It’s no coincidence that Jeff Blashill and Jon Cooper are good friends. When it comes to Power and Force, like attracts like. Power doesn’t want to hang out with Force.
So Power people tend to get together.
I was tipped off yesterday to a cool story of how Blashill found Brandon Naurato so I went digging around on the Internet. And upon finding Connor Earegood’s piece, he over-delivered in the In-Powered department in writing about Blashill. I’d like to unpack some of his principles in this piece.
Power Pulls People Up
Let’s start with the story just mentioned. Blashill found Naurato through his public writing on the Internet. His piece highlighted some ideas for where the Red Wings could currently improve based on what they had, what they were struggling with, what they could look for when deciding on new players to draft or sign, and how development in their current players in a few key areas could take their game to the next level.
It reminded me of when Sam Hinkie made an outside-the-box hire for the Houston Rockets, taken from Surf the Wave:
Sam always told his network to send him links to interesting things. One day, a friend shared a blog post with him. A few days later two friends shared a blog post by the same author. These blog posts started to be shared with him earlier and earlier in the day for about a week or so. Then Sam found the author and went deep on everything he had written. He read every single post. Without even knowing him personally, he was sold on his “proof of work.”
Hinkie was with the Houston Rockets as VP of basketball operations at the time. He walked into GM Daryl Morey’s office one day and exclaimed, “I’m going to hire a kid I’ve never met in the next hour, I’m about to call him now.” That day Rockets basketball operations had a new hire.
“He was leaking edge all over the internet… and we were going to employ him to stop doing that,” Sam said about this infamous story.
That kid could have been writing his blog in a penthouse in NY or his parent’s basement, and Sam didn’t care either way. The take-home message from that story is this. The true A-players you look to hire might not be your teammates from college. Or your sister’s brother’s cousin. They might be 23 and living in their parent’s basement or 55 and just became empty nesters with a passion for finding new ways to teach. People are leaking edge all over the internet right now. Go find a gamechanger. Their “formal education” and experience in the field matter less than you think. The barrier to entry should only be proof of work.
Force isn’t looking for or concerned with finding the best talent to ‘pull up’ regardless of if they have credibility or not.
Power seeks out edge wherever it can find it and is humble enough to learn from everyone.
Force sees Nar’s post and gets offended. They don’t hire a guy who ‘called them out’ publically and displayed how they might improve. The ego of a Force Coach gets in the way.
Power sees the same post and needs to hire that person to ‘stop leaking edge all over the Internet’.
Power also wants to find the best people and then create an environment to further develop them.
Power Empowers
As much as Blashill led the team as its head coach, that didn’t mean he took absolute discretion with team decisions. In fact, a lot of the Red Wings’ decisions came from a committee approach that embraced collaboration between all the coaches.
“The one thing we tried to create in our coaching environments was real open discussion,” Blashill said. “And I wanted to make sure I created an environment where guys felt like they could say what they believed, and it might be in total disagreement with me and that’s great. That’s fine. And then we would argue about it and we would debate things to try to come up with the best answer, to try to come up with the best solution.”
Blashill continued, “I think when you are in that type of environment where you know you’re grilling each other where you’re trying to find those best practices and best solutions, you all grow as a group and I certainly feel like we hopefully all did.”
These methods had a lasting impact. In an interview with The Michigan Daily last year, Naurato mentioned how important those “war room” meetings were in developing him as a coach.
“Just being in that war room every day without feeling the pressure of the wins and losses,” Naurato told The Michigan Daily. “Seeing what works, what doesn’t, what adjustments are made … it just goes back into your core beliefs.”
It’s one thing to discuss coaching decisions as an assistant, but it’s entirely different for those opinions to hold weight. This methodology grew the coaches working under Blashill because their work could actually influence the team. Not every coach leads through a sort of debate and democracy approach, but Blashill’s style empowered them to learn through a more tactile approach.
It also helped Blashill grow, too.
“We need to learn from each other, and we need to grow and we need to become the best coaching staff we can be to help maximize our team,” Blashill said.”And I’ve (learned) as much from the people I’ve worked with as the people I worked for, without a shadow of a doubt.”
Just like players need to play to develop, coaches need responsibility, involvement in decisions and as much skin in the game as possible to develop. Power lives by this quote:
Power develops people for their next job.
Force isn’t concerned with developing them enough to leave.
Power empowers, Force keeps you limited so ‘they’ look better than you.
Power is Humble
Even though Blash found great people and put them in an environment to further develop, my favorite quote from the whole piece is this one:
“The biggest thing I would say is all three of those guys were accomplished hockey coaches and talented people before I met them,” Blashill said. “They’ve done a ton on their own.”
Power doesn’t take credit for things it did not do. And Blash knew that Nightingale, Naurato, and Ferschweiler were already talented… Maybe undervalued, but talented. Power finds those people and makes the unreasonable bet.
For more Power principles, check out the course or simply engage with this tweet to let others know about it: