Transcript: Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football ...€¦ · next Vince Lombardi coach to where, "No, no, no. I want to be a GM. I want to build something. I don't want

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Transcript: Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (EP.75) Published Date: November 12, 2018 Length: 51 min Web page: capitalallocatorspodcast.com/lombardi Michael Lombardi is a thirty-year veteran of professional football, including as a General Manager and a three-time Super Bowl winning executive. He is the author of the fantastic recently released book Gridiron Genius, A Master Class in Winning Championships and Building Dynasties in the NFL. The book is a tour de force of applied leadership through his knowledge working alongside football greats Bill Walsh, Al Davis, and Bill Belichick. Since stepping aside from the front office to write his book, Michael appears as a commentator on television, hosts the top-ten sports podcast, GM Street, and speaks to businesses about leadership and teamwork. Our conversation covers his early passion for football, the contrasting leadership styles of Bill Walsh and Al Davis, the magic of Bill Belichick, the four areas of leadership, the science and art of scouting, and where the front office breaks down. Michael embodies the style of leader that he describes, and his lessons are applicable to investment and business leaders alike. Edited by: Rev.com

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Capital Allocators Podcast EP.75 Michael Lombardi

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Book Links Ann Coulter Don Winslow, The Cartel (The Power of the Dog)

Ted: 00:05 Hello. I'm Ted Seides and this is Capital Allocators. This show is an open exploration of the people and process behind capital allocation. Through conversations with leaders in the money game, we learn how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital. You can keep up to date by visiting CapitalAllocatorsPodcasts.com. My guest on today's show is Michael Lombardi, a 30 year career veteran in professional football, including as a general manager and a three time Super Bowl winning executive.

Ted: 00:45 He's the author of the fantastic recently released book Gridiron Genius: A Master Class in Winning Championships Building Dynasties in the NFL. The book is a tour de force of applied leadership through his learnings working alongside football greats, Bill Walsh, Al Davis and Bill Belichick. Since stepping aside from the front office to write his book, Michael appears as a commentator on television, hosts the top 10 sports podcast, GM Street and speaks to businesses about leadership and teamwork.

Ted: 01:18 Our conversation covers his early passion for football, the contrasting leadership styles of Bill Walsh and Al Davis, the magic of Bill Belichick, the four areas of leadership, the science and art of scouting and where the front office breaks down. Michael embodies the style of leader that he describes and his lessons are applicable to investment and business leaders alike.

Ted: 01:43 Before we get going, I recently wrote a blog post called Origins of an Investing Podcast that tells the story of how this fun adventure came about. If you're interested, check it out at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/blog. At the end of the post, you can sign up to get the podcast episodes and blog posts pushed to your inbox. Please enjoy my conversation with Michael Lombardi.

Ted: 02:15 Michael, thanks so much for joining me.

Michael: 02:17 It's great to be here Ted. It's really awesome. Been looking forward to this for a while.

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Ted: 02:20 I guess let's just start with how did you first get interested in football?

Michael: 02:25 Oh, that's easy. I grew up in a small beach town in South Jersey called Ocean City. And I turned on the television in the mid '60s. '70s, I was maybe 10 years old and I saw this guy who looked exactly like he belonged at my family dinners on Sunday. His name was Vince Lombardi and I thought, "That's kind of what I want to do." So there's no relationship between me and Vince other than the last name, which is a common Italian name. So I just really at the age of 10, I plotted a course to try to get to the NFL.

Michael: 02:52 And then I played Strat-O-Matic baseball with my two buddies, Michael Sannino and Danny Reynolds and this whole idea of Strat-O-Matic team building became so powerful for me that that's where I went from being thinking I was going to be the next Vince Lombardi coach to where, "No, no, no. I want to be a GM. I want to build something. I don't want to just coach something." And that's kind of how it started. Everything I did from that point. I went to Valley Forge Military Academy, it was because I wanted to get into football. I went to Hofstra University because I wanted to get into football and it just started that way.

Ted: 03:22 I remember Strat-O-Matic, but what was it about Strat-O-Matic?

Michael: 03:25 We were 12 years old, 13 years old. My father is still a barber at 91 years old, cuts hair every day. And we had this house half a block from the beach in Ocean City. It's the summer time, we're all playing baseball together, the three of us. So we found this game, it's a card game, you roll dice and you play. And the three of us just bonded over it and we built our own team. So you have the 28 baseball teams and Reynolds liked the Red Sox. I liked the Braves. Sannino liked the White Sox, he was a Dick Allen fan. I was a Hank Aaron fan.

Michael: 03:55 So we started that way and then we decided to take all the players and just hold drafts and we would just do drafts and then we made rules up as we went along. So we're making rules up and we said, "Anybody who's in your farm system and he has a card, you have the rights to him." So Sannino finds Don McMahon and Don McMahon's card, for people that don't know Strat-O-Matic baseball, the pitcher has four, five and six








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columns. The hitter has one, two and three. One dice rolls to what column you go to, the other dice, you add them up to figure the number.

Michael: 04:27 Well, McMahon's card only had three hits on it. So whenever he put him in the game, he was getting everybody out. So we had to make a rule for McMahon and just as life is so unique. So 30 years later I'm on the practice field of the Raiders and Al Davis is standing there and he's got three people around him, and Al never wanted anybody around him. So these people must have been somebody he knew or liked because that was rare. So I walk up to him and one of the people that are there is Don McMahon. And I'm like, "I hate you, Don McMahon. You killed my life. I couldn't win a game." He was from Erasmus High School and that's how Al knew him. So it's kind of funny how world comes full circle.

Ted: 05:06 So you have this passion for football from early on. What was your big break in getting in?

Michael: 05:11 There's a saying that the world gets out of the way for people that know where they want to go. I knew where I wanted to go. So when I was at Hofstra, every January, February I would get in my little Toyota Tercel and I would drive to coaching clinics throughout the Northeast and I would try to meet coaches, I would try to learn football, I would pay for the hotel room or I would sleep in my car. Whatever I had to do, I would do it.

Michael: 05:34 In one of these trips I met a guy named Harvey Hyde who was the head coach at Pasadena City College and he took me to lunch, he kept in touch with me and then one day I was on the campus of Hofstra, I was getting ready to graduate and I read the New York Times and Harvey Hyde was named the head coach of UNLV. So immediately I called him up and he said, "Yeah, I don't have anything, but if you want to volunteer come on out." And so I did. But I would write letters constantly to people, "How could I get a GA job? How could I come work for you?" Because I was obsessed with doing it.

Ted: 06:03 And what was that path from there?

Michael: 06:04 So then I'm there. I'm not making any money. I'm living on Burger King coupons. I'm living in a dumpy hotel on the strip. I would get the Holiday Inn buffet line and then from then,








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people left there, I've got promoted. My first full time salary was $9,000. And then when I was making $9,000, I thought I was living pretty good right. And then the 49ers were looking for a gopher basically. They were looking for somebody who could work in their personnel department, somebody who would help out whatever they needed. And I was just at the right place at the right time and Tony Rosano, the director of college scouting for the 49ers said, "I'm looking for it." So I got it and the next thing I know, I'm driving Bill Walsh's Porsche. How, if I'm making nine grand, I'm driving this incredible Porsche. It was great.

Ted: 06:42 What was it like working for Bill Walsh?

Michael: 06:45 You're some young kid. You think you know everything when you start out. You know nothing, but you know the guy that you're sitting next to or the guy, when he walks in the room knows a lot. You just stop right there and start taking notes and you have notepads and you just start trying to ask him questions and trying to observe and learn from him because you know he knows and you know nothing. So it was just incredible and I was fortunate enough to ask him questions.

Michael: 07:09 The greatest thing I ever asked him was, we were driving one day and ... Actually the greatest thing that he ever asked me was, he asked me a question, he said, "Do you know who Tom Peters is?" I thought he was talking about a punner from South Dakota. And he said, "No, no, no. Tom Peters, he just wrote this book called In Search of Excellence. You should go read that book." And that set me off on a path of management and leadership that I have been on since my whole life.

Ted: 07:37 What did you pick up from Peter's book?

Michael: 07:38 What does leadership mean to some young kid. Whoever yells the loudest, is that what it is? Whoever demands the most? Nothing about leadership. What is the true essentials of leadership. What is the makeup of what makes a company really good, is it just luck? Is it timing? So I started to learn about how to build an organization, how to be in search of excellence is truly what you learn. Like how can you keep getting better.







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Michael: 08:01 Shinseki has this great quote that I hung in my office at the Oakland Raiders. It said, "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less." And I learned early on that be adaptive to change. And Walsh was always about that. Study the game. Walsh was a historian of football, but he wanted to apply it to current times and then adapt it. He was very divergent in his thinking.

Ted: 08:19 What kind of leader was he?

Michael: 08:21 He had a great command of what he wanted to do. There was no doubt he knew what he wanted to do. He commanded everything. It was about the standard of excellence. The things he wanted his organization to behave, he didn't do it in a sense where he just assumed everybody knew it. He educated you on what he wanted so there was no misconstruction of what he was saying. Everybody understood exactly what he wanted. He wanted you to be courteous. He wanted you to seek out knowledge. He wanted you to stay current on the game. What he wanted was he educated you on the person he wanted you to be. And that applied to Joe Montana, the star quarterback as well it applied to the guy who read the ads at Candlestick Park.

Ted: 08:58 How long did you stay working at the 9ers?

Michael: 09:01 This is probably the biggest mistake of my life. So I'm there and I'm thinking, "Okay, this is great. I'm learning a lot here, but I got to learn a lot more. But I think I should learn different ways to do it." And what I failed to understand was the NFL was really more political than knowledge. And if I'd stayed with Walsh, I probably would have had a more successful career in terms of moving up the ladder. I wouldn't have learned as much because I would have learned just one way.

Michael: 09:25 So I went to Cleveland Browns to try to learn more. And one of those car rides coach Walsh told me, he said, " Look, the most football I ever learned in my life was working for Al Davis." And I knew at that moment I wanted to work for Al Davis and I did. So I went to the Browns. Then I became friends with Al and then I went to work for Al.

Ted: 09:41 What did you see different in Al's leadership style from Bill?

Michael: 09:44 It wasn't as precise. Al was very much about a philosophy. He wanted to build the Raiders as a size speed football team, but










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he never shared what he really wanted. He never really was very meticulous in the details. Because he had a coach. There was a coach there. There was a buffer him and the organization. So he allowed that to occur, whereas Walsh was, we call it hands-on, but really, what does hands-on mean, Ted? Aren't you doing your job if you're hands-on? It's like mission statements. It's one of the most ridiculous things you could ever have.

Michael: 10:16 What does that mean? We're gonna win the Super Bowl, is that a mission statement? No, it doesn't tell anybody anything. It's the same thing, what's hands-on? Hands-on means you're engaged. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I'm going to tell you what I want you to do. That's not being hands- on, that's been a good leader. So I think that was the difference between the two.

Ted: 10:35 Is there an example that stands out for you in something that Al didn't communicate as well or you think that Bill Walsh would have communicated the same thing differently?

Michael: 10:42 Oh, there's so many of them. Al didn't trust very many people. So that's a real problem. So that's what happened. He always thought somebody had an agenda. He felt like there was always somebody's method to the madness. So he was always trying to calculate what that was. I'm reminded of a story, Lyndon Johnson, when he was in the White House, he would sit there every morning and read The Washington Post. And as he was going through the pages one morning he circled two articles and he called Ben Bradlee on the phone and said, "You know, the source that's typically on this Health and Human Services article was in the hospital last night. Who is the new source? And then this other source on this finance column was in Egypt, who's the source?"

Michael: 11:21 Lyndon Johnson was obsessed with learning who the sources were. Al was obsessed with learning what the agenda was. And that kind of overpowered everything. So he never really explained what he wanted. His greatness was his ability to brand, but his weakness was he wasn't willing to take all his knowledge and share it with someone else and then learn it back himself. It was almost behind the iron curtain, whereas Walsh was very much about teaching you what he wanted, explaining to you how he wanted it in detail and he wanted it






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done in that fashion and if you did it well, you were going to move up.

Ted: 11:56 So you mentioned Davis being gifted at branding, which is something that can be very elusive. What was it that he did that was successful?

Michael: 12:04 Anybody in the organization, he wanted it to be the Oakland Raiders. He was very much about the word. He was very much about the colors. So he took the silver from the Detroit Lions. He took the black from the West Point Army Knights. And so he combined silver and black, he wanted that brand in your name. So if you say silver and black to anybody who's in football, they know it's the Raiders. He was very much a part of that. That's what he wanted, the Oakland Raiders. He pushed the brand up.

Michael: 12:31 He was greatly influenced by the Brooklyn Dodgers. He grew up in Brooklyn. He was greatly influenced by the Yankees. So he wanted to combine the speed of the Dodgers with the power of the Yankees and that's how he built his organization and then he branded those things because he constantly talked about it. He always talked about the greatness of the Raiders and his message, which is part of marketing, is what helps sell the brand.

Ted: 12:55 Two of the other coaches, one you worked with and worked for, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick have this mystique in their incredible ability to succeed. Why don't you pick one or the other and talk about what you learned working with or for them?

Michael: 13:12 You have to start with Belichick because I think Nick would be kind enough to admit that Nick's success really was due to the education of Bill. Oftentimes we're a prisoner of who we work for and we're a prisoner of who we learn from. And I truly believe that there are two kinds of jobs. Jobs you can make a difference in and jobs you can only grow from. And we screw them up. I screwed them up in my career. Sometimes I tried to make a difference when I should have only grown from. So we always make that mistake. And I think what Nick learned from Bill impacted him far greater than what Nick brought to Bill.

Michael: 13:50 So let's start with Bill. Bill is an incredible leader. Bill's monotone. He's not concerned about what anybody thinks








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other than the people he's leading. So he's very deliberate in what he wants done. It's meticulous. It's explained to precise fashion. He can evaluate the game from 35,000 feet. He's not obsessed with tomorrow. He's obsessed with tomorrow and the next day and a day after. He's not a solution-based leader.

Michael: 14:19 So there's two kinds of leaders, solution-based and sustainable-based. And we know this through the home finance crisis. Those people giving loans to the guys who couldn't pay them back were solution-based. Sustainable- based are thinking about the future. That's Belichick. So every decision he makes is based on sustainability. And then his meticulous work habits, his ability to not just be in the office all day long, but to be productive at the office, to understand what's urgent and important. Not return the telephone, not have the TV on, not surf the internet.

Michael: 14:49 His focus and concentration is remarkable. And then he can build out the whole organization and he's very much about, "What can I do better?" Whether it's when we play a game, after we win a Super Bowl, what can I do better? He's in search of excellence every single day. And it's hard, it's challenging, but that drives the culture. He is the culture builder of the organization. People get lost in the football, but it's the culture he really is most responsible for.

Ted: 15:17 Can you walk through what a week looks like working with Belichick?

Michael: 15:22 Yeah, that's easy. So let's say okay, we're recording this on Friday. They just played the Chiefs on Sunday night. So let's start Monday morning. Let's go back to Monday. Monday will be everybody will get to the office. The game ended at 12:30 at night, let's say 11:30. About time you get home it's 1:00 in the morning. Everybody is back in the office by 6:00, 6:30 easily. You start out by breaking down the game that you just played, offense, defense and the kicking game. There'll be 12:00 or 12:30 staff meeting at which Belichick will walk in the room, sit at the head of the table and the offensive coordinator, the defensive coordinator and the special teams coach will have filled out forms that go all the way back to 1991 in Cleveland. That breaks it down, the game.

Michael: 16:00 Things we did well, things we did poorly, things we need to improve on, mistakes we made in scheme, mistakes we made in







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coaching, the tactical points of the game, player evaluations of where we misjudged their team. So he's doing an autopsy of the game and he wants his offensive coordinator to do it, he wants his defensive coordinator to do it. So that meeting lasts for about two to three hours. It's not, "Hey, we won guys. Everything's great." No, no. It's like, "We're either doing this better, we're doing that better."

Michael: 16:27 Then he'll start on what he thinks we need to get ready for to get ready for the Chicago Bears. So, "Okay. This week I want to do this. I've seen enough of this player." So that meeting lasts probably about three hours. Then from Monday night until Tuesday afternoon at 5:00, you're preparing for the opponent you're going to play, study and videotape. Well, how they do, what they do. Break it down. He's doing the same thing in his office.

Michael: 16:50 So then he'll go back Tuesday around noon, he'll meet with the quarterbacks, Brady, Brian Hoyer. That's the only two. Josh McDaniels won't be in the room and he will have broken down every player on the Bears' defense in their back seven. So that would be the linebackers and the defensive backs. He's written it all up on his computer by himself. So he's studied every player. "Hey, I think this is what they do. This is why they do it. We should attack this player. We shouldn't attack that player and go forward."

Michael: 17:17 Then Tuesday night we'll have a staff meeting. He'll go over the practice schedule for Wednesday, tell the staff what he wants done, how he wants it, "I think we need to work on this. I think we need to work on that." Wednesday morning at 8:00, he will welcome the team back, congratulate them on the win. Perhaps he did meet with them on Monday, gave them that day off, and then he'll start setting the agenda for the week. And that starts with this thing called points of emphasis.

Michael: 17:42 So what I would do for him and what I'm sure he does now for himself is he would break down the opponent into points of emphasis, "How are we going to win the game? Offensively, defensively and the kicking game, how are we going to win?" And then he presents that to the team, "Here's how we got to play the game. Here's how we got to do it. Here's the way we're going to play and here's why", with film to back it up.






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Wednesday practice, 5:00 staff meeting to go over the practice with the coaching staff.

Michael: 18:07 Same repeat that on Thursday. Friday, today, they come in. They'll go over the game again. They'll go over the Thursday practice in the morning at the 8:00 team meeting, but Friday is about what players and plays are the Bears going to run this week when they absolutely have to have a play. They call them "got to have it" plays. So then he wants the team to know that if it's third and six on a crucial part of the game, they're going to throw the ball to Tarik Cohen or if it's third and seven and they need the ball back, they're going to blitz. All week long he's teaching the Patriot players how this game is going to be played. All week long.

Michael: 18:44 Then practice, and then Saturday night at the staff meeting before he meets with the team, he then goes over how he wants to play the game based on how the week at practice went. For example, "The first third down we get into I want to run this." Or, "If it's fourth and short early in the game, I'm not going forward. I'm going to bunt." Or, "If it's fourth or short early in the game, we're going to go forward. I'm going to go. I want to get the lead. I want to build the lead." And then he goes over the game plan with the staff, then he goes back and meets with a team and they get ready to play.

Ted: 19:11 How similar or different is that entire process-

Michael: 19:15 It's completely different. So when you're a young kid in the league you think everybody does that and what you find is no one does it other than him, other than Walsh. I've never been around a program that ever operates that way. I've been around programs that doesn't meet as a team. They just meet as groups, as individuals. So there is a difference. Winning looks alike in organizations, losing looks alike in all organizations. So I'll give you an example. Every day after practice on Wednesday, Thursday, Bill makes the coaches come into his 5:00 meeting and he goes over the practice tape of that day.

Michael: 19:49 Nick Saban hated it. Oh my God, he hated it with a passion. He would complain, "I can't believe [inaudible 00:19:54] I've got to be in here. It's killing me. I got stuff I got to do." You know in Alabama what they do, don't you? Same thing. But it's hard to break people out of bad habits. It's hard to do that because







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they're not used to it and they're not used to being led. And that's what he's doing. He's leading the organization every single day.

Ted: 20:10 How much of an edge do you think the Patriots have gotten over the years, just from that process?

Michael: 20:17 I think it's the reason why they've been at seven Conference Championships games. I think the difference between him and the next great coach is Sean Payton is great at what he does. I think Pete Carroll is great at what he does. But the difference between Bill and maybe Andy Reid and that group of guys to the next group is significant. If the cap's 175 million, Belichick's worth at least 10% of the cap.

Ted: 20:39 Yeah. And is it even more pronounced in college with Alabama?

Michael: 20:41 Way more. Way more. Alabama's, two weeks ago there were 17.5 point favorite if they played LSU. Think about that. That's a huge gap between the second best team and a lot of it comes through the process.

Ted: 20:53 You had written something in your book where you couldn't, even with Belichick, you couldn't just hand someone the same agenda and say, "Here, go do it."

Michael: 21:02 So I have this uncle, Fred Palermo. He's 91 years old. He's still alive. God bless him. So he used to say when we go out to eat together and we were at a restaurant and they had a huge menu, he said, "They can't cook all this good." There's no way a chef can cook 50 things really good. And that always hit me. So if you're at a diner, order the burger because they'll cook that good. But at the French Laundry, they only have five things on the menu. They'll cook every one of those really good.

Michael: 21:26 It's the same thing in business and leadership. If you have too many things on the menu, you can't operate them all good. You've got to narrow it down. So the Emeril Lagasse theory was born out of ... Look, we could go online right now and get every one of Emeril Lagasse's recipes. No problem. We'll print them out, we have them, you and I, now let's buy a restaurant, let's start cooking. We can't cook them good. We can't copy them. And we'll be out of business in three month because we don't understand it. We don't understand how the things go into the recipe. And then we also have too many things on the menu









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and we can't cook them all good. So why is In-N-Out Burger so great? Because they only do a couple things. So when you do a couple things really well, people notice.

Ted: 22:05 There is a nice parallel invest in this concept of like a generalist versus a specialist. And it's almost the same thing where you've got to be really good at the one thing you're doing. But then, like what you said before, you also have to grow and change.

Michael: 22:20 And I think where Belichick gained such an advantage is, what are my weaknesses and how can I improve on them? So if I know I'm not good in a certain area ... We're not all great in everything. So I have to work on something else. I must improve on something else I do and I think that's where he gains the edge.

Ted: 22:35 You had mentioned earlier these leaders commanding and I loved in your TED Talk you talked about the cultural romps, you called them. Why don't you walk through those characteristics of leadership?

Michael: 22:47 Again, through Tom Peters. My life is centered around Tom Peters. Somehow he has come through my life without never meeting the man. You know how you have people that influence you in your life that you never meet. I mean, this man has done incredible things for me. Leadership is defined in four areas, management of attention, management of meaning, management of self, management of trust. So in my book I altered them a little bit because I thought it would be ...

Michael: 23:14 The command of the room means when you walk into a room you gain people's attention, you have a plan. It doesn't matter what your plan is, it just matters you have a plan. Now, command of the message, you've got to explain your plan. That's a challenge for some people. A lot of people have really good plans. They just can't explain them very well. So therefore, they lose it. And I talk about this in my TED Talk, about how Martin Luther King in the middle of his "I Have A Dream" speech, which wasn't titled "I Have a Dream" speech, Mahalia Jackson in the background yells, "Tell them about the dream, Dr. King."

Michael: 23:46 And he then goes on an 11-minute expose on, "I have a dream," and everybody got the message. It was powerful. It was








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visualized. You could hear it and see it. That's command of the message. Now, all of us don't have King's great skills, but you don't have to be a ra-ra guy. Belichick never raised his voice. Nick Saban might. It's your own style and your own authenticity, but you have to have a way to deliver your message so you can do it clearly, and that's command of the message.

Michael: 24:15 And then command of the process is about making sure that when you wake up every morning, you're committed to the culture and the process and not making exceptions to all the rules. One exceptions cost you your job. The way you treat one person is going to have a ripple down effect if you're outside. The program is bigger than any individual. If somebody wants to go against the grain ... I'll give you an example, the Utah Jazz were in a situation where they had a great point guard and Jerry Sloan was the head coach. And the point guard was going too far to the right. So Sloan went to the owner and said, "It's either me or him."

Michael: 24:52 And the owner hesitated and Sloan quit. And that hesitation is the reason why he quit. Because if that guy couldn't see it that clearly, it didn't matter. That's really command of the process. You've got to be committed to the values of the organization every single day and no one's bigger than it, including yourself. That's what comes in the command of self. This is really important, how you handle yourself, how you discipline yourself and how you educate yourself on an ongoing basis. That's create followers.

Michael: 25:23 It doesn't getting to the office at 4:00 in the morning and just having your car parked out. It's getting results. It's showing people how you work. You don't have to do it through, "I got here at 4:00." It's like people give to charities that want to take out a billboard that they gave to a charity. You don't have to do that. You just do your thing and your recognition will come to you. And what I found was to be a great leader you have to really be strong in three of the four, and great ones are all four. If you're only good in two you're really never going to succeed.

Ted: 25:53 I want to dive in a little bit on some of the details of let's call it the process. So you spent a lot of time in scouting. We think about statistics in baseball. What's happened in football?




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Michael: 26:01 So the technology has certainly helped a lot. When I first started in the league we were on 60 millimeter tape, which was very expensive and there wasn't a lot of it around the building. If you had game film of your present game you probably only had three games duped. So it was very expensive. Today everything's on high definition video. So now I can sit in my office in New England and watch every Texas A&M football game. So scouting has changed dramatically.

Michael: 26:26 Scouting, for me to get on an airplane and fly all the way to college station and then watch four games of their tape seems not worthwhile. Now, do I want to watch them practice and play? Maybe that's case. So film has changed it. The game itself has changed it by the rules. By the way they've changed the game from a running league to a passing league has altered the game. And as the game has become more complex, it has moved from checkers to chess, those pieces and the complications of those games requires you to find players that can influence the game.

Michael: 27:01 For example, back in the early '60s the middle linebacker called the defense. There was no real passing game so it didn't matter if they threw the ball, he wasn't going to get exploited. Today, if you play with a middle linebacker that can't play the pass and it can only play the run, you're done. So there's a line that I always use, if I can formation you off the field, meaning if I come out in a passing formation and you can't play, you're not a good player. So that's changed. As you're watching the game, you have to adapt your grading system and your philosophy to the ever-changing flow of the game.

Ted: 27:34 What's the blend of skill and character?

Michael: 27:38 Kobe Bryant is one of the hardest working, most competitive and intense players you're ever going to come across. So when your a great player has that work ethic it builds the whole organization. Tom Brady will spend ... He got to the office probably at 6:30 today. He probably won't leave till 6:30 at night. Nothing's more important than what Tom Brady does to his body, to his mind. So when you have great talent that brings that passion, you have a chance. When you don't, you get fooled, you get duped. You might have a high spike just like a stock might go up, but then you prepare for the downturn.







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Michael: 28:16 And then what happens is you don't create more followers to do it that way because if he's successful doing it that way, everybody else figures, "Well, let's cut this corner this week and we're going to have that result." So you must combine greatness with work ethic. I've never seen a great player that didn't work hard.

Ted: 28:34 How does that work in the scouting? so you can certainly digest a lot more on film?

Michael: 28:38 Right.

Ted: 28:38 How do you go about the softer qualitative side of ...

Michael: 28:41 Well, so you have to be unique now. Right now because I can't go talk to a trainer because the laws in the country won't allow him to give out information on his medical. So that's back in the '80s they would tell you anything you wanted to know. The coaches won't tell you anything you want to know because they don't want that player to hear a negative thought about them, it hurts their recruiting. So you know right now no one's honest. So how do you get around it? For us, find different ways. How do you find someone's behavior when you're not watching is the best way to learn about somebody.

Michael: 29:12 We might go down to LSU and we know there's two bars that the players go to. And if you sit in that bar and watch what happens or talk to the bartender, he's going to tell you more information about the player than any of the coach over there. If you get immersed in the campus, talk to the sorority girls, you're going to find out more about the players than the traditional methods. And that's where, if you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less. If you stay doing it the traditional way, it's not going to work.

Ted: 29:40 So as you go through the process of a draft, it takes a lot of time to get down to LSU and just sort of hang out in a couple bars and get to know whoever you need to know. How do you narrow the filter?

Michael: 29:51 Everything about scouting, just like I'm sure about stock investment, is about elimination, not finding. Everything is about elimination. We built a criteria for what we want from each player, a mental criteria, a physical criteria. So for example, if we want an offensive lineman, we know we want










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offensive lineman that 6'5" or taller who has 34.5 inch arms or longer, whose hand size is 9.5 or bigger, who run the 40 in 5.3 or less and who start three years in college or more. So we set up a criteria.

Michael: 30:25 And through that criteria all the players get funneled into it and then eventually less come out. And it's those less that you work on. The FBI doesn't open up the phone book and start looking for serial killers. They have a profile. It's the same thing in scouting. It's the same thing you do in your business. You have a profile of what you like in a company and it matches your profile, you're going to go after it.

Michael: 30:47 Now, that's not saying they're going to invest in it, but you're going deep dive into that and figure out maybe I'm here. That's what we do in scouting. So once you get that list down the key isn't to have ... Again, it's the Fred Palermo, too many things on the menu. We don't need 1,000 guys on our draft board. We need a 100 that fit what we do.

Ted: 31:02 What happens with the Jeremy Lins of basketball? So you have that criteria, certain size, certain weight, certain speed, but then there is the-

Michael: 31:13 He falls through the cracks. So there's always exceptions to every rule and you're going to come across them. There's always a small school guy that dominates something. But my attitude is, let him come to me. I don't need to chase him. If Jeremy Lin's a really good player, he's going to come to me eventually. He's going to a camp. I'm going to hear his name from somewhere. I'm not going to miss him. As Al Davies used to tell me all the time, "You know kid, you don't work in the NFL. You live in the NFL." I live in the NFL. I'm going to hear his name. You live in your business. You know through buzz, people are talking about this Lin guy, now let me go to some work, but if I spend my time searching for Lin, I lose too much time.

Ted: 31:49 How have the filters changed over the last bunch years in football with the explosion of data?

Michael: 31:54 Oh, it's been great. I tell everybody this, I'm in the information business. So I collect information and I sort information and I research information. People that say, "Well, you don't want to analytics." No, I want analytics. I want to know, but I don't want








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someone who is on a doctoral study. I don't want something 10 years from now. I want you to be wrong. Tell me that the broad jump doesn't equate to anything and I'll listen to you and let's test it out. Let's try it.

Michael: 32:20 But don't tell me you need 10 more years to test this out over here in a lab. We're not AstraZeneca. I don't have 10 years. I got to get to the answer. And you know what, being wrong, Ted, is the greatest thing we can be. It's like when you recruit a kid in school, you want somebody to come work for your firm. The one thing you don't want to hear is maybe. You want to hear either yes or no. No is just as good as yes because I'm moving on to the next guy, but maybe just ties me up to law. Maybes don't exist.

Michael: 32:48 Same thing with this research. So I take all this information and I sort it, I look at it. How does it apply? So instead of congratulating everybody after the draft, what do you do? You do the same thing Belichick does after every game. What did we do well? What did we do poorly on? What combines should we really pay more attention to? Northwestern has a workout every year for all the local kids from Chicago. Three kids got drafted at that workout. Okay. We need to put more resources in there. Something like that.

Ted: 33:13 Where do the tensions come up between say an owner, a general manager and a coach in terms of staying on a plan? Everyone wants to win the Super Bowl.

Michael: 33:22 Right. You're smart. You know the whole [inaudible 00:33:24] here. There's a lot of them. So Walsh used to say to me all the time the Civil War is the ugliest war to fight and there's a lot of civil wars in the NFL because why? Credit, who gets credit? Who deserves credit? Does the owner deserve the credit? Does the head coach? Is the personnel guy not getting enough attention? Who's in Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback column? Who's in there? So when ego plays into it, it becomes very toxic.

Michael: 33:49 For me, I understand my role. My role as a general manager is to work with the coach. There only can be one spokesman for the organization. There can only be one message, command of the message. If I talk and say something about the team during the season, all I do is stir the fire up. John Mara talking about Odell Beckham the other day just rekindled the fire that the







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media just wants him to do. John Mara doesn't need to talk. Dave Gettleman doesn't need a talk. Pat Shurmur should be the face of the franchise, let him to handle it all.

Michael: 34:23 But now we don't have that. So you have dissension. So when things don't go well you've got this. Everybody points the finger, well, they didn't do a good job on that, they didn't do a good job on that. When one voice is coming through and everybody agrees on the philosophy and the direction, you can powerfully win anything, but what happens too often is people want credit, people want to be in front the media, people want to be on TV, people want to be recognized. And that kills you. Ego is the enemy.

Ted: 34:49 How much of ... Let's just break it down from the coach's perspective. How much of that is this kind of notion of job risk, that they want to be known because who knows how stable their current situation is in these high turnover coaches?

Michael: 35:00 Well, yeah. Look, one third of the workforce in the NFL gets fired every single year. So that's a dangerous job. Really, it starts from the owner. The owner needs to be able to run the business like it's his business. Come in and tell us exactly what you want. What kind of football team do you want? Do you want to run the ball? Do you want to throw the ball? What do you visualize your company to be? Describe it for me. What type of people do you want? Will you take a chance on risky character? Define risky character. Okay.

Michael: 35:27 Anybody who hits a woman, we're not drafting. Okay, that's fine. All you gotta do is tell me. I agree with you. Anybody who smokes marijuana, we're not drafting. We gotta have a conversation there because most of the population does, it's legal. So let's talk about that. All right. And then you set the rules. Once we agree on what the rules are, fine. I'm often reminded of that scene in Apollo 13 when those scientists are sitting at a long table and two guys walk in with cardboard boxes and throw all this crap on the table and say, "We got to make this into that." And they point to the board. That's what your job is.

Michael: 35:58 When the owner tells you what he wants, it's your job to figure out how to make it into something else. But what often happens, the owner doesn't tell you what he wants. He never







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says, "Well, this is what I really want." And it becomes very difficult.

Ted: 36:09 It just sounds like such a common problem if the third of staff turns over most of the time this isn't working.

Michael: 36:15 That's right. And what happens is because of that, most of the time people base their decisions on solutions-based, what's good for us today. And if the owner doesn't understand that, you run the risk of having that high, low, up and down. Walsh told me in 1984, " We are only competing against eight teams." That was when we had 28 teams in the league. He was right. Today they're still only competing against eight teams. Some teams have no chance. In part because they don't have a culture, in part because they're fighting the Civil War, in part because they don't have the right structure organizationally to be able to deal with it. And the owners really can keep spinning the wheel and finding new people, but until they recognize it's their job to explain exactly what they want, they're never going to win.

Ted: 36:57 How does general manager fit into that equation?

Michael: 36:59 Well, most general managers don't have the complete autonomy to do whatever they want to do. It's really a coach-based league and it should be because the coach is dealing with the players every single day. If the players think the coach doesn't have control over their job, they can't be successful. They have to control it. But the general manager has to work and support the head coach and he has to do it in the background

Michael: 37:21 One year, when I left the Browns after Modell moved the team to Baltimore, Belichick went to New England and then I went to Philly and then after that CBS just got football back here. So I was still under contract and I started helping out CBS Sports and Jim Nantz and I were doing a segment on the NFL Today and I was going to talk to him about Bill Polian and Caroline and a bunch of personnel things, front office stuff and Nantz looks at me and says, "You know Michael, this is really interesting for you," he said, "but all of America really only cares about who owns the team, who's the coach of the team and who's the quarterback of the team."







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Michael: 37:58 And ever since that day that's how I approached it. Nobody really wants to hear from the GM until the draft, so shut up and just do your job. And that's really the role of the GM should be.

Ted: 38:07 We talked a bit about how Belichick plans for the week and then you're on the field and I would love you to tell the story of how you started your book and in part because people listening heard the episode with Annie Duke, this key play of the Patriots in Seattle. You had a very different perspective on that play than she did.

Michael: 38:27 Yeah. Annie was tremendous with her perspective. I loved that. So I get to the Patriots in 2014 after being fired again from one year working for the Browns, the owner changed direction. And I come in there and my first day on the job Belichick is talking about his goal line defense isn't very good. And they were really bad that year before. They couldn't stop anybody on short yard. So he wanted the defensive coaches to come up with a goal line defense in the front, but had three corners in the back end.

Michael: 38:56 So instead of playing nickel where they could run the ball on easily, he had a goal line front which deters people from running the ball and throw it against three corners. So we installed. We installed in April. We practiced at all the mini camps, all the OTA days. That's May and June. We come back to training camp, we start practicing in training camp. We practice it all of training camp, we don't run it. We practice it every game during every week during the season, we never run it. We get into the playoffs, we practice it every game, we don't run it. There's 26 seconds left to go on the clock.

Michael: 39:34 The Seattle Seahawks have the ball. They're in one-yard line. It's third in one. Belichick looks on the other sideline, he sees some confusion in the Seattle bench. He doesn't want to call time out because he feels like the time out will only benefit them, not him. Me, on the other hand, like an idiot, I'm up in the box, "We gotta call time out. We gotta call time out." Because if they score touchdown we need some time to win this game. Belichick decides, "We're going to win or lose right here." So he calls out for defense that we had never run before the entire year. Let's just put goal line nickel out there. We do.

Michael: 40:08 And Annie's perspective is, everybody's giving Pete Carroll crap for running the ball, which is completely wrong. We had so








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many big guys that if Marshawn Lynch would have tried to run the ball, he would have lost a yard. That's a fact. I don't care what Cris Collinsworth or Al Michaels say on television. That's just a fact, okay? So we put goal line nickel out there. Pete Carroll sees that we're putting goal line out there and it's clear on tape, he could hear him say, "They put goal line. They're in goal line. They're in goal line." They sent three receivers out on the field thinking they gained an advantage, but we really had the advantage.

Michael: 40:43 The next play Malcolm Butler and undrafted rookie free agent intercepts the ball at the one-yard line and we win the game. And it's all through his preparation and yet it's also through his ability to see the situation across the field, not react to it, not listen to the noise of all the other coaches telling him what they think he should do and focusing on the moment. It's remarkable.

Ted: 41:03 How often does the intuition of the coach supersede the plan?

Michael: 41:09 Belichick in the first quarter is on a mission and I mean a mission to figure out what we practice, is that the game? Is how we practice how this game's going and if it's not, how do I change it? How do I adjust to it? So you have to be adaptable within your plan and you've got to figure out when to change the plan. "They're going exactly how we said, let's just stay with plan." Or, "No, they're doing something completely different. Here's what we need to do." And I think that's the essence of experience.

Michael: 41:38 I'm reading this book by Chip Connolly about Wisdom at Work and he talks about experience, how he's helped out I think the Airbnb guys because he brought experience from his field into this high tech youthful business and it's helped them. Well, it's the same thing in all businesses. We all need some experience to know when to make that move. You don't get that when you're 25. I didn't have it, I know that, and I'm sure you're a much better investor today than you were 10 years ago because you learned through your experiences. And I think that helps.

Ted: 42:09 The back half of your book is this sort of magical football wonky kind of what's next generation of strategy. So let me ask you this question, what are the things in football that coaches generally don't do, that they should?







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Michael: 42:27 First down in football everybody talks about establishing the run. It's the most ridiculous statement of all time because all it does is establish your ability to kick field goals because you never know score a touchdown running the ball. You have to make explosive plays. You have to get chunk yards of play. So when the NFL started years ago, Wednesdays practice was all about first down, installing your first down. Today downs really don't matter. It's really about establishing the lead that matters. So throwing the ball.

Michael: 42:54 So modify how you change your practice, spend more time on third down in the red zone than you would on first and ten or if you're spending time on first and ten, practice throwing the ball, not running the ball. So you have to change and adapt to the game and your teaching habits have to change and adapt as well. And I think that's part of the biggest issue is because coaches are programmed. We've always done it this way, we're gonna keep doing it this way. If you don't do it that way and you're not successful then people are saying, "Wow, what are you doing?"

Michael: 43:21 And you have to have enough boldness, enough curiosity and enough confidence to do it the way you are because if you're watching the game and paying attention to it, you should do it that way.

Ted: 43:32 What are other common mistakes that coaches make?

Michael: 43:34 Well, they don't watch the game. They're not watching, they're not managing. Situational football is so important. If you have the ball, Ted, and I need the ball back and you have a third down play, third and four and I have one time out left and it's 2.05 to go in the game, if I call time out, most fans at home would say, "Well, that's a smart thing. You gave the two-minute warning." It's the dumbest thing you could do in football. Why? Because what I've given you the right now is to run or pass. I've now allowed you to run or pass.

Michael: 44:07 If I let those five seconds go and you go to the two-minute warning and I still have a time out, you have to run the ball because if you don't run the ball, they're going to kill you. They're going to rip you for not using the clock. If I know you're going to run the ball, I play a run defense, I get the ball back, but








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if I allow you the right to throw or run, I'm an idiot. And that mistake happens week after week after week. It's bizarre.

Michael: 44:31 And the other thing is, there's miss ... Field goals are turnovers. So if you don't evaluate, if I miss this kick and I turn the ball over to them, I'm giving them a huge advantage. So what are my odds if I go for it on fourth down as opposed to if I kick it? Weigh those. I don't understand why TV hasn't done it. There should be like a rolling total right where okay, the chances of making the field goal are 78%, the chances if I get-

Ted: 44:56 Like poker hands-

Michael: 44:57 Exactly. Exactly.

Ted: 44:58 Yeah.

Michael: 44:58 People would fall in love with that.

Ted: 45:00 Why do you think they haven't done it?

Michael: 45:01 Because I don't think they know enough. I think what's happened to football is football is a highly advanced game of chess and the people that are talking about the game don't understand the chess game. It would be like me going to analyze a Bobby Fischer [Borkowski 00:45:13] chess match. I don't know enough about it to analyze it. So what can I say, nice move? I mean, it's just not. That's the other thing that drives me crazy, Ted is, it is advanced test game and we have coaches acting like complete lunatics when if you ever watched two grandmasters play chess, did they ever show any emotion? Of course not, they're thinking. Do you ever see Belichick? He's always thinking. It's the same thing.

Ted: 45:37 What are your other favorite little nuggets?

Michael: 45:40 Well, oftentimes when we look at a game, who's in the game determines what you do. So everything's a chess match. So if I go to three receivers and you play base defense, then I'm going to run the ball. If you play nickel against my three receivers, I'll run it then. So it's the chess match that's in there that we never get explained about the game. So that's a real problem for me. And then I think every third down isn't the same.











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Michael: 46:03 So at halftime this weekend you'll see third down stats with four for seven on third down. Well, the third down, if you're at your opponent's five-yard line, that third down is worth way more than you're at your own 25-yard line. That third down is four-point play, this third out at the 25 is just a third down. They never talk about that. They just lump them all together. When you practice, you practice third downs in the red zone, you practice third downs in the field.

Michael: 46:28 And then my other one is where the quarterback cannot get sacked. So if I'm Tom Brady and I have the ball at my opponent's five-yard line and I hold the ball and I get sacked at the 12, that's not a problem. I'm going to kick the field goal anyway. I'm waiting for somebody to get open, but if I have the ball at my opponent's 35, let's say and I take a sack there to the 42, now I can't kick a field goal. That's a three-point sack I gave up. So I can't take that sack. You follow me? I can't take that sack. That's a dumb play. That's me beating myself and I can't do that.

Ted: 47:02 Through all your experiences in coaching, what do you take away as the biggest lessons of leadership?

Michael: 47:09 To never stop learning. I think curiosity is the greatest thing. I think you have to keep asking why and I think you have to reverse engineer it. Jack Nicholson said this once and I think it's a powerful line. He said, "You know, I am a devout Democrat, but I read everything that Ann Coulter writes about because I want to learn, because I want to know. It's the elixir of life." And I think if you take that approach, if you really believe in something strongly, then read everything about it the other way, it will either enhance you or grow you.

Ted: 47:37 So you've written this wonderful book, you're doing podcasts, you're on television. What's next for you?

Michael: 47:44 I wanted to have a second career. George Raveling is one of the greatest men I've ever met in my life. He was a coach at USC, Washington state in Iowa. In fact, he is the curator of the Martin Luther King "I Have A Dream" speech. He was on the stage that day. He was working security and he just happened to ask Dr. King for the copy of the speech and Dr. King gave it to him. So he's owned it. He lives in Los Angeles. He's been a mentor to me and he told me, "The greatest years of my life was from 60 till








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I'm 81 now." And that's really what I want to have. I want to be the greatest year of my life from now on.

Ted: 48:15 Where's that going to take you?

Michael: 48:16 I don't know. I have no idea. I have nothing planned other than I'd like to write another book. I love football. I love leadership and I just want to keep doing this.

Ted: 48:23 How have you been spending your time now?

Michael: 48:24 I've been spending my time working on football mostly and reading about things that I can apply to football. That's the beautiful thing about football that Walsh talked about, was how you can take something that you learn in Chip Conley's book or Ryan Holiday's Ego Is the Enemy and apply it to your field. Isn't that why we read? And so that's what I'll try to do.

Ted: 48:43 All right Mike, let's turn to some closing questions. What was your most memorable accomplishment outside of work and family?

Michael: 48:51 When you have two wonderful kids, a beautiful wife. I think the family thing in this business is so hard to maintain because you work so long and you work hard. But I think my proudest moment was, I think, my ability to understand the situation outside of professional and try learn something else. And I took this writing course in San Francisco, I think that was my proud ... To learn something else.

Ted: 49:13 What's your biggest pet peeve?

Michael: 49:15 I don't understand offices that are a mess. It drives me crazy. I have no confidence. I went to a military academy so excuse me and I apologize. But I think an office should be tidy. I know Einstein's office was a disaster and I have a picture of Bill Buckley's office. It looks like a disaster. Those are people at a different level. It drives me crazy if an office isn't neat. The other thing is because Walsh was a stickler for paint pictures being straight on the wall. If I will walk by an office, I don't see a picture that's straight, I have the fix it.

Ted: 49:43 What teaching from your parents has most stayed with you?











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Michael: 49:45 I think hard work without a doubt. My dad is 91 years old, he still cuts every single day. I think work ethic you get from your parents. My mother always told me to dream. She was the one who wanted me to dream and Springsteen wrote that song Born to Run to get out of this town and my mother's words were echoed in that.,You've got to dream. Your life's not going to be here. Your life can be bigger than this.

Ted: 50:04 What information do you read that you get a lot out of that other people might not know about?

Michael: 50:09 I'm obsessed with the cartels. I'm obsessed with Don Winslow. I love the writer Don Winslow. I love reading about the cartels, how people think it's just a bunch of thugs, which they are, but how they set up their enterprise and how they shifted the dynamics of when we legalized marijuana and they realized it was a business, how they shifted it into now we are faced with this opioid crisis in America.

Ted: 50:30 All right. Last one. What life lesson have you learned that you wish you knew a lot earlier in your life?

Michael: 50:36 That you can get great wisdom from just one man. If I would have stayed with Walsh my whole life, I probably would have been wiser and better, even though I went through a diversity of learning I think I didn't get enough. Judge Scalia has a line that says, "Wisdom comes later." When wisdom comes later, I think that wisdom comes later from that.

Ted: 50:53 Michael, thank you so much.

Michael: 50:54 Thank you Ted.

Ted: 50:57 Before you take off, I've created three different ways for you to stay updated on the podcast and my blog according to your preferences. First, you can sign up to receive a monthly email with a few great things I've read and listened to over the month. Second, for more prompt delivery you can subscribe to my blog and receive emails when each podcast episode and blog post come out. And last, you can access the full library of transcripts by signing up for a premium subscription. All three options are available on the home page at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com. Thanks for your support.










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Transcript: Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football ...€¦ · next Vince Lombardi coach to where, "No, no, no. I want to be a GM. I want to build something. I don't want