Corporate Best Practices in the Sports world

While I'm the furthest thing from a blogger or journalist, I finally drummed up the courage to share a few thoughts about how my 30+ year corporate career, including many of those as a senior executive, could finally overlap my now, 10 years working in Sports and talent recruitment.

I have been rather outspoken about how professional sports teams (specifically on the Operations side), could take a lesson or two from the corporate sector when it comes to sourcing, recruiting and hiring the best Management and Coaching candidates available. Qualifications and years of experience of candidates are usually obvious, however, I'm more often than not shocked by how the recruiting and hiring model in sports operations is upside down and/or backwards from corporate best practices. Throughout my corporate leadership career, candidate identification was often the heavy lifting part of the exercise. On occasion, and depending on the sensitivity of the open position, recruitment firms would be engaged to not only avoid the awkward outbound calls to potential candidates, but more importantly, to respect any claims of "tampering" with others' employees. Unfortunately, in a free world, these direct "reach outs" were the norm and just something we had to deal with as they occurred, In some cases, the news that someone was being recruited elsewhere was a breath of fresh air, however, I won't go there!

In the sports operations space, I can attest that it is still the norm that when a viable candidate is simply presented for an open position (especially in a Coaching capacity), the hiring manager begins the character references at that point, which, to this day, I fail to comprehend. In the corporate world, while informal due diligence is often conducted on a candidate's name, the "normal" model would suggest preparing a candidate interview list, conducting interviews, and based on what was discussed and shared, references would be conducted by the hiring manager to validate information and/or clarify any "uncomfortable" or outstanding pieces. Given the amount of talent available for any of these sports jobs, why wouldn't a hiring manager not want to speak to as many qualified candidates as possible, with a going-in position of wanting to learn a thing or two from each person? Unfortunately, pre-interview reference checks disqualify candidates, which, to me, doesn't sound right, make any sense, nor is this smart. I get the time requirement of doing this amount of work, however, how about hiring the right individual out of the gate reduces the workload when you need to fire or fix a bad hire down the road? Doesn't learning how people think and how they pitch themselves for a job shed light on a hiring manager in assessing a potential hire's creativity, rather than listening to others' opinions about the individual? In other words, how about formulating your own opinion rather than listening to someone else's bad experiences with a great and qualified winner-candidate.

In sports, isn't it obvious that a former winner or winning experiences would be critically important to a candidate's qualifications? Often, sports folks who have never won anything minimize the value of someone who has gone through the all the pain and emotional drain to win a championship. Those who have won in their careers have a life experience to share that non-winners can't relate to, and can only wish to have experienced. If past experiences are relevant and important in assessing a candidate, why is winning not at the top of the list of "must have's" given the trials and tribulations of accomplishing that feat?

While I'm on a roll, this brings me to my next point, which I have a hard time understanding, and always have. It involves the use of the title "Interim" as it relates specifically to a Head Coach. The use of the title "Interim" has a very meaningful and different impact in the sports world as compared to the corporate space. Announcing a CEO as the "Interim CEO" is clear to the employee base that either the organization hasn't committed to the person in that role beyond a temporary period, or is potentially considering a future reorganization, in which case the incumbent may not be in that role on a permanent basis, and the impact on the employee and their performance should be minimal.

However, in the sports world, where team performance is totally results-oriented and the "Coach" is ultimately responsible for the team's success, letting players know that the organization hasn't fully committed to the Coach can be a huge impediment. Players often decide who they want coaching them and given the guaranteed nature of their contracts, can decide if they're on board, or not, with the interim individual, which can be easily translated into their commitment to perform, or not. After all, if the organization hasn't committed the job to the Coach, and insists on calling them "Interim", why should I, as a player, commit to playing for that individual, especially if they're only "stopping by" and working in a stop-gap capacity? If I don't like the person, I can absolutely have an impact and influencing power on whether or not they make the cut on a longer term basis.

Synonyms for the word "interim" are "temporary, part-time, short term, caretaker, transitional, acting", etc. Does anyone believe that this is the message a team wants to send to their players? I totally understand "acting" in the case of someone who is replacing someone who fell ill, as an example, however, in the case of a termination or resignation of a Coach, where the departure implies something planned and longer term, why is the job status/title, in this case, "interim", important in messaging? Is the Coach not the Head Coach, regardless of their employment status? Are employees in corporate leadership positions identified as Interim or Part time as in "Part-time Accounting Manager" or "Interim Vice President?"

In any case, I decided to share these thoughts for all my HR buddies, and tried to just make the point that while the sports world is a really fun and intriguing place to work within, there are a bunch of successful and smart corporate best practices that I believe the sports community should begin to pay attention to.

Please understand that I am not looking for people to agree or disagree with this, nor am I looking to get into an argument with anyone on their beliefs and opinions. I simply put this out there, not as an Editorial, but from someone who has worked both sides, and has observed and leverages my past experience and endorses sharing best practices to help other businesses improve.

Have a great day!