, listen, things are not working. It must be a people breakdown.

People ultimately execute a business model and a process. So one of our tried and tested confirmation bias that we always protect ourselves is like, be a people breakdown okay people ultimately execute a business model and a process and so one of our tried and tested you know confirmation bias that we always protect ourselves is like i just assume there's really good work going on every franchise or federation that we work on but maybe there's some system process failure somewhere either communication's not right or organization's not right or the flow of dissemination of content is not quite right or in them big moments where we have to make there's not enough of the flow of dissemination of content is not quite right or in them big moments where we have to make there's not enough of the right people in there or the

right skill sets in there or we talk about this cognitive diversity of have we got the right sort of third angles on it. So I always go in or we always go in and assume there's really good work going. That helps also disarm everyone too to be involved in the process that you're not coming in doing some kind of tax audit, that you're here to help people get better so coming from a position of empathy there disarming everyone in the building allows everyone to sort of think listen i can be a part of the growth there it doesn't have to be wider spread change and in many of our projects we're about you know there's no people hired we could go in and say, this is about realigning these three people,

promoting someone from a position, opening a better channel of communication, implementing these processes. No people come in. Now, that's our position. Now, we're not trying to be a search business. A search and all our contracts are actually an advisory piece of work with the assumption that there may be some people who get hired or none at all. So starting from that position of growth that a lot of teams you know there's no uh correlation between headcount where you finish in the front office right you know there's teams that have

have the biggest headcount missed the playoffs the teams are the smallest headcount make the playoffs right so we know that the volume of people is not significant the key is can we get them people aligned can we get them people aligned? Can we get them understanding where the competitive drivers are? And can we build processes to do it? And that might mean no new people come in, guys. So starting from that world allows everyone to sort of, everyone's got an A coming into the class,

and you kind of lose it based upon the quality of your answers over time. One of the things that interests me the most is that you have found in the past, like there's a big debate right now, especially in hockey, the eye test versus the numbers, scouting versus analytics. And you have found in the past,

if you hire a leader who is eye test, or if you hire a leader who is analytics based, it doesn't guarantee you anything. What guarantees you success is not necessarily who you hire and what they believe, but the process that they create. That correct? Yeah, no, I think I think that's absolutely right. And this is the challenge of the world of sporting. And you know, I don't know enough about the NHL on a day to day basis. But if you go to global global sport and there's this index towards, hey, we want a general manager or someone in a leadership position

who can pick talent in this kind of mercurial sort of God-given way, right? And then we index the other way, which is this super smart person, you know, MIT trained, who's going to work through all these numbers in a kind of beautiful mind type movie scene and unearth this incredible player, right? What we have learned over time is that it's really the combination of them things. And the person who sits above it, who can garner all that information, who has credibility in this case with the scouts, maybe who can understand that in the keyword, credibility in this case with the scouts maybe who can understand that and the keyword translate the information from the data person

Which is what Billy being Billy beam is not a mathematician by his own son But Billy being in moneyball was a translator of the information that allowed everyone from The bench coach through to the owner to understand what was going on and how we make a decision The new leadership roles are coming up are these people who can translate this spectrum of qualities in the in the front office and then inform ownership about the best direction to go you know so we've seen it go one way or the other and you often see that in restructures hey we had an analytics led leadership person and the next hire they go they swing the pendulum completely the other way and what we're saying is actually the leadership person who sits there has to be kind of an adult mentality who can pull all this information together and give the business, this $2 billion asset, the best decision based upon all the resources we've got to go forward. Can I pick up on that a little bit as well?

I'm curious. I'm curious, in your mind, can you share with our listeners what some of the better or necessary managerial traits any executive should have in sports? What are the absolute must-haves? Yeah, so I think the ability to communicate is a key one because communication then comes, the ability to garner information at a head of department level, the ability to manage upwards or be liaised with ownership, the ability to communicate a sense of direction or an author and that. So very difficult without that high level of communication to be able to then disseminate a business plan down. So that will be the first one that we're sort of always looking for. Can they basically sell their ideas, essentially,

in and outside the building? The second quality that we're always looking for, and this is always a danger when you're looking at assistants stepping up into leadership roles for the first time. And everyone on this call, me, you guys included, someone gave us a chance, right? Back in the day, someone saw something in us and gave us a chance. So we're always playing that devil's advocate.

But in the role that they're in now, can we work out what they're doing? What their locus of control is? What are they in control of now? So if they're an assistant GM who's a scout, if their assistant GM is analytics, is there an assistant GM who's a cap and contracts, assistant GM who's a operational role within the team? Can we isolate what they're doing and what their influence is and how they sort of go about the day-to-day basis?

So we're looking at one of the second or third qualities, like are they coming with a golf club? Have they got a domain expertise in something? Because I think, you know, as you go through the course of any calendar year in any major sports team, you know, we want to divide up some level of experience based upon the challenge. So if you are a scout, what we're hoping is that, you know, in them big moments, you're going to lend your 15, 20 years of experience into that moment. Okay. But we don't want you to be a scout all year round as a GM. We want you to do this leadership role. So communication, bringing a domain expertise in whatever that is. I think the third one then is the ability to attract and

retain talent so one of the big failings that you often see is in an interview process with let's just take an agm and they say okay here's the org chart that i want to work towards and here's some of the people that like to hire and you know we always have the same you know nine highs and eight and eight highs of seven seven highs six and the danger is if there are six today they think they're gonna get an eight when actually they end up with a five and a four okay and this is the challenge of the ownership model of like how do i exert influence on the design of the new org chart with this first time gm without either alienate them, ostracizing them, annoying them, but knowing that it's probably going to take me as an owner to help them

attract this group of talent that we need into the business. So the ability to attract and retain talent is another quality that we look for. The fourth one is, you know, how can they create a business plan that's operational? So a challenge of a lot of teams is, and the first time Gio was talking, he said, this is a five-year plan. In our experience, it's four years of trying things

and then you're 50, you throw a load of things at the wall and see if it sticks, right? The challenge of an owner is when they hear that, and an owner said it to me in a completely different sport last year, he's like, listen, this guy's got a great plan, but I've had two of these guys before all on two four-year plans, and now I'm eight years in and I'm still where I was day one. Okay?

So how can your business plan as a GM fit the needs of the business, not this sort of utopia four or five years from now, we're going to get this brilliant success. If that team is under pressure and needs to sort of be to win now or it needs to sell tickets now or it needs to be sold now the GM has to create a business plan that holds the future and today together as one so communication the main expertise you know the ability to hold the future the ability to sort of manage or there's a multiple set of things,

but I just don't think the people who do this job, lastly, guys, the people who do this job successfully year on year, their ability to communicate up and down a vertical is a non-negotiable. Mike, you were an executive overseas, as you mentioned, Chelsea and Bolton. I'm sure that you tell your clients, these are some of the mistakes I made that I make sure your organization will not make? What would they be? Like, what do you say, I did this and I would never do this again? You know, we learn more nine times out of 10 out of our mistakes than our successes in that. And I had an interesting time. I had sort of one coach for nine years who I grew up with and learned with and a guy called Samuel Eddice,'s a huge influence saw him on my career very young age and give me a lot of autonomy and and growth and was one of the first people 20 years ago to say you should get outside of soccer

what else is going on around the world and that so you know in 2000 i was flying to the atlanta braves to watch what they were doing i was like the 49ers to watch what they were doing i was like the yankees to watch what they were doing and there was this curiosity to see what was out there i was going to see the all blacks it was a famous rugby team so he was one of the first guys to sort of instigate that curiosity and then i went to another team chelsea where i had actually nine coaches in seven years so i went from total stability to largely instability but still very successful and it was an interesting model when we grew this business was like, there's different ways to get success, right? Everyone's aspiring

for longevity as a key indicator. And in certain situations it is, but there's also now the world of sport, the average tenure of a coach at a GM is radically dropping. So probably less than three years now for pretty much every major sport. You go to an MLS team, it's less than two years. The things that I've learned is that I learned and the mistakes that I try and encourage our candidates not to, and our clients not to make is not to build too long, robust business plans that are going to be executed three, four, five years out. The reality is we're probably all working on a 12 month game plan and we're

holding the future whilst managing today. The other thing is, is based on data points is that you're always in the market looking for talent. So you might have hired a head coach three months ago, but you've already you've still got to be looking for who's the next person. And that's got to start now too often people get to a point where they want to move past someone, and then they start looking, okay. Market forces is still the biggest driver of human capital interchange between businesses. Is that person that I want available today?

But how do I prepare both an understanding about who we are as a business and the second thing, where the market is going or what I will need. So if I know in the next two years, I need a new head coach in this case, and I know the average age of the roster is 23, which makes us the youngest in the next two years I need a new head coach in this case and I know the average age of the roster is 23 which makes us the youngest in the league I probably should be identifying very good coaches today and they might be gone from the market someone else might hire them but there's it's in my locus of control to do that now so I think you know I learned from being always trying to be in front of the market when it came to people because time it happens really quick and you've got to be ready to execute really quick mike i was talking to someone with an nhl

team a couple of days ago and we were talking about uh making safe choices uh versus taking a little bit of risk and sometimes when you take risk it can flame out as we've seen before but it could also succeed and and lead you to some pretty happy places as a sports organization. And this person was talking more and more with his group about allowing themselves to be put in positions where they can be pleasantly surprised. You can make the safe choice and you know what you're getting, or you could take a little bit of risk and you might be surprised and push your program that much forward. How do you advise on managing risk? And how much should you be taking on a consistent basis?

That's a brilliant question. And a question not often asked either at an ownership level or for an office level. You know, there's an MBA owner, and you don't have to probably Google too far to understand it. So, you know, the number one job of a GM is to keep his job. You don't have to probably Google too far to understand it. So, you know, the number one job of a GM is to keep his job. And whether you agree with that or not, the sentiment is about not taking too many risks.

Actually, you know, the job is to try and build this sort of steam engine in a linear way. The reality is if you look at successful programs, there's a start and then there's like a hockey stick and it peters out. There's very few programs when you look at the data that go like, hey, year one, it looked like this. Year two is a a hockey stick and it peters out there's very few programs when you look at the data that go like a year one it looked like this year two is a nice step up and it's linear and then year five we delivered you know we landed the plane right there's usually these moments of healthy level of appetite for risk meets market forces meets the timeline of the owner and then when you pull together them sort of circles,

then you sort of work out. And I reference the owner at the end there, guys, because I think the owner piece is important. Again, outside the NHL maybe, but if you go to the other major sports, the owners are very engaged in the process and that. So it might be there's a capacity to sign a free agent. There might be a capacity to go into the tax.

There might be capacity to do a transformational transfer in European soccer. It's not probably going to happen without the owner's engagement. So understanding and sharing the risk profile across the vertical from the owner right down to the scout, if they're the person who's identified the player, I think is really important. But linear growth of an organization today to produce success is more infrequent than frequent. So to get the growth, look at Tampa Bay as one example. Last year with Tom Brady, a program that was steadily growing, they get a market opportunity to do something, it transforms them. So I think the level of risk is about how do you understand what your

core situation is and how do you react in a calculated, disciplined way to market opportunities in the moment you've got them. There's something you've alluded to a couple of times here that hockey executives have told me in the past. And that is that sometimes the biggest challenge in an organization is the pressure the owner feels from the public or friends. And that is a bigger factor than we realize. True or false? Yeah, I think if you talk at a macro level, it's probably true. Okay. On a micro level, it's case by case, right? So I think what you have to understand, I have learned to understand with owners is it depends where they are on their journey so if you look at there's an influx of like a sport like mls where expansion has been a huge part of the growth of the league in the last

five to seven years invariably then new owners are you know more civic owners you know they're they're an owner in a town where they've got a huge say and they want to pump some money in to build a team, to build an organization, but they're not experienced sports owners. They can be very experienced in other sector in business. So invariably with that group, there's a belief that success comes quicker than it actually does. All right? So they've got money, they've got resources, they've got runway, they can sprint quickly

and they expect results quicker. Now that invariably doesn't always happen. So I think it depends on the individual owner, Elliot, when you talk about that. But there's no doubt that the pressure, we use this analogy, you know, you say to an owner, right, it's going to be sort of three years to get to this position. They kind of nod their head, they shake your hand, et cetera. And then 18 months in, they have a bad run of five games and it's like planting the tree you know and it takes three years to grow and 18 months in they pull up the tree to see if it's

still growing right that happens too many times and uh the piece for the executive is or we all say in our advisory work is like don't sell something three years out, sell a 90 day game plan for the next 36 months, because that's the piece that allows everyone to be accountable and engaged in the whole process. When you say like, you know, and it's, it's a trait of a,

of a first time GM, they kind of explode onto the job and I'm going to deliver it. I'm going to be the person who delivers all the success, et cetera. And they go at it in a blind state. And then they get a year down the line go at it in a blind state and then they get a year down the line and they're in a bad place either they've not communicated the owner they forgot to be engaged they forget to do a plan and then the owner gets in often either frustrated

annoyed or they start looking somewhere else for an answer and i always say to coaches and gms like when the owner stops calling you it's probably not a good sign. Okay. Because it doesn't mean he's not got questions or she hasn't got questions. They're probably just asking them someone else, you know, the limo driver, the 12 year old son, guy in a bagel shop. So how you, how you engage and retain the attention of very smart owners around your business plan is huge. So I think owners invariably and we'd always encourage that you know, believe in your staff, believe in the process, believe in the organization,

but it's up to the executive to retain and seduce the ownership group on a daily weekly monthly quarterly basis. Okay, I got a couple of hockey related things for you. First of all, two summers ago, Ted Leonsis, who is the owner of the Wizards, in addition to the Capitals, he hired your company, Sportsology, to help review the basketball team. What did you learn about him? And what things did he ask you when he was changing his organization there? Just for the record, Ted's a very prominent and high-profile owner in the NHL. One of the most incredible human beings you'll deal with on a personal level. Incredible guys, great humility, great appetite to learn, incredible curiosity. His son, Zach, who's a huge part of the success there too, has been a part of it.

Monica Dickson. I know they've got great people like Dick Patrick, who's been a stalwart through it. But Ted is the epitome of what you see in the NBA. Fast, dynamic, wants to be successful, is prepared to fire himself on Friday and re-employ himself on Monday to get the best and next idea. Is a global citizen when it comes to ideas, concepts, innovation and that. And so I learned a tremendous amount about not only building organizations, but building teams, but also doing it from a values-based perspective. You know, what he's put in place in the city of DC is incredible. Actually, when the basketball team was going through

its own personal transformation, the North Star of what Ted and people like Dick Patrick had created on the Capitals was a great template for us to understand how you could create success in that city with that ownership group and that. But I think as they went through their own sort of journey, I think Ted was one of the brightest, most dynamic people I've ever dealt with. And his curiosity to go outside,

not only the world of basketball, but also the world of hockey, into politics, into Google. Obviously, Lorene Powell Jobs is a part of their ownership group. So the curiosity to explore companies like Apple and how they could impact it was just breathtaking, really. And you have done some work with Harris Blitzer Sports Entertainment, the parent company of the New Jersey Devils. And I'd heard your name mentioned with some of their searches in the past. What kinds of things have you done with them? And maybe also, what have you learned about hockey

and your brief forays into it? Our experiences with hockey has very much been on an advisory learning perspective and that you reference that organization you own multiple teams venues you know incredible business with a global attitude to grow and very symbolic of a new ownership group who you know incredibly smart incredibly successful got you know the resources, appetite, and discipline and patience to produce success over time. But I think our experiences, particularly with the Devils,

was very much on an advisory. And it was essentially learning about what are the drivers of success in NHL and where can they find competitive advantage. And I give that organization great credit because they were another one that was very curious about not only what is happening within their portfolio, but also what is happening in global sport. And is there an opportunity to find one or two things, whether it's a process, a piece of technology, an operating model, a way of communication, a way of holding information from a data storage perspective, that they were very, very inspirational. And I left that project like that which is very short and sweet with a great understanding of it there's a lot of empathy

from what I've been through in European soccer with the AHL model and development talent through the ecosystem and I left my very short experience with hockey thinking I won this tremendous growth here there's some great work being done across the league when you start to realize who's out there but you also realize that there's great opportunities to to arbitrage with new thinking too all right you know i'm not going to let you get away with that one let's hear some uh thoughts about the new thinking that could happen in hockey i'm curious about this you know when you look at the front offices and maybe history teaches you and we talk about the nba and everyone can say,

hey, listen, you know, if you haven't worked in the MBA, there's no way you can produce success. And we've been in transformational projects in the MBA. The MBA was very linear in its thinking about where it could get competitive advantage. Particularly, it was like, you know, go to the next generation of people who've been trained in the same way as the last generation and ask them to do the future job just better better which really just produces the same results in there

and then you start to see slowly but surely a head of department uh coming in or it might be even a gm look at what bob myers did in golden state came from being in the ecosystem but being an agent uh rob palenka comes in and now you see that leon rose in new york and that the agent is probably in most cases one of the uh one of the first people if you want to get transformation on the court is to look at an agent as a gm and that might be a mechanic to the contracts who doesn't really apply to the nhl we were involved in a process recently it's public knowledge here we took a guy nico harrison from from Nike, to be the general manager of Dallas. Now, I don't think I could have recommended that,

or we as a business could have recommended that three or four years ago. But the point is the evolution of that sport is a great sort of North Star new behavior for a lot of major sports now, which is, listen, stop, stand still. Can we find people who have not had this traditional pathway to drive outcome in this and you can say yeah we could try it but will it produce success

so someone like bob myer's success in golden state roberto lenka's success in the lakers i think leon's doing a great job nico harrison is coming from nike but knows the ecosystem so that sport has been through the paradigm shift and I think hockey has got the opportunity and there's pockets of interesting work whether it's analytics work, whether it's medical and performance that's creeping into the sport when we horizon scan across all the teams and look at operating models and people process. But the speed of change is not is not that aggressive to be candid and someone on some team and some owners is going to grab it. And that's always what happens in these sports,

is that someone is brave enough to suspend judgment, to kind of fire themselves as an NHL owner on a Friday, re-employ themselves on Monday. And it doesn't have to be radical guys. It just has to start with a curiosity to try something new, okay? And not be downtrodden by the values and views of the past. The past doesn't equal the future. And the sports that have gone through that growth, and particularly the isolated teams within them sports, that's the first step they've done. Suspend judgment, find someone who can add value, a leadership role

that's got cognitive diversity, that comes from a different world because the smart, intelligent people, they'll find a way to create empathy and understanding with the more traditional people at that sport, which will win credibility and grow performance. So if I'm reading this correctly, then you're saying there's a chance that two plucky Toronto-based podcasters could one day run an NHL team. If I'm reading you in between the lines here, right, Mike? What a disaster that would be. Listen, we're not trying to do miracles here, guys. Let me end on this one. There's one, as you well know, there's one very unique market in the NHL,

and that is Montreal. French-speaking fans, French-speaking media, and the feeling has always been that it's an organization that sort of limits the field when it comes to their hires, specifically of managers, because they have to be bilingual. Do you look at that as a drawback, as a handicap? How would you approach, it doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, the Montreal Canadiens specifically, but a situation like that, how would you address it? That's a great question, Jeff. Great question. Yeah, so it is a fantastic question. And obviously the world of North American sport where,

you know, the business language and the operational language of the teams is predominantly English. I know in sports like baseball, depending on parts of the country where, or parts of the teams is predominantly English. I know in sports like baseball, depending on parts of the country, where parts of the Dominican Puerto Rico, where they might find talent, the Spanish index is of some competitive advantage. One could argue, one could argue, okay. If I go outside that and I go into Europe, you know, uh, where if you're a top Spanish team and English team and Italian team, et cetera, it's expected that eight times out of 10, the executive carries at least two or three languages.

You know, you go into places like Holland, we've got clients in Holland and, you know, the sporting director speaks seven languages, right? And it definitely gives that team an opportunity to communicate with the market efficiently, speed-wise. But I do think you've got to be careful that you don't create too many barriers where you close the net of talent okay because you know languages in communication go hand in hand

but i've also seen executives who speak five languages in european soccer are poor communicators right so it's not a cause and effect but i do think having an over bias to a particular narrow language set as the only operating model reduces the market of talent and then if you find someone that you like who doesn't have the language skill set i think you can you can supplement them in intelligent hires around them that when you're in big moments in the big room that you've got a collective mass of both skill competence competence, and language. But I haven't seen it too much in North America, as I referenced in European soccer.

We place GMs and then we structure the major champions league clubs. You are always trying to find the balance within the management team of that skills, competence, and language. And to find one unicorn who has it all, very difficult. I guess last one. Number one, do you do background checks too? Like, I think one of the things that's going to happen now is that there's going to be so much more emphasis on that. Do you do that kind of thing also? Yeah, I think it's an unfortunate reality of modern day business, whether it's in or outside of sport, the digital footprints of all our lives is relevant. You know, we have seen the recent cases, obviously,

in and outside the world of sport where a digital footprint has acted in a negative way for the organisation, the candidate, the executive, et cetera. So I think it is and it will continue to be business as usual. And then it will become how complex can you make your background check-in or your diligence to protect everyone involved, starting with the client, the owner. I think what you'll probably find is a greater demand by,

if it's the case of a sports human owner or a CEO of a business outside it, for people to be more transparent with their background and how they sort of, in the interview process process sort of come forward with their history at any particular time, but for me due diligence side, it's getting more complicated and more relevant because these are multimillion dollar decisions of hiring people and building organizations and to pull up the tree a year from now, something that's nothing to do really with performance, but to do with character and background, it's expensive if you've gone down a route.

So I think it's going to become more prevalent. And just finally, is there anything we haven't asked you, Mike, that you would want to say that we're missing or we haven't covered? No, I'm very grateful for the opportunity to share ideas. At the end of the day, we sit in a very privileged position between the axes of different sports, different markets, different countries, different moments in time. And our job is not to be all singing, all dancing, superior answer making, but it's to be a curious and smart and intelligent evidence-based partner to any of our clients. That's our goal. Not to come and say,

this is the only one route that you have to do to get success. Sport is dynamic. Success is dynamic. Well, there's not one way of being successful, but we are always trying to find a route to how can we partner with like-minded organizations? And sometimes guys, it's an ownership group is like enough is enough.

I've done the stairway to heaven of this sort of linear model. And I want to not explode out of it. I want to suspend judgment. And I want to think about different ways of doing it. And I may end up back with where I think we were going to go anyway. But I put my head on the pillow and I can look at ourselves. And I go back to someone like Ted leon says this is a great example you know ted spent nearly nearly 130 days going through he promoted his agm which is tommy shepherd who's a great guy into the gm job and everyone says well that was like a long process to get someone who was in in the building anyway but actually it was a great process because he could sit there and say i looked around i spoke I spoke to multiple people, I saw where the market was, I saw where our needs were. And he hired like two or three different people around him and they built a branch trust that's hopefully now going to take him on in year

three to great success. That's the silhouette of the future for me. And it starts with a curiosity at the moment. This has been fascinating. Mike, you're a very busy person. We really appreciate you parking as much time as you did with us today for this podcast. Continued success. I don't think this is the last time we'll be checking in. But for this time, thank you very much for doing this with us. Thanks. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, Elliot. Best wishes. Take care. I really want to thank Mike Ford for stopping by the podcast this week. If you want to learn more about Sportsology, the website is sportsology.pro and the Twitter feed at sportsology underscore pro. We thank Mike again for stopping by.

We're back later on this week for more 32 thoughts the podcast