The Free Press’s Carlos Monarrez suggests that it’s a good thing that Jeff Greenberg exited the Red Wings’ GM search on Monday, and Monarrez’ second reason behind his reasoning is pertinent:
Let’s hope this indicates Ilitch will hire a true hockey person, meaning an NHL executive with extensive experience in a winning organization.
Those qualifications should be table stakes. But what I hope distinguishes a new GM with championship-caliber bona fides is having enough power and respect from Ilitch and his top aides to be left alone to do their job.
Even if that comes to fruition, I suspect the new GM will have to do things differently than Yzerman by keeping Ilitch in the loop better, explaining personnel strategy more clearly and embracing analytics.
In business parlance, it’s called managing up. In the vulgate of normal folk, it’s called smooching.
It’s an important skill for every working person with a boss. If the Wings’ next GM deploys this skill effectively, he may not only get Ilitch on his side a lot faster, but he might do something even far more impressive, like getting his owner to regularly attend games.
Continued (paywall);
I’m not expecting a miracle in terms of Christopher Ilitch spending as much time with the Red Wings as he spends time with the Detroit Tigers, but I do agree that aligning the front office with Ilitch’s sports practices is a logical course of action.
It’s not “managing up” or “smooching” as much as it is simplifying the managerial process, and that makes sense.
The rest of Monarrez’ rationale is worth reading, but this portion of his column is truly pertinent to the GM search.
