It is a busy time of year for fans of NFL football. An exciting regular season recently wrapped up, one which saw several records broken. Now the playoffs are underway, with some exciting games this past weekend, including yet another impressive result from Denver’s QB Tim Tebow in an upset win over Pittsburgh. But something else happened recently in the land of the NFL, which along with a few other examples from recent history, are fodders for some lessons on the importance of succession planning and broader talent management in the workplace.  I’ll proceed by reversing the standard order and tackle first the Ugly, then the Bad, before ending with the Good.

The Ugly

Last week the Indianapolis Colts fired VP Bill Polian and his son General Manager Chris Polian. Simply stated, the Colts had a horrible season. They lost their first 13 games, and while they finally won two of their last three, they still ended the season with a league-worst  2-14 record (the team’s worst performance in twenty years). Compare that with an average 11.5 wins in the past twelve seasons, and you can see why a shakeup in the front office was not a big surprise.

Why the sudden collapse? The Colts’ defense was weak (especially their rush defense), they had no running game, and even their special teams were below average. But these areas were not weak due to significant personnel changes or injuries – in each case, the players involved were largely the same as in 2010. Anyone who follows the NFL knows the primary reason for the Colt’s lack of success this year: their four-time MVP quarterback Peyton Manning went down with a neck injury before the season. Manning had been an amazingly consistent producer for the Colts, leading them to the Playoffs in 11 of their 12 previous seasons, and putting up strong individual statistics every year. He wasn’t yet showing his age – unlike other quarterbacks who are 35 years old, Peyton was still a top-notch star. In fact, I’ve heard some analysts this year suggest that Manning should get some MVP votes – even though he didn’t play at all. Such a vote would be symbolic of course, but it speaks to just how valuable he was to his team: not only did they lose his direct offensive firepower (passing/receiving yardage declined by 31%), but in his absence more pressure was put on a sub-par running attack, a relatively weak defensive unit had to spend more time on the field, and so on.

Unfortunately, Manning wasn’t able to play at all this season, and as of now it remains unclear if his career is over or not. But what is clear is that the Colts lacked a back-up plan in case something happened to Peyton. I was shocked to learn that throughout the 2010 season, the backup quarterbacks didn’t play in any regular season Colts games – Peyton played every minute of every game. The replacements this year included Curtis Painter (who was the existing backup but played only briefly in two games in 2009 and not at all in 2010), Kerry Collins (a 39-year old veteran who they desperately signed out of retirement), and Dan Orlovsky (who was so marginal a player he had been in and out of the league several times since 2005). The Polians can’t be held accountable for the injury to Peyton Manning per se. But what the firing is indicating to me is that they are being held accountable for not having a good or even adequate successor in place should the worst happen.  After all, quarterback is the most important position in the game, and Manning had already turned 35 – reasons enough to make sure you have adequate bench strength. By not having a solid backup at this key position, and by not making any significant upgrades elsewhere on the team, they left the Colts extremely vulnerable to disaster.

The Bad

If the Colts’ handling of this succession planning risk could be called “Ugly,” how have some other teams faired in similar circumstances? One case to consider is that of the Green Bay Packers from 2005-2007. This situation is more nuanced to be sure, but I think it is an instructive case to consider. Like the Colts with Manning, the Packers in 2005 found themselves with an aging superstar quarterback, Brett Favre. He was a fan favorite of the Cheeseheads of Wisconsin, and with good reason: he had been a strong performer for 13 years, winning three MVP awards and numerous other accolades. But knowing he wasn’t getting any younger (he turned 35 during the 2004 season), the Packers smartly drafted a gifted young quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, with the 24th overall pick (the second QB taken that year).

The problem – and this is where this case gets complicated – is that the Packers then kept Rodgers on the bench for three seasons. Like any rookie quarterback in the NFL, he had plenty to learn – and who better to learn from than future Hall-of-Famer Brett Favre? The issue arose though when Favre started to falter a bit. The Packers fell to a 4-12 record in 2005, and Favre threw more interceptions (a league-leading 29) that year than touchdowns (20). The team improved to 8-8 the next year, even though Favre still wasn’t his old self.

Meanwhile Rodgers only managed to get into five games over both seasons combined (although an injury during the 2006 season was one reason). During his years as backup, Rodgers inspired performances with the practice squad would earn him the respect of his teammates. As Wikipedia notes, Packers receiver Donald Driver described Rodgers running the scout team as if “[it was the] last possession of his life.” In a 2011 interview with Sports Illustrated, Packers receiver James Jones described that Rodgers “was making throws [in practice] that Brett was not making.” As a result, a “quarterback controversy” was brewing, as it seemed that Rodgers was increasingly ready to step up, and actually would have already been the starter on many other teams.

This is the risk you take, in business as much as in sports: is it better to ride out an existing, experienced talent to the career detriment of developing the younger talent? Do you sacrifice on-the-job professional career growth for the person waiting in the wings, thereby delaying their greatness a bit longer? It is the classic short-run vs. long-run benefits tradeoff, with a good measure of uncertainty added to the mix.

Rodgers practiced with the starting squad in the 2007 pre-season, and seemed more than ready. But the fickle Favre decided not to retire at age 38 after all, and as it turned out, any “quarterback controversy” in Green Bay died down soon enough. Favre achieved one of his best seasons ever while leading the team to a 13-3 record. Rodgers meanwhile continued in his backup role, getting into only two games that year.

In one sense, this was a classic “good problem to have” – and it turned out well for the Packers in 2007. But it could have just as easily turned out poorly – with the Packers keeping an aging, popular veteran in place and thereby blocking the faster emergence of a high-potential and likely future star performer (something that happens often in pro sports). Sure enough, in 2008 the Packers finally handed control to Rodgers, as Favre had temporarily retired (he came back, but was then traded to the Jets). Rodgers didn’t disappoint: while the team lost many close games and only posted a 6-10 record, Rodgers’ numbers as quarterback were good, and he also played through injury to earn further respect from Green Bay’s fans (no small thing, as replacing the legendary Favre was more than a little pressure).  Rodgers has consistently improved since then, leading the Packers to a phenomenal 15-1 record in 2011 with Aaron throwing an amazing 45 touchdowns with only 6 interceptions.

The big question is – how much sooner would Rodgers have reached his current level of productivity had Green Bay given him the reins sooner? Granted, Favre did well in 2007 – and Rodgers at that point likely would have done no better (possibly worse). But imagine how much better his 2008-10 seasons might have been, had he gotten real game experience sooner. We’ll never know for sure, but perhaps Rodgers would have had numbers at or near his 2011 level for several seasons by now.

The Good

A third example is that of the New England Patriots, one of the smartest organizations in the NFL, and arguably all of pro sports. They seem to draft and develop players consistently well, across many positions and over a lengthy period of time. From 1993-2000 their quarterback was Drew Bledsoe, and they certainly had some success with him at the helm. His numbers declined in 1999 (particularly in the second half), as he threw more interceptions than touchdowns that year and the team ended the season with only an 8-8 record. The Patriots drafted Tom Brady in the 6th round of the 2000 draft (using the 199th overall pick). Like the Packers would later with Rodgers, the idea was to groom Brady as Bledsoe’s eventual replacement, and sure enough Brady only got into one game in 2000 even while Bledsoe continued to decline (the team managed only a 5-11 record).

But then it happened. In 2001, during the second game, Bledsoe was hit by New York Jets linebacker Mo Lewis and suffered a sheared blood vessel in his chest. Tom Brady stepped in as his replacement, and ended up leading the team into the playoffs and eventually to winning the Super Bowl that year – quite an accomplishment for a pro quarterback in his first season as a starter. (To his credit, Bledsoe did come back that season and played an integral part in the Patriots success, substituting for an injured Brady in the AFC championship game).

Interestingly, a similar situation arose for the Patriots again several years later. By 2005 Brady was entrenched as a superstar for the Patriots, and while they actually had a veteran substitute in 43-year-old Doug Flutie, the Patriots new they needed a younger player as protection should disaster strike. So they drafted Matt Cassel in the 7th round with the 230th overall pick. His role in his first few seasons was to learn the ropes and be ready should something happen to Brady. The Patriots went 10-6 in 2005, 12-4 in 2006, and then had a record-breaking 2007 season where they went undefeated in the regular season (16-0), only to fall in the Super Bowl to the underdog New York Giants. Brady had arguably the best statistical season any quarterback has ever had that year, throwing 50 touchdowns against only 8 interceptions and leading the league in many categories.

At the start of the 2008 season, just as Patriot fans were excited to get the season underway so they could put the crushing Super Bowl defeat behind them, the unthinkable happened. In the first quarter of the first game, Tom Brady suffered a torn ACL and MCL and his season was over. Matt Cassell’s time in the sun was now, and the team’s smart drafting and preparation paid off: he stepped in and not only led them to victory in that first game, but led them to a respectable 11-5 season (narrowly missing the playoffs). Brady of course returned the following year, but Cassell’s performance in 2008 earned him a ticket to a starting role with the Kansas City Chiefs.

Succession Planning and Talent Management Implications

While the narratives above are somewhat simplified versions of what happened in each case, I think some valuable succession planning and broader talent management lessons can be learned from these NFL examples. The lessons I see are:

• Bench strength and talent mobility. You can make a great hire or promotion and get a lot of productivity from that person for a long period of time. But you can’t rest on your laurels: you need to be focusing not only on the support and development of your “starters” but on building out your “bench strength” as well. Making sure you have a rich talent pool and, in this context, a strong focus on internal talent mobility is the best way to make sure you won’t suffer as much as the Colts did this year should disaster strike (e.g., a top performer leaves the organization).

• High-potential development. Focusing on developing your high-potentials is critical to retain them in the organization so that one day they can step up and be the leader you need them to be. How you handle giving them a promotion when existing, perhaps star, employees are in place can be a challenge (see the Packers example.) Fortunately in most organizations there are usually multiple career paths and potential leadership positions that can become available to a rising star.

• Labor demographics. Related to this point, business leaders need to consider carefully their labor pools more broadly than just their high-potentials. As David Wilkins noted in his post US Labor Numbers for 2011: A Dream Deferred, “the biggest drops in labor participation rate are among the young, notably 16-24 year olds. Among the oldest workers, participation rates have been steadily increasing and now at are record highs. This has pretty serious implications for the long-term skill development of US workers, particularly given the projected shortages of experienced talent that the World Economic Forum predicts we’ll see by 2020.”
   
  Do you have any Baby Boomers who are playing the role of Favre at your organization, unintentionally blocking others from developing their careers and reaching their potential sooner? This is a classic case of what smart economists call the “seen and unseen”: yes, you are retaining your experienced employees’ skills, knowledge, network, etc., but at a significant opportunity cost in delayed career and talent growth for your younger employees.

• Readiness. Clearly the backup for Peyton Manning was not ready to take the reins when needed (as noted, when the injury hit, the Colts scrambled to fill this gap by bringing a player out of retirement.) In the other cases – Rodgers, Brady, and Cassell – the teams drafted and developed a backup who was ready to step up. How do you know the readiness levels of your younger, less experienced employees? Do you have tools that enable a broad range of people to nominate ready successors for all critical roles, allowing you tap into the “wisdom of the crowd” in your organization?

• Know your people. Professional sports are awash in statistics, talent analytics, and performance metrics. Teams know the value of this kind of talent intelligence, and it is critical to their success and failure. What level of talent intelligence do you have about the people in your organization, and how does it support your succession planning efforts?

What do you think? Do you know of other examples from sports – not just football, but basketball, baseball, hockey, etc. – where important succession planning and talent development lessons can be abstracted and applied to your organization’s talent management needs?  Please share in the comments; I look forward to hearing from you.