Murphy hopes to take the Packers from ‘Good to Great’
Back in 1991, Bob Harlan, then the president of the Green Bay Packers, was not a “football person.”
But the humble Harlan was smart enough to know that he didn’t know what he didn’t know. (That is a quality of wisdom that has been recurring frequently lately among effective business leaders in this column.)
So, Harlan went out and hired a “football person,” Ron Wolf, to oversee the football operations of the team, allowing Harlan to focus on the business aspects of running the Packers, including the then-controversial expansion of Lambeau Field.
“We wanted a football person making all of our football decisions,” Harlan told PackersNews.com. “The people on my executive committee were very talented businessmen, very successful businessmen and very valuable to the organization helping us with our business structure. But from the football side, I just felt we needed one strong football person and give him that authority.”
Of course, the dichotomy of duties served the Pack gloriously well. Super, you might say.
It paid off again with another Super Bowl title after Harlan brought in Ted Thompson to be general manager, and Thompson hired Mike McCarthy to be
head coach.
Fast forward to 2018. Harlan is retired, and Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy a “football person.” And he’s restructuring the team’s front office again.
Time had passed by the previous structure.
As general manager, Thompson had complete control over all of the football operations, just as Wolf did before him, and McCarthy made the most of the roster Thompson built for him.
In recent years, Thompson had lost his touch in player evaluations, making several questionable decisions.
When the Packers fell short of expectations, as they did this past season — even taking into account the injury to quarterback Aaron Rodgers — who was to blame? Thompson, for not creating a roster that could compete? Or McCarthy, for not making the most of that roster on game day?
Perhaps both, according to Kay Plantes, a business strategy and leadership expert.
“Organizations are only successful if their parts are aligned towards achievement of a shared goal. A terrific R&D team cannot create company success if the marketing team is unable to build awareness and consideration of its innovations, for example. The Packers need both better players and game plans less dependent on Rodgers for the Packers to build sustaining success,” said Plantes, principal at Plantes Co. LLC in La Jolla, Calif.
Murphy is fixing that quandary by hiring Brian Gutekunst as the Pack’s new general manager. However, Gutekunst will not oversee all of the football operations. He will be in charge of what he does best: college and professional player evaluations.
Gutekunst will be assisted by Russ Ball, who was promoted to executive vice president/football operations. Ball will do what he does best: salary cap management.
That leaves the management of the team on the field to McCarthy. That’s what he does best.
“I thought it would be really helpful for Mike McCarthy to report to me,” Murphy told the Journal Sentinel. “I think it’s best for the organization.”
Thus, Gutekunst, Ball and McCarthy each will report to Murphy, the “football person.”
In the end, all of the executives will be tasked with doing precisely what they do best.
Or, to put it in the parlance of Jim Collins’ book “Good to Great,” Murphy, a former All-Pro safety who earned an MBA in finance from American University and a law degree from Georgetown University, appears to have placed all the right people on his bus. Furthermore, he’s put them in the right seats on that bus.
“In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with ‘where’ but with ‘who.’ They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats,” Collins wrote.
It turns out that Murphy indeed has read “Good to Great” and discussed the importance of getting the right people in the right seats on his bus, according to Aaron Popkey, Packers director of public affairs.
Murphy said 13 other NFL teams have similar front-office structures, and seven of those clubs advanced to the playoffs this year.
Gutekunst sees the benefits of the new hierarchy.
“No red flags,” Gutekunst said. “I had to think about it when I was trying to process it or whatever, but the biggest thing to me was just the people involved. My relationship with Russ is really strong, and my relationship with Mike is really strong. So I needed to hear how it was going to work, but once Mark laid it out, I was all for it. I was pretty jacked up about it. Because it actually takes some things out of my way, so I can really do what I’m good at. So, I was happy about it.”
The new structure also assures better direct accountability. After all, it remains unclear why backup quarterback Brett Hundley failed when Rodgers went down. Was it because Hundley never should have been drafted so high by Thompson to begin with? Or did Hundley fail because McCarthy could not coach him up to be effective? We’ll never know.
With the new structure, if the Packers fail, Murphy, the “football person,” will have the final say about who needs to get off the bus.