YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Lombardi

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77
first
2018-11-12
most recent
2018-11-12
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1
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podcast

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  1. “They just meet as groups, as individuals. So there is a difference. I mean, winning looks alike in all organizations, losing looks alike in all organizations. And so I'll give you an example. Every day after practice on Wednesday, Thursday, Bill makes the coaches come into his 5 o'clock meeting and he goes over the practice tape of that day. Nick Sabin hated it. Oh my God, he hated it with a passion. He would complain, I can't believe a dog. I got to be in here. It's killing me. I got stuff I got to do. You know what Alabama would 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 they're not used to it and they're not used to being lead.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “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 mean, I've never been around a program that ever operates that way. I've been around programs that doesn't meet as a team.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “All week long, 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 of 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 for it. I'm going to punt. Or if it's fourth and short early in the game, we're going to go for it. 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 the team and they get ready to play.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Offensively, defensively in 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. Wednesday practice, five o'clock staff meeting to go over the practice with the coaching staff. Same, repeat that on Thursday. Friday today, they come in. They'll go over the game again. They'll go over the Thursday practice or in the morning at the 8 o'clock 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 at 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 Terry Cohen. Or if it's third and seven and they need to ball back, they're going to blitz. All week long, he's teaching the Patriot players how this game is going to be played.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “that day off, and then he'll start setting the agenda for the week. And that starts with this thing called points of emphasis. 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?”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Until Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock, you're preparing for the opponent you're going to play, studying videotape, how they do, what they do, break it down. He's doing the same thing in his office. 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 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. 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 o'clock, he will welcome the team back, congratulate them on the win, perhaps see it meet with him on Monday.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “No, no. It's like we're either doing this better, we're doing that better. 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.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah, that's easy. So let's say, okay, we're recording this on Friday. They just played the Chiefs on Sunday night. 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. By the time you get home, it's 1 o'clock in the morning. Everybody's back in the office by 6.630 easily. You start out by breaking down the game that you just played, offense, defense, and the kicking game. There'll be a 12 o'clock 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 nineteen ninety one in Cleveland that breaks it down the game. Things we did well, things we did poorly, things we need to improve on, mistakes we made in scheme, mistakes we made in coaching, the tactical points of the game, player evaluations of where we misjudge their team. So he's doing an autopsy of the game, and he wants his offense coordinator to do it, he wants his defense coordinator to do it. So that meeting lasts for about two to three hours. It's not, hey, we won, guys. Everything's great.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Church 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.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Can evaluate the game from thirty five thousand feet. He's not obsessed with tomorrow. He's obsessed with tomorrow and the next day and the day after. He's not a solution-based leader. So there's two kind of leaders, solution-based and substantial based. And we know this through the home finance crisis. Those people given loans to 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. 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?”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “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 kind 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 try to make a difference when I should have been only growing 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. So let's start with Bill. Bill is an incredible leader. Bill's monotone. He's not concerned about what anybody thinks other than the people he's leading. And so he's very deliberate in what he's once done. It's meticulous. It's explained to precise fashion.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Two of the other coaches one you worked with and worked for, Nick Sabin and Bill Belich, have this mystique in their incredible ability to succeed. You pick one or the other and talk about what you learned working with or for them.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “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 it silver and black. He wanted that brand in your name. So if you say silver and black to anybody who's a football fan, 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. He was greatly influenced by the Brooklyn Dodgers. He grew up in Brooklyn. He was greatly influenced by the Yankees. So he wanted to... He always talked about the greatness of the raiders, and his message, which is part of marketing, is what helps sell the brand.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “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 done in that fashion. And if you did it well, you were going to move up.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “There's so many of them. Yeah. I mean, 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 their madness. So he was always trying to calculate what that was. And I 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 Bradley on the phone and said, you know, the source that's typically on this health and human service article was in the hospital last night. Who's the new source? And then this other source on this finance column was in Egypt. Who's the source? 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.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “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 he never shared what he really wanted. He never really was very meticulous in the details. It was always about because he had a coach. There was a coach there. There was a buffer between him and the organization. He allowed that to occur. Whereas Walsh was, we called hands-on, but really, what does hands-on mean, Ted? Aren't you doing your job if you're hands-on? Like, it's like mission statements, one of the most ridiculous things you could ever have, right? What does that mean? We're going to 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 being a good leader. And so I think that was the difference between the two.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “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. And 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. 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.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “He had a great command of what he wanted. There was no doubt he knew what he wanted to do. He commanded everything that 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 as applied to the guy who read the ads at Candlestick Park.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Does leadership mean to some young kid, right? 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? Like just luck is a 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 could you keep getting better? Shininsky has this great quote that I hung in my office at the Oakland Raiders that said, if you don't like change, you're going to like relevance 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.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “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 try and observe and learn from him because you know he knows and you know nothing and so it was just incredible and I was fortunate enough to ask him questions 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 and I thought he was talking about a punner from South Dakota and he said 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”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “So then I'm there. I'm not making any money. I'm living on Burger King coupons. I'm living at a dumpy hotel on the strip. I would get the holiday in buffet line. And then people left there. I 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 can 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 you. So I got it. And the next thing I know, I'm driving Bill Walsh's porch. I went from making nine grand to driving this incredible Porsche. It was great.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “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 loyal Toyota Trussell 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 where I'd sleep in my car, whatever I had to do, I would do it. And 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 at 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 can I get a GA job? How can I come work for you? I was obsessed with doing it.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “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. Well, McMahon's card only had three hits on it. So whenever he put him in the game, he was getting everybody out, right? 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 it 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, you know? I couldn't win a game. And he was from Erasmus High School. And that's how Al knew him. So it's kind of funny how the world goes”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “We were 12 years old, 13 years old. My father was still a barber, 91 years old, cuts hair every day. And we had this house half a block from the beach in Ocean City. It's the summertime. We're all playing baseball together, the three of us. And so we found this game. It's a card game. You rolled 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 like the Red Sox. I like the Braves. Senino like the White Sox. He was a Dick Allen fan. I was a Hank Aaron fan. So he 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 Senino finds Don McMahon. And Dom McMahon's card for people that don't know Stratomac baseball. The pitcher has four, five, and six.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Italian name, and so I just really at the age of ten, I plotted a course to try to get to the NFL. And then I played Stratomatic Baseball with my two buddies, Michael Sanino and Danny Reynolds, and this whole idea of stratomatic 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. And from that point, 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 Hofstadt University because I wanted to get into football and it just started that way.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “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 Lombardy, and I thought that's kind of what I want to do. And so there's no relationship between me and Vince other than the last name, which is”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I guessed 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. He is the author of the fantastic recently released book, Gridiron Genius, a masterclass and winning championships and building dynasties in the NFL. The book is a tour de force of applied leadership through his learnings working alongside football grades 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 Bellet.”

    2018-11-12 · Capital Allocators · Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (Capital Allocators, EP.75) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source