What is the best way for an owner to motivate his GM and head coach to win, without being a meddler

The Game Room
1

Seems that an owner is always stuck in a Catch-22.

If he keeps prodding the head coach and GM to win, then he gets into Jerry Jones syndrome, where a meddling owner can inadvertently hurt the team more than helping it.

But if he doesn’t prod the GM and head coach hard, then he ends up with Marvin Lewis or Jason Garrett syndrome, where a coach just keeps the team stuck in mediocrity, “same old, same old,” knows that losing won’t jeopardize his job (at least, not until a very long time has gone by,) and knows that as long as the team remains in decent shape, always at least a playoff contender but never truly breaking through, he can keep collecting a paycheck.

But then if the owner sets up performance-achievement structure, like big bonuses for winning championships, then he runs the risk that a short-sighted GM or head coach will just mortgage away the future for the present for a “win-now” mode when the owner wants a longterm dynasty, not just a flash in the pan.

And at a certain point, when the team keeps losing, the owner will get personally blamed by fans and media just as much as the GM or head coach.

Pay too little salary, and the GM and head coach feel disrespected or people don’t want to take the job; pay too much, and the pressure is reduced because the GM or head coach are financially set for life (although they are, frankly, set for life even at lower salaries, too.)

What’s the ideal balanced approach? If the owner fires too quickly, then his team gets stuck in head coaching carousel forever with no continuity; if he waits too long to fire, then an entire decade goes down the drain.

2

They already want to win. Lack of motivation to win was never the problem to begin with.

3

Jason Garrett was a particular case, because he was the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys; Jerry Jones is both the owner of the Cowboys, and the Cowboys’ general manager. Jones has a documented history of falling in love with certain players and coaches, sticking with them far longer (from a GM perspective) than a less sentimental, and more “success-first,” person would.

4

Exactly. Motivation isn’t the problem. Having the right players, coaches, and staff is what a coach needs. Another thing is by letting a coach know that they won’t be fired for taking reasonable risks that don’t end up panning out.

5

And yet even then, as GM, he would probably believe his choices were in fact about helping them win. “Fall in love” usually means “thinks they are particularly good at their job.”

I’m with @Chronos. I’d need some indication that motivation to win is the problem. Beyond just the inherent competitiveness in sport, winning is the way you assure everyone you’re good enough. It’s best job security there is, even if you are given the opportunity to try and fail a bit.

6

I have no doubt of that. I strongly suspect that Jones believes he is an exceptional judge of talent, an exceptionally good GM, and is making all of the best decisions.

However, the record kinda speaks for itself. When the Cowboys were excellent, early in Jones’ tenure as owner/GM in the early 1990s, they had Jimmy Johnson as their coach, but he was also the de facto general manager, as far as personnel decisions went (and was quite good at it), because Jones had ceded that responsibility to him.

When Jones wanted to take total control of the GM decision-making, Johnson balked, and then walked. The Cowboys won one more Super Bowl, two seasons after Johnson left, with Barry Switzer as coach, and largely with the team that Johnson had assembled. In the 30 seasons since then, they have never gotten past the divisional round, and missed the playoffs entirely in 17 of those 30 seasons.

Jones clearly is not going to fire himself as GM. But any team owner who did not give himself the GM role would have fired a GM with Jones’s record a long long time ago. In Jones’s case, I am 100% certain that he believed that Garrett, and the other guys he’s fallen in love with, were, yes, “particularly good at their jobs,” even when the objective evidence said otherwise.

7

I remember years ago when George Steinbrenner hired and fired Billy Martin as the Yankees manager multiple times. Never understood what he thought he was going to accomplish or improve by introducing that kind of instability.

Perhaps it’s a common failing for New York based robber barons / sociopaths.

8

I think it would be tough to be an owner. You shouldn’t interfere with the day to day running of the team, but you do need to hire a GM and decide when to fire him. If you’re not a football professional yourself, it’s going to be very difficult to tell who the best available candidate is. It’s also difficult to tell when the GM is failing because he’s not good at his job, as opposed to when he’s failing because his job is really hard and he had some bad luck. Basically, you’re rolling the dice and hoping for the best.

But I agree that at the elite pro sports level, nobody involved should need extra motivation to care about winning games.

9

Most such owners hire one or more front-office executives with football knowledge who can help with that sort of decision, and/or bring in “search consultants” with that knowledge when they need to hire a new GM.

The owners who choose to not do so, or who choose to ignore the guidance they are given by their experts, tend to reveal themselves by their teams’ performance.

10

So, the OP boils down to “how to micromanage your employees without looking like you are micromanaging your employees?”

If an owner needs to come up with a “head coach of the month” award or other such scheme to motivate the staff to build and maintain a winning culture, that speaks to incompetence at the top, not at the coach or GM level. But such owners generally aren’t the types to ‘fire’ themselves, i.e. taking themselves out of the decision making process by hiring competent team executives to do that stuff.

11

No, what I’m asking is what an owner can do to prevent complacency, or a head coach and GM who thinks that “good enough to not get fired” is all he needs to do, or whose main goal is to just not get fired but not actually break through and get over the hump.

Or, a head coach or GM who always falls back on things like “Injuries, bad officiating, ball didn’t bounce our way, drafting is a crapshoot,” to try to absolve self of blame but, again, not actually break through.

12

As above, there’s no indication complacency is actually an issue anywhere. Nobody at that level wants to lose.

Sure, fans imagine it is there, but fans think a lot of things.

If an owner actually sees complacency, the solution, not just for NFL owners but to bosses in general, is to sit the employee down and lay it out to them. KPIs, weird bonuses, and other passive-aggressive measures are just ways for the owner to avoid having a not-so-tough conversation about how unhappy they are. And there are no NFL owners who have shown any problem telling the staff how unhappy they are about not winning

13

A bad owner would be telling the GM/Coach to just “win more.”

A good owner would be asking the GM/Coach what they plan to do to succeed where they’ve failed in the past. And knowing when it’s time to move on from one who’s just making excuses and not actually improving.

14

The OP’s question is applicable to every manager everywhere in every society and every industry on Earth. How do you get good results from your part of the organization?

There’s books and books on management. They even have university degrees in it. I strongly doubt there is anything that’s materially different about a pro sports biz versus any other. With the exception of having very goal directed strivers in every position.

Second point:
The OP’s question implies the existence of high level shirkers. I’d like to see evidence of some in any pro sports team.

There are pro sports team owners who’re doing at as a vanity project. Even if they’re sound managers in other areas of their empire, they may choose not to be here.

15

The other thing I would add is many North American professional sports teams’ income streams, and profitability, are only tangentially related to their on-field performance (at least, not in the immediate term). So, many of the primary business metrics which are used in other for-profit businesses to measure success: net profits, ROI, etc., aren’t necessarily directly linked to wins.

16

See also (as you mentioned above): Jerry Jones and the Cowboys

17

Excellent point.

An owner may find the most profitable version of his team is mediocre on the field. Even if the e.g. coaching staff isn’t aiming for that, the owner can make it impossible for them to succeed.

IMO as long as the owner is honest with themself and isn’t ham-stringing the staff while also demanding a winning dynasty, and firing underlings who don’t deliver the impossible, they’re free to run their business to lose games and thereby make more money.


For those leagues where the antitrust laws are waived by Congress, it’s a good bet this is a frequent topc among owners behind closed doors.

Probably also in other leagues without immunity, but w lots more secrecy.