How Good is the Second Act for a Leader?

Last week, I examined Mike Vrabel's path to the Super Bowl as a head coach in the National Football League.  I noted that 33% of Super Bowl winning head coaches had achieved their championship after failing to win a title with their first team.  The data suggest that a coach's second act can be more successful than the first, perhaps because leadership is a learned capability.   All-time great coaches such as Andy Reid, Bill Belichick, Mike Shanahan, and Don Shula all seemed to have learned from their successes and failures during their first tenure as a head coach.  

Today, I decided to examine whether this phenomenon was unique to the NFL.  Does the same pattern apply in the other major sports in the United States?   The table below shows the data for the past 50 years in each of the four major sports leagues.  As it turns out, the NFL is not unique.  In fact, the other sports show an even more dramatic positive effect for coaches in their second (or later) act!  In Major League  Baseball and the National Hockey League, more than 60% of championship coaches in the past 50 years did not win during their first tenure as a head coach.  All-time great hockey coaches and baseball managers in this group include Scotty Bowman, Al Arbour, Joe Torre, Dusty Baker, Terry Francona, and Tony LaRussa.   

By the way, during my original analysis of the NFL, I also noted that the sport's championship coaches demonstrated that the curse of expertise is very real.  The curse of expertise means that people with specialized knowledge who have achieved remarkable success often struggle to teach others, because they cannot easily put themselves into the shoes of someone for whom results do not come as easily.  In the NFL, only one Super Bowl winning head coach earned entry into the Hall of Fame as a player.  Is the curse of expertise also evident in the other sports?  Indeed!  Few Hall of Famers won championships in the last 50 years as a head coach: NFL (1), MLB (1), NHL (2), and NBA (4).  

Interestingly, second act success stories seem quite rare in business.  Most CEOs seem to achieve their most prominent success during their first tenure as a leader.  A few people stand out as having more successful second acts.  These include Reed Hastings, Eric Schmidt, and Stewart Butterfield.  The question that I'm not sure I can answer is:  Why are there more highly successful second acts in sports than in business?  Perhaps companies simply don't give many people that opportunity for a second chance if they have struggled during their first tenure as a chief executive.  Others would argue that talent matters more than coaching in sports, and that coaches win championships when they find the right fit between awesome talent and their good leadership skills.  Perhaps we simply attribute too much of a company's success or failure to the CEO, and therefore, we do not see through the struggles of a firm to identify the strong leadership capabilities of its top executive.  

Lessons from Patriots Coach Mike Vrabel's Leadership Journey

What can we learn from the leadership journey of New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel?  This week, I sat down with Bryant University writer Bob Curley to share my thoughts, including some interesting data about other coaches in NFL history. 

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Source: New England Patriots

Last night marked the end of opening weekend in the National Football League. My beloved New England Patriots lost their opening game against the Las Vegas Raiders. The debate has raged in the aftermath of the loss. Did offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels make his strategy and scheme too complex for his young quarterback, Drake Maye? Or, did Maye execute the gameplan poorly and make costly mistakes? As fans, we have no way of knowing which explanation is closer to the truth.

As I listened to this debate rage on sports radio, television, and the web yesterday, I began to think about the lesson for business leaders.  Many enterprises face incredibly complex challenges, particularly in today's turbulent economic and geopolitical climate. Yet, the most effective leaders simplify their strategies and the operating plans. They provide clear, concise direction. They focus on a few key metrics, rather than trying to constantly shift attention among many different performance indicators. They don't pursue dozens of major initiatives; instead, they rally people around a few important endeavors. These leaders understand the power of small wins too, rather than only measuring success at the end of long, complicated initiatives.

Steve Jobs put it best when he said, "Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."

Selecting a Leader: Lessons from the Patriots' Jerod Mayo Experiment

Source: Yahoo Sports

Selecting a leader can be a vexing challenge for many organizations.  As the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance reported last year, the median CEO tenure in S&P 500 companies dropped by 20% from 2013-2022.  The median tenure of a CEO was 4.8 years according to that research.   The National Football League is even more challenging when it comes to leader selection.  The average tenure of an NFL coach equals roughly 3 years.  

Here in New England, a debate has intensified in recent days about the future of Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo.   The team has fallen mightily from its two-decade run of dominance with Tom Brady as its quarterback.   The Patriots dismissed their legendary coach, Bill Belichick, last year and replaced with him with young defensive assistant Jerod Mayo.  Now, the team has only won 3 games (against 11 losses) to date this season, and the young head coach has struggled badly.  Was it a good hire, and would it be wise to move on from a new coach after just one year?  Is that fair to Mayo?

First, we have to review a few basic facts that suggest Mayo would be an outlier if he succeeds as head coach.  

• According to an ESPN study from 2009-2018, the average head coach in the league had 19.5 years of coaching at various levels before becoming an NFL head coach.  Mayo had just 5 years of experience.
• That same story concluded that "It's common for new coaching candidates to have more than one influence."  Mayo had only played and coached for one man, Bill Belichick, in his entire playing and coaching career.
• Former Belichick assistants have mostly floundered as head coaches in the league, as I documented in a 2022 blog post. At the time, I compiled the win-loss record of former Belichick assistants. I wrote: "175 wins, 252 losses, and 1 tie for a winning percentage of 40.9%. That's awful. Only one of his former assistants managed to compile a winning record (Bill O'Brien with 52 wins and 48 losses).
• Finally, in another blog post from 2021, I examined the idea of the curse of expertise among NFL coaches.  I wrote, 
• "33 coaches have won the 54 Super Bowls that have taken place. Several coaches have earned multiple championships, including Bill Belichick (6) and Chuck Noll (4). Of those coaches, only 1 man made the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a player (Mike Ditka). Only 2 men earned Pro Bowl status as players (Mike Ditka and his mentor, Tom Landry, who made it to one Pro Bowl as a punter for the New York Giants in the 1950s). None of the other Super Bowl winning coaches earned Pro Bowl status as a player." 
• I attributed this lack of championship success by star players to the curse of expertise. I described this challenge as follows: "Put simply, experts sometimes have a difficult time teaching much less experienced and accomplished people. Why? They forget what's it like to be in the novice's shoes. They can't predict the types of challenges and problems that the novice will face when mastering a new skill. In many cases, the expert may not even be fully aware of the "how" behind certain highly effective results. It comes so naturally to them that they don't have a complete understanding of the process that leads to those successful outcomes."

Now, none of these statistics suggests that Mayo has no chance at turning things around in New England.  Some great coaches have had awful starts to their career and then gone on to remarkable success (see Bill Walsh and Tom Landry, for example).  They inherited terrible teams, embarked on a lengthy turnaround process, and learned from early stumbles.   

Some news reports suggest that the Kraft family wishes to stick with Mayo despite the tough first year.  However, the Kraft family has to consider whether they might be succumbing to the sunk cost trap.  Are they reluctant to cut their losses because of how much they have invested in Mayo?  Is he truly better than other alternatives that are going to be available this offseason?

Companies face similar challenges when hiring leaders.  Sometimes, they choose to value attributes and skills, or even personality, rather than emphasizing depth of experience.  That might be the right call; experience is not the only valuable element of a person's qualifications.  However, companies should question whether they are, at times, under-rating the value of experience - both in terms of years and quality/range of past work.   Are they being wowed by charisma, or simply blown away by how well someone interviews?  Understanding the types of experiences that are most likely to help someone succeed is crucial.  Learning on the job is difficult for any leader, but particularly for those who don't have a reservoir of relevant experiences upon which they can draw in challenging situations.  

Super Bowl Coaches, The Curse of Expertise, and The Importance of Perspective Taking

Source: Sporting News

As we approach the Super Bowl this weekend, here's a quick look back at the history of NFL championship coaches.  The data are clear.  In football, championships are generally not won by coaches who were formerly superstar players.  33 coaches have won the 54 Super Bowls that have taken place. Several coaches have earned multiple championships, including Bill Belichick (6) and Chuck Noll (4). Of those coaches, only 1 man made the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a player (Mike Ditka). Only 2 men earned Pro Bowl status as players (Mike Ditka and his mentor, Tom Landry, who made it to one Pro Bowl as a punter for the New York Giants in the 1950s). None of the other Super Bowl winning coaches earned Pro Bowl status as a player. 

Why might great players not thrive as coaches in the league?  Multiple potential explanations exist.  However, I'll focus here on something called the curse of expertise.   Put simply, experts sometimes have a difficult time teaching much less experienced and accomplished people.  Why?  They forget what's it like to be in the novice's shoes.  They can't predict the types of challenges and problems that the novice will face when mastering a new skill.   In many cases, the expert may not even be fully aware of the "how" behind certain highly effective results.  It comes so naturally to them that they don't have a complete understanding of the process that leads to those successful outcomes.   

Moreover, a study by Yale psychologists Matthew Fisher and Frank Keil shows that experts think they can teach and explain effectively.  In other words, they often don't recognize the curse of expertise.  Fisher and Keil conducted a series of experiments demonstrating that, "Highly educated individuals tend to overestimate their ability to explain their own areas of formal expertise."   In short, they argue that the experts' "confidence is unwarranted."  

Managers in business face the same curse of expertise as they lead teams and organizations.  They may not be able to recognize the problems and challenges that front-line or entry-level workers face as they try to master their job.  They may be overconfident in their ability to teach their team members.  To overcome the curse of expertise, managers need to get better at perspective taking.  They need to be able to step into their employees' shoes.  They must ask open-ended questions to learn about the challenges their team members are facing.  They have to reflect back and recall some of the early failures and stumbles in their career.   They need to check in with their employees and test for understanding after explaining something to them.  How did they interpret what I said?  Did they understand my rationale, my thinking, my logic?  Finally, managers need to invite questions.  What more would you like to know?  How can I clarify what I have explained?  The better managers become at perspective taking, the more likely they are to overcome the curse of expertise.  

How Confident Should We Be in Our Hiring Decisions?

Hiring decisions are so critical for leaders, yet they often prove to be the most vexing choices that individuals have to make. Organizations are constantly seeking better ways to screen candidates. Today, I came across a fascinating quote from renowned behavioral economist Richard Thaler about our ability to make good hires. Thaler refers to some interesting research about the National Football League draft. Here's his comment:

“Take all the [NFL football] players picked at a certain position, and rank them in the order in which they’ve been picked. Now ask yourself, ‘What’s the chance that nth player is better than the n + 1?’ If teams were perfect, it would be 100 percent. If they were coin flipping, it would be 50 percent. Across all the drafts and all the positions, the answer is 52 percent. The next time you’re hiring somebody and you’re absolutely sure that this person is the answer, ask yourself whether you have as much information as NFL teams, who got to watch the guy play [in college] for three years.”

Now that is a sobering commentary.  Consider how much work the NFL executives and coaches do in preparation for the draft.  It is an incredible amount of research.  Yet, the success rate clearly doesn't prove to be very good.  The factors that trip up NFL general managers are similar to the issues that impair corporate hiring decisions.  Can the person fit our system?  Do they have the right attitude as well as talent/skills?  Can the person be coached?  Do they have a great resume, but perhaps lack certain key intangibles?  Do they excel in certain areas, but are those the right metrics on which we should focus?  

Do Technical Experts Make Better Leaders? Part 2

Someone read yesterday's blog post about technical experts as leaders, and they asked me if I had done a similar analysis for NFL coaches.   In yesterday's blog post, I showed that most NBA championships have been won either by non-players or players who never made an All-Star team.   That finding stood in contrast to a scholarly study that showed former All-Stars achieving a higher winning percentage than non-stars or non-players.  The scholars used those findings to argue that technical experts thrive as leaders, contrary to conventional wisdom.  My results regarding championships didn't fully support their conclusion. 

What about the NFL?  What do the data show there? I reviewed the list of Super Bowl winning coaches from 1966-2016.   32 coaches have won the 51 Super Bowls (several coaches have earned multiple championships, including Bill Belichick and Chuck Noll, who both won 4 times).  Of those coaches, only 1 man made the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a player (Mike Ditka).  Only two men earned Pro Bowl status as players (Mike Ditka and his mentor, Tom Landry, who made it to one Pro Bowl as a punter for the New York Giants in the 1950s).   None of the other Super Bowl winning coaches earned Pro Bowl status as a player.   Thus, in football, it appears that the findings are even more pronounced.  Championships are generally not won by coaches who were formerly superstar players.  

The NFL: Could Growth Obsession Become its Downfall?

The National Football League has never been more popular in the United States.  The league enjoys record ratings and lucrative television contracts.  Long ago, the league surpassed major league baseball as the national pastime.  However, many observers have noted a substantial decline in the quality of play recently.  Are such observations just the usual nostalgic "it ain't like the glory days" comments, or is there some truth to the comments?   That's hard to tell at the moment, though the league does appear to have an inequality not seen in some time (record number of 6-0 teams at this point in the season comes with an incredible amount of futility as well).  

What could be driving a decline in the quality of play?  I would hypothesize that the obsession with revenue growth has diluted quality... something we see in many industries.  The NFL is not immune to that phenomenon.   How has revenue growth obsession damaged quality?   One reason may be that the desire for growth has led to a huge shift in emphasis toward offense.   Fantasy sports have contributed greatly to that emphasis on offense.   As the emphasis has shifted toward increasing scoring, the league has become very pass happy.  The running game has diminished in importance.  How does that lead to decreased quality?  Well, for one thing, the incredible emphasis on passing offense means that one player, the quarterback, is more important than ever.   The quarterback has always been the most important position on the field, but now the critical need for superb play at that one position is elevated substantially.   In the past, you could win in multiple ways.   You could run the ball in a dominant fashion.  You could have a monster defense.  Today, the old adage "run the ball and stop the run" just does not apply.   If you do not have a superb quarterback, you are going to struggle to win consistently.   Recall that quarterbacks such as Mark Rypien, Brad Johnson, Trent Dilfer won Super Bowls in the past.  That seems increasingly difficult in this new era.  The problem, then, is that the league does not have enough quarterbacks who can play at a very high level.  This year, Peyton Manning has suffered a decline in skills due to age and injury, and other top QBs (Luck, Roethlisberger, Brees) have been injured or have played poorly.  So, in a rush to drive revenue growth, the league made itself more dependent on one position, the quarterback.  However, it does not have enough excellent quarterbacks to maintain a high level of play.  

That's my hypothesis.  The NFL is not immune to the basic tradeoff that many firms face... top line obsession can lead to brand and quality dilution.  The ratings continue to soar, but will this problem eventually lead to a loss of viewers?    I don't know... I still watch, but then again, I have the privilege of watching the greatest quarterback of all time each week.

Three Myths and Lessons from the NFL Deflateglate Debacle

Yes, all of us here in New England enjoyed yesterday very much.  Our four-time Super Bowl winning quarterback prevailed in federal court over the National Football League and its commissioner, Roger Goodell.  As I reflected on this debacle over the past seven months, I discovered three myths that have prevailed at times.   As we debunk each myth, we find lessons for all organizations and leaders.  

Myth #1:   Attendance, television viewership, revenues and profits are at an all-time high.  Recent scandals and public relations disasters have not decreased any of these key metrics.  Therefore, these major stumbles on the part of the NFL don't actually matter much.

Reality:  Serious leadership and public relations mistakes have consequences, even if they do not lead to revenue and profit decreases in the short run.  Why?  Consider other stakeholders for a moment.  When a company stumbles badly as the NFL has, you have to ask yourself:  How do these events affect other constituencies besides our customers?  For instance, does this crisis affect employee engagement?  Does it diminish our ability to attract and retain great talent?  Consider whether top female lawyers are more or less willing to work for the NFL in the wake of the Ray Rice scandal.  Similarly, you can ask:  Are other organizations more or less willing to partner with the NFL on key initiatives?  You can certainly imagine how some organizations might choose to partner with other sports or entertainment entities because of the negative publicity that might come with a close affiliation with the NFL.   

Myth #2:  The owners have (and should) back Roger Goodell as commissioner because he has been good for the bottom line.  Sales and profits have soared under his leadership. 

Reality:  In major league baseball, a new metric has emerged in recent years.  It's called WARP (wins above replacement player).  How much value does a player provide ABOVE AND BEYOND that of a hypothetical replacement player (an inexpensive Triple A call-up who plays the same position).  When we think about leadership of a major organization, we should consider that person's VARL (value above replacement leader).  Could some other leader step into the job of NFL commissioner and achieve similar financial results.  I would contend that many other talented people could attain the revenue and profit levels achieved by the NFL during Goodell's tenure.  The sport is simply that popular, and the groundwork for that success was laid by Goodell's predecessors.   Too often, companies provide incredibly high compensation packages for CEOs because the board somehow convinces themselves that the person is indispensable.   Instead, they should seriously ask: What is this CEO's VARL?  

Myth #3:  Better data lead to better decisions. A better investigation would have led to a very different result. 

Undoubtedly, the NFL bungled this entire inquiry.   Top executives' lack of knowledge of the Ideal Gas Law, for instance, is simply astounding.  However, better data do not always to improved choices.  The bottom line:  this entire matter is an incredible example of the power of confirmation bias.  Put simply, people look for and rely upon data that confirms what they already believe.  The investigators fell into this trap.  They gathered and assimilated data in a highly biased manner.  The reporters and analysts all fell into the confirmation bias trap.  Fans naturally exhibited the bias as well. We all saw what we wanted to see in the data.  The same confirmation bias affects corporate decisions of all kinds.  More data do not always lead to better decisions, because we gather and analyze data in a biased manner.  

Human Resource Lessons from the NFL Draft

The NFL draft began yesterday, as each team made its first round selection.   My favorite team, the New England Patriots, drafted Malcolm Brown, a defensive tackle from the University of Texas.  You can imagine that fans often do not get excited about the drafting of an interior lineman.  They do not have a flashy highlight video or come out of college with gaudy statistics.  They are in the trenches.  Of course, solid line play is crucial to success in professional football.  

Interestingly, I noticed that six NFL teams chose wide receivers in the first round last night.  Wide receivers, naturally, tend to have highlight reels full of fantastic catches, long runs after the catch, and dazzling touchdowns.  They have plenty of attractive statistics such as receptions, yards, and touchdowns.  However, I know that the New England Patriots have not drafted a wide receiver in the first round in the entire Bill Belichick era.  He's been head coach since 2000, and of course, they have amassed the most victories and most Super Bowl championships in the league during that time.  

I took a quick look at the data from the past decade of NFL drafts (2005-2014).  During that time, 36 wide receivers were chosen in the first round.  By my quick count, just 2 (5.6%) of those WRs won a Super Bowl championship for the team that selected them in the draft.   In contrast, 8 of 68 (11.8%) defensive linemen chosen in the first round won a Super Bowl with their original team.  I dug deeper, and I found this article by Jeff Howe about this very topic.  He conducted a much more in-depth analysis, and he concluded that choosing a wide receiver at the top of the draft is a "waste" of precious resources. 

What's the lesson here?   As we select talent for our organizations, we have to be careful about the attributes/criteria that we employ.   Do the people who are flashy and charismatic tend to get more consideration than those who put their heads down working in the "trenches" of an organization?   Are we wowed by certain "gaudy personal statistics" that may not actually correlate with "winning" by the organization as a whole?  Finally, do we worry too much about what others think?  Coach Belichick could care less what others think.  He knows that others think the selection of a defensive lineman is boring.  Fans want flashy receivers.  He doesn't cave to outside pressure.  Of course, that's easy to do with his track record.  For managers, it might be more challenging.  However, we have to focus on doing what's right, not what's popular. 

Chasing Stars: Lessons from NFL Free Agency

In New England this morning, the gnashing of teeth and cries of agony can be heard in the streets.  The Patriots have let another star player leave via free agency.   Why can't the Patriots just pay the money!?!  Belichick and Kraft are too cheap.   You hear all these complaints.   However, several NFL writers have commented that signing high-priced free agents has been fool's gold for the most part in past years.  The Patriots fans do not want to hear that evidence. They want stars. 

Is there a lesson here for all business leaders?  Boris Groysberg has done fascinating research on the mobility of star performers.   He began his work by focusing on superstar Wall Street analysts.  He found that many firms pay top dollar to recruit away superstar analysts from competing firms.  In the end, many of those superstars experience a performance decline at their new firm.  Why?  Groysberg argues that we underestimate the extent to which that high performance was driven by the team around that superstar, the supporting organizational context, etc.   In other words, we attribute too much of their high performance to their internal abilities.  We underestimate external factors.  We also discount the difficulty of adapting to a new organizational system and structure.  Groysberg has argued that the same trap of chasing stars occurs in many fields.

Several years ago, he studied punters and wide receivers in the NFL.   He found that wide receivers experienced a decline in performance when they switched teams (above and beyond the normal decline associated with age).  Punters, on the other hand, did not suffer a performance decrease after switching teams. What's going on?  Groysberg and his colleagues argued that some positions involve much more interaction with fellow players.   A wide receiver's performance depends on the knowledge of a particular offensive system, experience within that system, time spent working with a particular quarterback, etc.  A punter's performance is not dependent on those around him to nearly the same degree.  Now think about other NFL positions.  Many of them are much more like the wide receiver than the punter.  Therefore, many players often have a hard time sustaining their high performance after switching teams via free agency.  Still, some positions may have less dependence on interaction with teammates, knowledge of a particular system, etc.  Coaches and general managers should be thinking about the "portability" of each position.

For business leaders, the question is:  Which stars in your firm have talent and skills that are more portable than others?  Think carefully about the work that these stars do.  Think about their position/role, not just their individual ability.  In which cases will one experience a performance decline when switching organizations?  For what types of positions will people be able to maintain high performance in a new system and with new colleagues? 

Developing your people: Lessons from NFL Quarterbacks

Karl Moore and Devin Bigoness have a good column at Forbes.com about developing your people.  They draw lessons from the development of National Football League quarterbacks.  As they point out correctly, teams tend to take one of two contrasting approaches with their young quarterbacks.  Some teams take the "immediate testing" approach - i.e. they throw them in the pond and challenge them to learn to swim.   These quarterbacks often will struggle mightily in their rookie year.   It's trial by fire.   Other teams will adopt a "learning to win" model.  These quarterbacks sit on the sidelines for some time, perhaps even several years, watching a veteran quarterback lead the team.  

Each of these models has had its successes and failures.  Aaron Rodgers succeeded using the "learn to win" approach.  He spent four seasons as a back-up before becoming the starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.  He went on to become a star and a Super Bowl champion.   Peyton Manning, on the other hand, went the immediate testing route.  His team lost many games during his first year, and he did throw many interceptions.  However, we went on to craft a Hall of Fame career, won multiple MVP awards, and became a Super Bowl champion too.   Of course, both models also have their share utter failures as well.

Moore and Bigoness do not advocate one model over another (appropriately, I might add).  Instead, they propose that you should really understand your people, so that you can determine which model might be best for each individual.  At the same time, you have to assess your organization's needs.  You must balance what's best for individual against what is best for the firm.  Some times, you might have to "rush" someone's development, despite some risks, because of a pressing organizational need.  In other cases, you may determine that the organization can afford to give an individual a bit more time to "learn to win." 

Importantly, if you do adopt at  the "learn to win" model, you do need to still make sure that you present that individual with sufficient challenges and development opportunities.  One risk, with this model is that a talented person will leave because they are not receiving the opportunity that they desire.  In the NFL, teams have control over young players for several years.  In companies, people can depart at any time.  Thus, leaders must share their development strategy with the individual being groomed, and work with them to co-create a development plan that works for them and the organization. 

Differences Key to Negotiations: Ask Bill Belichick!

The 2011 NFL Draft has just ended, and all of us can learn a valuable lesson from Coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots (even if you are a slightly misguided fan of the dreaded New York Jets).  Belichick has become known for "trading down" in the draft.  Put simply, he often gives up a high draft pick for a high draft pick the following year, providing the other team also gives him an additional lower draft pick as part of the trade.  Take this year's trade with the New Orleans Saints for instance.  He gave up the Patriots' pick at the bottom of the first round for the Saints' pick in next year's first round (expected to be about in the same exact spot).  However, the Saints also had to give the Patriots a second-round pick this year.   These moves frustrate Patriots' fans, as they tend to not like when Belichick gives up the chance to take a flashy, well-known first round player in the current year.  However, he explains that these moves provide the Patriots "good value" - after all, the Patriots got that additional pick from the Saints.

Interestingly, academic researchers Cade Massey and Richard Thaler have examined the NFL draft and shown that, in the past, general managers tended to overvalue first-round picks.  In other words, teams gave up too much to move up and get another first round pick in the draft.  The brainy Belichick has examined this research, and he takes advantage of the fact that teams are often willing to pay too much to move up in the draft.  So, he gladly makes the trade and moves down.

However, there's more to this story.  By now, most general managers have become aware of this tendency to overpay for first round picks.  Yet, people still make trades like this one between the Saints and Patriots. Why?  The answer lies in the fact that Belichick may have a lower "discount rate" than other general managers. In other words, he may not discount the value of picks in future years as much as others do.  He has a more long term view. Other general managers may have a much more short term orientation, valuing the pick today MUCH more than the pick next year or thereafter.  Naturally, with three Super Bowl championships and a supportive owner, Belichick can afford to adopt a long term view. Some may argue that the Saints gave up too much here, but to them, this made good sense.  The same holds true for the Pats, because they have a longer term orientation. 

The lesson here though is that DIFFERENCES in interests and perspectives provide the MEANS FOR A NEGOTIATED AGREEMENT.   Negotiation scholars tell us this all the time.  Two parties often will find a resolution not by focusing on common ground, but by understanding their differences and using those to reach an agreement. In this case, the Saints and Patriots have a difference in discount rates. From that, they are able to find a mutually beneficially trade arrangement.  We should all take a page from these two teams.  Discovering our differences with other parties can pave the way to an agreement that makes both parties quite content.