Michael Lombardi on Leadership

In this episode of The Knowledge Project, Shane Parrish interviews Michael Lombardi, NFL executive and leadership expert. Lombardi breaks down leadership principles that apply far beyond the football field – from managing teams to personal growth. These notes highlight key insights with my occasional commentary (from someone whose football expertise begins and ends with Super Bowl commercials).

I'm not a football expert. My knowledge of American football comes primarily from watching Super Bowl advertisements. I have never watched a game in my life, but I have enjoyed the episode as the message was core for the human.

Learning vs. Working: A Delicate Balance

Lombardi's Insight: Early in his career, Lombardi focused more on absorbing knowledge than producing tangible work. He emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between learning activities and actual production.

My Take: This distinction hit uncomfortably close to home. I've spent countless hours "researching" (falling down Readwise and Snipd rabbit holes) rather than actually creating. There's something comforting about perpetual learning mode – you can't fail at learning, right? Well, except for that time I tried to learn Python and somehow crashed my computer with a simple "Hello Windows Registry" program.

The real challenge is recognising when you're using "learning" as a shield against the vulnerability of producing actual work. At some point, knowledge must transform into action.

The NFL's Learning Treadmill

Lombardi's Insight: In the NFL, you must constantly study and grow to keep up with its evolution. Methods from just four years ago might already be obsolete. Time management becomes crucial.

My Take: This reminds me of the tech industry's infamous "learn or perish" mentality, except with more concussions. I am not sure that everybody wants that. Having a dinner with my friend and his partner, who is PhD student - she told the story that some person asked the professor „when we will stop learning? We deserve life where we do not need to learn anymore". I laughed and then cried a little.

The modern world is more like the NFL than my rigid childhood education – constantly evolving, rendering yesterday's playbook useless. I've experienced this firsthand trying to keep up technical expertise. Just when I mastered doing nothing, everyone moved to Tik Tok. Then ChatGPT appeared, and now I'm that awkward elder millennial trying to figure out why everyone's is writing prompts that are reversed back on receiving end. Time is indeed the enemy here – there are only so many hours in the day to learn new systems while still performing in the current ones.

The Four Elements of Leadership

Lombardi's Framework: Good coaching is essentially good leadership, encompassing four key elements:

1. Management of attention: Having a clear plan
2. Management of meaning: Effectively communicating that plan
3. Management of trust: Building trust through consistent behavior without double standards
4. Management of self: Practicing self-criticism and admitting mistakes

Most successful coaches exhibit at least three of these four elements.

My Scorecard: I'm sitting here wondering if I possess even one. My planning typically involves "figure it out as we go" (management of attention: failed). My communication has been described as "confusing but enthusiastic" (management of meaning: questionable). I've caught myself preaching work-life balance while sending midnight emails (management of trust: abysmal). And admitting mistakes? Well, I'm perfect, so that's never been an issue. (Management of self: catastrophic failure.)

The brilliance of this framework is its simplicity and comprehensiveness. Whether leading a tech team or managing a household, these four elements form the foundation of effective leadership.

Why Brilliant People Fail: The System Mismatch

Lombardi's Insight: System compatibility matters more than individual talent in the NFL. A player's success depends largely on how well their skills align with the team's system. This explains why some players underperform after switching teams – it's often a system mismatch, not a decline in ability.

My Take: When Lombardi talks about system compatibility trumping individual talent in the NFL, I immediately think of the tech teams I've worked with. Just as a star quarterback might flounder in the wrong offensive system, I've watched brilliant engineers crash and burn in organizations that didn't match their working style.

The parallel is uncanny. In football, a player might excel in a fast-paced, aggressive offense but struggle in a methodical, control-oriented system. Similarly, I've seen innovative engineers suffocate in companies with rigid approval processes, while others thrive in that same structure. It's not about raw talent - it's about the fit between personal style and organizational system.

What makes this insight particularly powerful is how it challenges our typical hiring and management approaches. We chase "top talent" when we should be asking "top talent for what system?"

Organizational Philosophy: The 10,000-Foot View

Lombardi's Insight: Successful organizations need a philosophy that transcends time – a 10,000-foot view of goals and behavior. These time-tested principles allow organizations to withstand challenges and adapt without dramatic changes.

My Take: This reminds me of the difference between weather and climate in organizational terms. Many leaders get caught up in the daily weather – reacting to immediate challenges and trends – while neglecting the climate they're creating. A strong organizational philosophy acts as that climate, providing stability amid the inevitable storms.

I've worked in places with wildly different organizational philosophies. One startup I joined had the philosophy of "move fast and break things" (which they certainly accomplished – especially the breaking part). Another organization operated on principles of careful deliberation and consensus-building (ok, I am a bit painting a better picture than it was). Neither approach was inherently superior, but problems arose when they tried to adopt practices that contradicted their fundamental philosophy. The fast-moving company implemented bureaucratic approval processes, so called CAB. The consensus-driven organization suddenly demanded rapid innovation. Both initiatives failed spectacularly because they violated the underlying organizational climate.

Scouting: The Art of Elimination

Lombardi's Approach: When scouting football players, focus on eliminating players who don't fit your system, rather than just finding players. Start with your standards and requirements, then filter out those who don't meet the criteria.

My Take: This is counterintuitive brilliance. Most selection processes – whether for hiring employees, choosing investments, or even dating – focus on finding the "best" option. But "best" is meaningless without context. The best player for the Patriots might be terrible for the Raiders. The best employee for the large company might flounder at a small nonprofit (I have actually seen this working that way many times).

I'm guilty of ignoring this wisdom in my own hiring decisions. I once hired someone primarily because their resume was impressive, overlooking clear signs that they wouldn't thrive in our particular environment. The result was predictably painful for everyone involved. Lombardi's approach – starting with clear system requirements and eliminating mismatches – would have saved us all considerable grief.

The Groupthink Trap

Lombardi's Observation: Coaches often work with people they've previously collaborated with due to shared football philosophies. While comfortable, this can lead to groupthink, where everyone views the game similarly, potentially hindering innovation.

My Take: Oh boy, does this resonate beyond football! In my experience, conformity was not just encouraged but enforced. The result was intellectual stagnation – everyone approaching problems from identical angles, producing identical (and identically limited) solutions.

I've seen this same pattern in various workplaces. Teams become echo chambers, hiring people who think like them, approach problems like them, and ultimately limit their collective potential. The antidote, as Lombardi suggests, is cultivating curiosity, staying updated on industry trends, and remaining open to modifying strategies. This requires the courage to invite dissenting voices into your inner circle – something many leaders find threatening rather than enriching.

From Information Scarcity to Filter Failure

Lombardi's Insight: With increased information availability through technology, coaches need better filtering skills to determine what's truly important versus merely urgent. Every NFL team has unique methods for processing and analyzing information to gain a competitive edge.

My Take: "We're not suffering from information overload, we're suffering from filter failure," tech philosopher Clay Shirky once said. When Lombardi discusses how NFL teams compete on their ability to filter information, he's unknowingly describing my daily existential crisis.

I oscillate between two dysfunctional extremes: either I'm down a Readwise rabbit hole consuming everything without producing anything, or I'm frantically responding to whatever seems most urgent without strategic thought. Both are losing strategies, in football and in life.

The challenge feels particularly acute for those of us who experienced the transition from information scarcity to abundance. The mental models I developed in school - where access to information was the primary challenge - have proven dangerously outdated in a world where curation is the true skill.

Lombardi's NFL teams have responded by developing proprietary systems for information processing. In my own work, I've had to build similar defenses - ruthlessly unsubscribing from newsletters, implementing aggressive notification settings, and scheduling specific times for deep work. It's as if I'm designing defensive schemes against my own distractibility.

Monday Morning Quarterback: The Art of Honest Reflection

Lombardi's Process: Each Monday, analyze why you won or lost the previous game. Continue practices that contribute to wins and identify areas needing improvement to prevent future losses. This approach evaluates three key areas: player performance, coaching decisions, and scheme effectiveness.

My Take: "We won, so everything must be working." If Lombardi has taught me anything, it's how dangerous this thinking can be.

His "Monday reflection" process – analyzing wins and losses with equal rigor – strikes me as the antidote to tech's obsession with outcomes over process. We worship successful founders while ignoring the role of timing and luck. We emulate their often toxic behaviors assuming correlation equals causation.

I've fallen into this trap repeatedly. When my projects succeed, I credit my brilliance and work ethic. When they fail, I blame external factors – market conditions, insufficient resources, Mercury in retrograde. Lombardi would call BS on this immediately.

What would change if tech teams adopted this Monday reflection ritual? Imagine evaluating each product launch or sprint with the same methodical analysis: What aspects of our process contributed to success? What decisions created unnecessary friction? Which team dynamics helped or hindered progress?

The most uncomfortable question: Did we succeed because of our process, or despite it? That's the question that separates continuous improvement from ego protection.

Character Over Skills: The Scouting Challenge

Lombardi's Priority: Evaluating a player's character is more crucial than evaluating their skills on film. The goal of scouting is to know more about the player before they're drafted than after. This is increasingly difficult due to limited access imposed by schools.

My Take: This parallels hiring challenges in virtually every industry. Technical skills are relatively easy to assess – you can test coding abilities, writing samples, or sales techniques. Character, however, remains elusive. How do you evaluate integrity, resilience, adaptability, or teamwork in a few interviews?

I've made this mistake repeatedly in my own hiring decisions, overvaluing demonstrable skills while undervaluing character indicators. The results have been predictable – technically proficient team members who nonetheless created cultural problems that far outweighed their contributions.

The structural challenge Lombardi identifies is fascinating – the NCAA creates a highly supportive environment that masks potential character issues, while the NFL demands more independence. This same dynamic exists in many educational-to-professional transitions. Students receive structure, guidance, and support that often disappear in professional settings, revealing character strengths and weaknesses that were previously obscured.

Coaching Your Children: Criticism vs. Guidance

Lombardi's Advice: When coaching your children, convey that your coaching isn't criticism. It's a delicate balance to ensure they understand you're trying to help them, not criticize them as people.

My Take: As someone without children (unless you count my houseplants, which I occasionally lecture about proper sunlight utilization), I can only imagine the complexity of this balance. However, I've experienced it from the child's perspective – having parents whose feedback I often interpreted as fundamental criticism rather than specific guidance.

The distinction Lombardi makes is subtle but crucial. Criticism feels personal and judgmental, while coaching feels supportive and developmental. The same exact feedback can be received entirely differently depending on this framing. I suspect this principle extends far beyond parent-child relationships to all forms of mentorship and leadership.

Books That Shape Us

Lombardi's Reflection: Books influence us differently at various life stages. As we grow, books help us understand ourselves and others better. He recommends reading biographies.

My Take: This resonates deeply with my own experience. Books I found transformative in my twenties now seem simplistic, while texts I couldn't comprehend then have become revelatory in my thirties. It's not just that we bring different life experiences to our reading – it's that we're literally different people at different stages of life, with different questions and capacities for understanding.

Lombardi's preference for biographies is telling. There's something uniquely instructive about following another person's journey – their struggles, decisions, failures, and triumphs. While theoretical books explain how things should work, biographies show how they actually unfold in the messy reality of human existence. Of course, one must not forget a rule – never read a biography of a living person.

Principles Over Ambition

Lombardi's Wisdom: Guide your life by principles, not ambition. This is especially important in leadership positions, as ambition can sometimes override principles. Leaders do the right thing, while managers do things right.

My Take: This might be the most personally challenging insight from the entire podcast. I recognize in myself the constant tension between principles and ambition – the temptation to compromise the former to achieve the latter. It's easy to justify small ethical compromises in pursuit of "greater good" or personal advancement.

The distinction between leadership and management that Lombardi mentions is particularly insightful: "Leaders do the right thing, while managers do things right." You can teach people how to do things right, but not necessarily what the right thing is. This suggests that ethical judgment – knowing the right thing – is more innate than technical competence, which can be developed through training.

Learning from Writers

Lombardi's Suggestion: Interview writers to learn from their diligence and process-oriented approach. He admires those who write daily and thinks their methods offer valuable lessons for anyone focused on process over results.

My Take: As someone who writes prompts regularly (though not as consistently as I should), this recommendation struck me as unexpectedly perceptive. Writing is perhaps the purest example of process discipline – showing up daily, producing words regardless of inspiration, refining endlessly, and accepting that most of what you create will be discarded or heavily revised by ChatGPT.

The parallel to leadership is clear. Both require consistent effort without immediate feedback, faith in a process whose results may not be visible for months or years, and the discipline to continue when motivation wanes. Both also require killing your darlings – abandoning ideas or projects you love when they don't serve the greater purpose (bad wording, but you get the idea).

Three Leadership Lessons Worth Remembering

After processing Lombardi's insights, three principles stand out as universally applicable, regardless of whether you're leading a football team or a software project:

1. System fit trumps raw talent. The most talented individuals will fail in systems that don't match their strengths. This explains countless hiring mistakes I've witnessed where "star performers" flounder in new environments.

2. Process matters more than outcomes. The Monday reflection ritual - analyzing both wins and losses with equal rigor - is perhaps the most powerful practice for continuous improvement. It prevents the dangerous habit of confusing luck with skill.

3. Character remains the hardest thing to evaluate. Just as NFL scouts struggle to assess character before drafting players, managers in every field face this same challenge. Technical skills are easily tested; integrity, resilience, and adaptability are not.

What makes these insights particularly valuable is their applicability beyond sports. As someone whose athletic achievements peaked at "participation trophy" level, I found myself nodding along to principles that resonated deeply with my experiences in completely different domains.

If you enjoyed this breakdown from someone with questionable sports knowledge but genuine enthusiasm, you can follow my newsletter for more of these reflections on leadership, technology, and the occasional self-deprecating joke.

Take care!