According to a Bloomberg report, a trend is seen in the sports industry wherein hires for some of the top posts in leagues are being given to Wall Street executives.
Case in point: Robert Gulliver as the first vice president of human resources for the National Football League. A former Wells Fargo & Co. executive, Gulliver joined the NFL in 2010, bringing with him a talent assessment system that he has used on Wall Street for two decades.
Several executive search professionals said the NFL generated around $10 billion through various sources, which mimics the size and machinations of an investment bank these days.
Sports organization specialist and senior-level assignments Liz Boardman at executive search firm Russell Reynolds told Bloomberg, "The NFL is the Goldman Sachs (GS) of sports leagues. The head of HR, they carry and represent the culture. He knows the talent that needs to be there."
Gulliver explained that the reason he joined the NFL was that the league was open to implementing necessary changes to get most out of its personnel. The former Wall Street executive takes pride with his use of the nine-box assessment, of which he disclosed to the news agency as an evaluation tool to measure an employee's contribution to the organization and identifies an employee's potential contribution levels.
Using the term for performance measurement on a risk-adjusted bases, or alpha, Gulliver stated, "Winning in this business comes down to people as a competitive advantage. That's very similar to working in the investment management space, where your product, your generation of alpha, really comes from your people and leveraging and tapping into the insights of your people making decision. Generating alpha is winning on Wall Street."
Bloomberg said that executives in the NFL like Gulliver is important for the league to function to its full potential. Aside from staging football games, the league also offers loans to 32 of its clubs for stadium development and has established a fund to make investments in private sports and entertainment-focused technology and media companies together with Providence Equity.
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