He doesn’t sing, and he doesn’t dance, he isn’t Wolverine, yet I love the hiring of Hue Jackson.
From my perspective, this hiring teaches us 3 leadership lessons.
1. Identify your target
2. Aggressively pursue target
3. Be public and transparent
1. Identify your target
In past hunts for a head coach, and there have been many, the Browns did not appear to identify their target candidate early on. Everyone knows Pettine was their 5th or 105th choice for head coach when he was hired a mere two years ago. We don’t always get what we want in life, but if we don’t know what we want, we are much less likely to get what we want or need. This search committee interviewed Jackson the day after a heartbreaking loss, and they were able to prevent him from interviewing for the New York job.
2. Aggressively pursue target
It is not enough to know what you want; you have to go after it. If the guy is too aggressive he may be called a stalker, but if he doesn’t let the woman know he is interested, he doesn’t get a date. The Browns could have waited a day to interview Jackson after his team lost, they could have waited to make him an offer, and they didn’t. They laser focused on their target and appeared to heat seek their coach.
3. Be public and transparent
It is not possible in this day of social media and cell phone cameras, to be anything less than transparent. So why try? If you want the wife and co-owner on the search committee, be transparent. If you want this to be an Ivy League decision, be transparent. If you have identified your guy, be transparent. And then make it public. Because a blogger or Facebook will make it public.
It will take a year or two until we know if this 9th hire since the Browns came back to C-town is a good hire. What we do know is that this time the Browns identified the coach they wanted. They didn’t interview Tom Coughlin even though he has two SUPER BOWL rings. They used communication or intimidation to prevent their target for getting on the plane to interview in NYC. And they were about as transparent as a billion dollar a year company is going to be, Can you apply those lessons learned?
