Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As a civil servant in charge of the government's Strategy Unit, I brought in many people from outside government, including academia and science, to work in the unit, dissecting and solving complex problems from GM crops to alcohol, nuclear proliferation to schools reform.
When I got to GM they were using a matrix method of management which means everybody has more than one boss. I first heard about that system many years ago. It's supposed to help with collaboration, but my assessment is that it's pretty hard to get geared for action that way.
Socialists find me too far left; Trotskyites not far enough; ecologists say I am too happy eating foie gras, defending nuclear energy and GM plants; feminists find I am not enough of a woman; anarchists a petit-bourgeois who has sold out because I believe in universal suffrage.
Every GM will tell you it's an instinct. It's an instinct to be patient, to react, or act, or not to do anything at all. It just comes. What I can say is you must have a plan and a goal and a way to do things. At the end of the day, it's an instinct. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad.
I hope somebody falls in love with me - other than my fiancee. But that's what you want. As a player you want a team that really wants you; head coach, GM, owner, everybody that really wants you in their place and the players believe in you. I'm looking forward to making somebody fall in love with me.
You know there are so many people that have touched your life both on the ice and within your career in the NHL whether it be owners, GM's, coaches, players, trainers, all the way down. And that doesn't even account for all of the people that you encountered outside of the game that you met along this trip, too.
TARP is funded by taxpayers, so there are many rules about how that money can and can't be used. The result: GM spends an awful lot of time checking in with the people who administer TARP over everything from hiring to executive compensation and management. For a global company, that adds up to a lot of distraction.
Fantasy sports went a long way toward developing the sabermetrics formulas used not only by oddsmakers but general managers in hiring players. So the amateur fantasists ended up creating some of the algorithms that Oakland GM Billy Bean's statisticians used to win games with less salary money available for star players.
The general manager is kind of like the step into darkness when you reach the top of the league. As GM, you're responsible for everything, including the maitre d's and the sommeliers - all these people who have their own agendas. But you probably make less than the maitre d' and have a lot more work and a lot more headaches.
My senior leadership team is half people who have been at GM for a long period of time like me, and others who have joined the company within the last five years from different industries, experiences, and countries. You have a better picture of the world. The diversity of thought is where you can make better business decisions.
Right after the draft, when I came out to Oakland, there was a press conference and a dinner with the owner, GM, and Coach Nelson. We did some sightseeing and some house searching the next day, but to be honest, I had no idea what I was doing. I tried to find a spot close to our gym, because I figured that's where I'd spend most of my time.
There are lots of decisions, and also non-decisions, that go into this job. In the same way that it can be impossible to separate a coach from the players, it's also impossible to separate the GM from the coach from the players. You just have to ask: Is the GM helping the team have playoff success? Is he giving the team a chance to win the title?
