EAGAN — When Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was a 49ers researcher, he sat in his office in San Francisco, wondering how to run the team if someone put him in the position of general manager. What will the draft look like? Do we play songs in the morning to get things going? How can everyone prioritize our team over anything else in a world with many competing interests?
“All these things you dream of, they are here and happening,” Adformensa said. “Participation is special and I am very pleased that everyone here has responded positively to it.”
When Adofo-Mensah talks about his vision for a successful work environment, he uses words that we are not used to hearing in the field of football. Coaches and GMs usually talk about toughness, personality, hard work, and sometimes suggest biting the other’s patella. Adofo-Mensah’s dependable phrase is “culture of collaboration”.
Towards the top of the list of reasons why Wilf’s ownership decided to move away from Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer was that the ecosystem within the TCO Performance Center was harmed. From the front office to assistant coaches to athletes, there were many people on these walls who felt left behind in the process of chasing the championship. Whether Eric Kendricks was talking about Zimmer’s “fear-based” culture, assistant coaches reported he didn’t want to join the Vikings, or nepotism shattered their beliefs, directly in a variety of ways. Or indirectly defined. All were trying to achieve the same thing.
Adofo-Mensah’s “Culture of Collaboration” offers a completely different sound. But even he must admit that these three words are less descriptive about how the Vikings actually turn their culture around and the exact way it results in winning a football match. Must be. On the surface, it’s more like taken from Ryan Howard’s Business School page, rather than an actual overview of how to deepen the team in the playoffs.
So what does that really mean? How do they implement it? Does it make a difference, or is it just a lively McDonald’s salad?
When Flip Brown started a business culture consultant 22 years ago, people were asking him what “culture” in business meant. No one asks him anymore. According to a Columbia Business School survey, 92% of the more than 1,400 CEOs and CFOs surveyed believe that improving their corporate culture will increase their value. However, Brown discovered that everyone in the business has a different definition of what culture means.
“The definitions I use are: Common beliefs, assumptions, and actions used by organizations regarding how to understand things, react to things, solve problems, and collaborate.” phone. “Some of those assumptions and beliefs have been identified and written, but some have not.”
Solving problems and working together was not praised for what the previous regime did. Former receiver Stephen Diggs told ESPN after the deal with Buffalo that his main dissatisfaction with the Vikings was not listening to him on important aspects of the team’s attack. Zimmer has publicly teased the analytics department’s proposal at the 2020 NFL Combine, and Spillman has reportedly set aside warnings from scouts to avoid drafting certain failed players.It’s not the Viking’s top brass I never have I’ve heard from someone else in the past, but they’ve had a hard time getting the main contributors to the cause behind.
“The biggest gaps I see in business culture are: [the company’s] Employees will automatically know if there is a big gap between values and beliefs, and on the other hand, the behavior of owners, managers and supervisors, “Brown said. “It creates discord and people’s decision to grow out of culture.”
Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell are trying to prevent preached values and beliefs from differing from their actions.
“You will see it more and more around the building, but the idea is’us’-it’s our team,” O’Connell said. “We are working with players and working for them. They feel the support from us and they are returning it to us soon.”
The problem with making football “our team” is that things are constantly going wrong. If the team fails to implement the best strategy, they will be handed backs, fingered and excused every week. Everyone is planning their culture until they lose three games in a row to channel Mike Tyson.
“Rather than understanding what it is for your culture and sticking to it, the first collision of the road will go back to something else and change everything,” says Safety Harrison Smith. I did.
Former psychologist Brown, who has worked with more than 100 companies since launching a business culture consultant, says that achieving a consistent culture is a way for any business or team to overcome the challenges of the road. I am saying. Living in Vermont, he uses the example of a longtime Bill Belichick-Tom Brady leadership duo in New England. Another example is Pittsburgh, who has never had a losing record under Mike Tomlin, despite all sorts of problems the team experiences each year, from Antonio Brown’s drama to poor quarterback play. This is Steelers.
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“What is a sense of purpose? If the sense of purpose is about ego and salary, collaboration is a compromise,” says Brown. “If that’s true,’I don’t care who has the ball as long as I’m moving it forward. I want everyone to put their ego aside and unify for a common purpose.'”
But again, this is football. How can a team create an environment where everyone wants the ball to cross the goal line without ego or salary concerns?
Harrison Smith says it starts with a more personal approach.
“Aggression, relationships … everything works together towards the same goal,” Smith said. “”[Kevin O’Connell] I know everything about every coach here. He knows everything about every player. We work on the plan and work on it, but we start by building trust, accountability and relationships with each other. “
“I know the guy next to you, I know the guy who is guiding you, I know what drives them, their family,” Smith continued. “Not only your role in this building or Game Day, but how it affects others, how it helps others, how they help you, we We have such ownership of what we can do collectively. “
Not only does Brown know the players, coaches and front office personnel at the individual level, but he also proposes what he calls the “servant leadership” of Adfomensa and O’Connell.
“If the team wins, the player wins credits, but if the team loses, the leader is responsible,” Brown explained. “If he respects people for his integrity, he speaks well, listens well, and drives for results because he is doing what he is trying to do. While having empathy and compassion, people generally respect their leaders in the areas in which they are. “
This is at the heart of another general criticism of Zimmer and Spillman. That responsibility was often placed elsewhere when things went wrong. It has not yet been determined how Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell will handle the failure.
Everything is easier to say than is done in the NFL. It’s definitely positive to listen to everyone and work together to make decisions, but what if you disagree? It’s easy to say that you can hear all your voice, but it’s hard to say no.
“Leaders need to strike a balance between being inclusive and decisive,” Brown said, suggesting that leaders are authoritarian, if not authoritarian.
Viking’s GM and head coach are also responsible for managing ownership needs and needs, reportedly guiding the overall direction of the team’s off-season movement, especially in quarterbacks. Brown only works with clients who are willing to look at themselves in the mirror and question their role in how the culture has reached a downpoint. Said.
“Do the owners understand that they are part of the solution and part of the problem? Brown said.” Usually they take them from real-world experience. It has a fair level of wealth that tends to be isolated … it’s hard to recognize when things get out of balance. “
The actual experience of Viking over the last four years has been unachieved in the field and tensions since then. They are betting that the culture of collaboration will change both of them.
“I never feel like I’ve done anything,” Adformensa said. “We feel like we’re just getting started.”
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