Three Leadership Lessons from Browns GM Andrew Berry | The GM Journey

We took a brief hiatus from releasing a new episode of The GM Journey last Friday, so today I'm throwing it back to our episode with Cleveland #Browns GM Andrew Berry! If you missed Andrew's episode, be sure to check it it out here .

The Browns named Andrew general manager and executive vice president of football operations in January 2020. At 32 years old, Andrew was the youngest GM in NFL history at the time of his hiring, and is now preparing to enter his third season at the helm in Cleveland.

Here are three of my favorite leadership lessons from my conversation with Andrew. Check out the full podcast episode for much more!

1. It's crucial to bring different perspectives to the table.

When I asked Andrew for his thoughts on building front offices and establishing organizational culture, he had great insights on the importance of bringing different perspectives to the table. In his opinion, having too narrow of a perspective is one of the pitfalls of decision making, and bringing diversified voices to the table is a key way to consider varied ways of thinking and mitigate the risk of personal biases.

"Our philosophy here has largely been, alright, we want a diverse number of people and perspectives that have a legitimate seat at the table, because they'll help us to minimize the decision makers'... own personal biases. It helps us get the right information to the table and it helps us get deeper insights. Because one of the things that I thought, like, maybe kind of coming up a little bit more the traditional way is, at times when we were making decisions it was like everybody had the same background, had the same perspectives, had the same experiences. And times like when we made mistakes, I think, well, you know what, shoot, if we had this alternative viewpoint, that would have actually been really healthy at the time that we made this decision. So that always made an impression on me earlier in my NFL career, where I want to make sure that I surround myself with people who have different experiences, different ways of thinking, all with the same goal that allows us to... hopefully make the best calls for the actual team."

2. Develop your "major" and "minors."

In a similar vein to leadership lesson 1, Andrew hit on the power of leaders having both their "major" and a bunch of "minors." In other words, make sure you have an area of expertise, but that you also have experience in or a widespread understanding of different areas of focus as well. By touching different areas throughout their careers, front office leaders may be more effective and have an increased chance at success thanks to their deeper understanding of other roles.

"The way I describe it is, I think everybody should certainly have their major but they should have a bunch of minors as well, because the more people that can 'speak multiple languages' so to speak, I think the better off you are in football operations, because it's easier for people to see another person's perspective. Taking it in pure scouting terms, I used to always say scouts that could see the game like coaches and coaches that could see the game like scouts were invaluable in an organization. And I think that spans beyond just scouting and coaching, it could be resource and strategy, contract management, player development, logistics and compliance, all of those areas are important. I think the more people that have some level of working knowledge across those spaces, they are hugely helpful in an organization and quite honestly, that's the job of the general manager."

3. Be willing to take risks.

Andrew spent 2019 as the Philadelphia Eagles' vice president of football operations, and shared a lesson that he carried with him from his time with Eagles GM Howie Roseman. The NFL is designed to be a bell curve with most teams existing around the middle of the pack, and if you want your team to emerge to the front of the pack you're going to have to take some risks. Andrew took that lesson to heart, and knows that now that he is a GM himself, that pushing for that marginal difference between the middle of the bell curve and the top of the bell curve requires teams to take risks and find ways to do things differently.

And if you missed's Howie's episode of The GM Journey, you can listen to it here !

"I'm going to quote [Eagles GM] Howie Roseman. He's always said that the NFL is designed to be a bell curve, right, where every team starts off with the same resources, whether it's cap dollars, picks... if you're good, there are disincentives with your resources moving forward because you're good, if you're bad, there are incentives with your resources because you're bad, the idea with bringing everybody to the middle. But our jobs are to make sure that the team gets to the top end of the tail, at the end of the day you want to be this small handful of teams that are playing late into the season. Well, in order to do that, you do have to do some things differently and take some risks. But that doesn't come by playing it safe. And whether it's emerging technology or how you think about the roster or how you put together your team, you have to be on the front end. And that has some downside, like you could end up in the other tail. But at the end of the day, if you're going to win a Super Bowl or consistently play for championships, you have to take risks."

Coming up on the next episode of The GM Journey: Jon Robinson, General Manager of the Tennessee?#Titans !

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