As It Is When It Was

by Matthew Stollak on Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Often, a good manager is one that has spent more of his career developing others than being coached him or herself. In the NFL, it is common to see coaching trees develop. Bill Walsh, the legendary coach of the San Francisco 49ers, has seen many of his proteges go onto varying degrees of success, for example:

  • Mike Holmgren (won a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers)
  • George Seifert (won two Super Bowls with the 49ers as Walsh's successor)
  • Jim Fassel (his 2000 NY Giants team lost to the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl 35)
  • Sam Wyche (his 1988 Cinci Bengals advanced to the AFC title game)
  • Dennis Green (who took two Minnesota Vikings teams to the NFC championship game (and discovered "teams are who we thought they were))
This coaching tree grew additional branches as the coaches mentioned above developed a coaching pipeline of their own. Dennis Green, for example, saw a couple of his assistants become successful as well:
  • Brian Billick (won the 2000 Super Bowl as coach of the Baltimore Ravens)
  • Tony Dungy (won the 2006 Super Bowl as coach of the Indianapolis Colts)
With that in mind, what does your organization do to recognize talent development? Have you identified those managers who nurture talent that have helped the organization success in other areas? Do you reward them? What management trees have developed in your organization?

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