Front Office

The importance of a steady hand

I love sports. And I spend my professional life studying and working with leaders in every sector. So you know I’m going to be fascinated by a round-up in the New York Times Athletic rating the best and worst front offices in professional sports. The front office in sports- usually the chairman/owner, general manager, and head coach– is roughly equivalent to the board chair and CEO in a business or non-profit organization. So the lessons I teased from the Times’ Athletic have value even for those who’ve never tuned in to a ballgame

The Athletic ratings were based on a simple poll of peers. At the start of the 2024 season, 40 executives and coaches were asked to rank the top five front offices in their respective sports, in all four major leagues – the MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL. Then the Athletic tallied the scores for each sport.

So what did colleagues and competitors view as the key criteria for front-office excellence? A few things stood out, with obvious parallels to leadership in other sectors:

1. The ability to pick outstanding talent that complements the rest of the team as opposed to chasing after superstars who may be redundant or who don’t fit with the team’s culture and strategy.

2. Talent development programs that strengthen individuals while supporting cohesion and the overall vision for the team.

3. A clearly defined and well-articulated culture understood by those at every level of the organization.

4. Consistency, or the patience to take a take a long-term approach and stick with a good plan even through periods of turbulence.

I want to focus here on consistency because it came up time and again as a characteristic marker of front-office excellence. And because this is where many organizations fall short.

Consistency derives from having a vision, strategy, and plan for execution that remain in place even when a crisis hits or new leadership fads emerge. It’s the precise opposite of the “whole new day” approach that so often undermines organizations because a new leader feels the need to remake the organization in their own image, or is dazzled by a popular trend like “disruption.” Among underlings and direct reports, the effort to do a total remake is often derisively referred to as the “yellow snow” approach.

Consistency, by contrast, reflects a secure culture that supercedes one person or management style. And is often the result of a leadership team that remains in place and hews to a defined philosophy for a considerable span of time.

Take the NBA’s first-place Oklahoma City Thunder. GM Sam Presti has been in his position for 18 years, while owner/chair Clayton Bennett, who acquired the Seattle SuperSonics in 2006 and moved the team to Oklahoma City to become the Thunder in 2008, has 19 years under his belt.

It's worth noting that Bennett was previously part-owner of the San Antonio Spurs, while Presti began his career interning with the Spurs after college, later rising to assistant GM. Both worked with Greg Popovich, the longest-serving head coach in any major sport in the US. Though presently on break because of a stroke in November, Popovich has been in his position with the Spurs since 1996. So you could say that the Thunder have consistency in their DNA.

A surprising number of the other top front-offices also have long-serving leadership, including the number 3-ranked Baltimore Ravens. Their GM Eric DeCosta has been with the team since becoming an intern there in 1996, while John Harbaugh has served as head coach for 16 years.

The Athletic poll suggests that stable leadership enables distinctive and coherent cultures to thrive and sustain themselves over time. Yet in the corporate world this is an increasing rarity. According a 2023 report from executive intelligence firm Equilar, the median tenure among CEOs at S&P 500 companies has been steadily declining, with almost half (40%) now serving just 1 to 5 years. Chief reasons include unremitting pressure from shareholders impatient with any loss, which undercuts support for strategies designed to yield long-term benefits; increased scrutiny resulting from social media; and a larger culture quick to assign blame.

Of course, public pressure can operate even more punishingly in pro sports. But sports teams’ non-public ownership structures can offer protections— depending, of course, on who owns them. For example, the New York Jets, which ranked a lowly 64 out of 70 in the front office poll, has been owned by Woody Johnson, of the Johnson & Johnson family, for 25 years. Yet they’ve had 8 coaches in that time and their front office is described by colleagues in the poll as “chaotic” and “the most dysfunctional place imaginable.” Vision and temperament matter more than length of tenure, and are key to producing consistent results.

In the end, attracting the right talent, while important and admittedly the sexy part of leadership, will only get you so far. As the saying goes, it takes a steady hand to hold a full cup.

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