Gridiron Leadership: Winning Strategies and Breakthrough Tactics

by Scott W. Griffith, Jay Morwick, Evan H. Offstein

Book Overview

With its use of football stories, Gridiron Leadership provides a fresh, new approach to capturing and understanding the concepts and practice of leadership, strategy, and execution.

Gridiron Leadership: Winning Strategies and Breakthrough Tactics uses real moments from the worlds of professional and college football, as well as a wide range of evocative football metaphors, to dissect the craft of leadership and communicate...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0313378177
• ISBN13: 9780313378171
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Gridiron Leadersip

Outstanding work. The author takes lessons learned from the NFL and applies them to leadership and management in the workplace. Brilliant idea. I have read his other books and they are all great. I look forward to his future work as well. A great gift for the sports fan in your life.

A Text You Can Understand

As a 25+ year veteran management-level law enforcement officer and an avid disciple of the Dave Grossman and Sun Tzu principles, I'm always looking for new cutting edge leadership techniques that can be highly effective with today's more complicated workforce. The book really hits home if you're a football fan as much of the parallels are NFL related. It made the book which has quite a bit of text on the subject matter, much easier to read and enjoyable. The tactics outlined can be applied in almost any workplace and should produce desireable results. This is definitely one of the best books I've read on the topic in the past decade and looking forward to the next offering from the Offstein, Morwick, Griffith trio.

Superb read, highly recommended

The bye week last month gave many fans the chance to catch up on other noble pursuits. In my case, it's often reading, and I had the distinct pleasure of reading a fabulous new book. Entitled "Gridiron Leadership", this succinct book uses football as the backdrop to analyze key traits, tactics, and strategies for successful leadership and winning organizations. Right off the bat, this book has been endorsed by none other than Steeler President Art Rooney II, who wrote a poignant foreword at the beginning of this book. If that's not enough of an endorsement for this book, then I don't know what would be. The authors take the reader through the critical steps of leadership and building winning teams -- from the recruitment & retention of winning players (or employees) to building a winning climate in the organization. Each chapter is supported by relevant, real-world examples taken from the gridiron as well the corporate boardroom. This succinct, 180-page book walks the gamut of modern leadership and management -- human resources, crisis leadership, ethical leadership, strategic decision making, and organizational change. The authors and editors did a strong job of making this book smooth and enjoyable to read, and relevant as well with a host of recent examples from the world of football (including Super Bowl 43). Steeler fans, in particular, will be pleased with the number of positive references and examples related to the Steelers. Obviously, the Steelers are a good model of what a winning climate and strong, consistent leadership looks like, so it was terrific to see the Stillers cited throughout this book. If you are -- as I am -- a leader who enjoys the study of organizational behavior, business management, and leadership, you'll find yourself reading sections of this book and exclaiming, "Yes, that's right on!" Throughout this tome, the authors hit the nail on the proverbial head time and time again, and if nothing else, I can think of a half-dozen former bosses, subpar as they were, who are in dire need of this book. The authors also incorporate collegiate football into their examples. For example, their citation of the traditions at Texas A & M (including their famed "12th man" concept) was superbly on the mark. Although football is the central backdrop of this book, this book is more about leadership and winning organizations and less about pure football data and trivia. Football fans will unquestionably find this book enjoyable, worthwhile, and intellectually stimulating, as will readers of business and strategy. Along with Art Rooney himself, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in leadership, winning organizations, and the strategic management of football. I have already purchased a few copies of this book as a gift to past mentors, and I plan to buy more to give to co-workers/subordinates during the holiday season.

Not your typical B-school management book

This is a very good read. Insightful, and the football context is much more of interest than so many business school/management text which seem to run on like endless dribble. The parallelism to todays business world and leadership on the playing field come through very strongly and make this a very interesting and enjoyable read. I can fully appreciate the West Point leadership style Mr. Offstein brings to this the book. There is clear applications to this read to todays business environment. Well done and well worth the read.

Winning and Leadership

Gridiron Leadership is an excellent book! In every corporate environment, success or failure boils down to two things, the quality of your plan and, more importantly, your execution of that plan or early recognition of plan change. As in a football game, you can have the best play book, with great plays on offense and great defensive schemes, but if they are continuously executed poorly by unmotivated players, you will not win. If, as a leader/coach, you fail to recognize and make adjustments to your plan in a timely fashion, you will not win. Finally, "attitude is a reflection of leadership", if your team is unwilling to follow you, it doesn't matter how good they are, your likelihood of winning is non-existent. Gridiron Leadership provides the executive reader, fundamentals through vignettes and stories that enforce the lessons learned in this book. These stories discuss sense of purpose, teamwork, trust, communication, moral integrity, giving 110%, not letting your brother down, and playing to win. Effective leaders are always learning and improving. In my opinion, this book is a must read for all aspiring leaders.