What the NFL Taught Me About Operations

How is an NFL game like running an operationally complex business?

Imagine you’re the quarterback, peering at the field through your helmet. The crowd noise (data) is very loud, and through the helmet radio, you can’t hear the coach talking to you about the next play (communication). You look down at your forearm to review the play, but you can’t understand all of it clearly.

You’re about to go into the huddle, and your left offensive lineman, your most talented blocker, went down with an injury last play (your single point of failure). A rookie from Indiana University who is playing his first NFL game comes in to help block. You call the play from memory, and as you go up to the line of scrimmage, the crowd is roaring and you’re trying to assess what the defense is doing as they move around (more data).

You see that the left cornerback is sneaking in to blitz you 10 seconds before you’re about to hike the ball. You call an audible based on your experience (exception) to have your running back cover the blitz should it come in.

You scan the field one last time to get insight across the defense.

You hike the ball and look at the options (deviations) on the field. You first go through your reads — your first option, the wide receiver out wide, is covered. Your second receiver is covered running a slant, and the third wide receiver ran the wrong route (didn’t execute properly).

In a split second, you need to make a decision. The running back picks up the blitz, so he can’t run his play. You check down to the tight end and gain five yards on the play because that was the easiest path (happy path).

Throughout the game, you’re making these choices — whether it’s taking an easy pass, assessing your options, or covering exceptions, all with the goal of scoring a touchdown.

To make matters worse, your tight end, a critical veteran on the team who has the most knowledge about how to block and run plays and is your most versatile asset, decides at the end of the season that he’s retiring, and you have no backup plan (institutional knowledge). So you ask him to sit with someone for his last two weeks to transfer what he knows from his experience.

In a future play, the quarterback can hear his coach and can clearly see his playbook, giving him and his team the best shot to execute to their standard. He doesn’t call the audible to pick up the blitz on his weak side, but the tight end sees it and picks it up automatically (automation), while the wide receiver flawlessly executes the route, leading to a touchdown.

...We run our businesses without the daily clarity needed to drive consistent operational excellence and execution.

Scenarios like these echo what many of us see on a daily basis in running our businesses. Whether you are onboarding a new employee, vetting a new supplier, or opening a new deposit account, we run our businesses without the daily clarity needed to drive consistent operational excellence and execution.

Like the NFL on draft day, or with player trades, businesses have mergers and acquisitions, and employees leaving or joining, that you have to integrate into how you operate without missing a beat, because a misstep could lead to revenue loss, customer complaints, or financial penalties.

Today, everyone is talking about AI as the savior of how you operate and execute, but capturing knowledge to run your operational playbook is the foundation of your AI journey. 

Today, everyone is talking about AI as the savior of how you operate and execute, but capturing knowledge to run your operational playbook is the foundation of your AI journey. You may have customized or configured your applications to your business needs and policies; this is your operational truth. AI doesn’t magically create your data or your institutional knowledge.

Capture your knowledge quickly. Gain insight while you drive standardization and productivity, meet compliance requirements, and improve your quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) processes. Then, determine where it’s worth leveraging automation or AI agents. Rinse and repeat.

Ultimately, the best NFL teams don’t win just because they have the best individual players. They win because they have a system that allows everyone to execute consistently, adapt to changing circumstances, and perform under pressure.

The 5 Operational Weaknesses I See Most Often (and How to Address Them)

Whether you’re running a bank, healthcare company, or any complex business, I consistently see a handful of operational weaknesses that prevent organizations from executing at their best:

1. Lack of operational visibility: Leaders don’t have a clear picture of how work actually gets done, where bottlenecks exist, or why exceptions occur. Start by capturing the current state of your processes and establishing measurable operational baselines.

2. Over-reliance on institutional knowledge: Critical processes live in the heads of a handful of experienced employees. Capture their knowledge, decision-making, and exceptions before it all walks out the door.

3. Inconsistent execution: Different employees or teams perform the same process differently, creating unnecessary variation, errors, and quality issues. Establish a standardized operational playbook that defines how work should be performed while accounting for legitimate exceptions. This shouldn’t be static, but it should be measured consistently.

4. Managing exceptions reactively: Organizations often focus on the happy path but fail to document what happens when things don’t go as planned. Identify the most common exceptions, understand how they’re resolved, and build those decisions into your operating model.

5. Automating before understanding the process: Organizations rush to deploy AI and automation without first understanding the underlying workflow, business rules, and decisions. Establish your operational truth first, then determine where automation and AI can deliver the greatest value. In today’s ever-changing world, where everyone is chasing the latest AI model, this is the critical first step to get the most value out of your AI investments.

Rob Della Santina is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Confidence Systems, a San Francisco-based software company that helps organizations capture, document, and operationalize their institutional knowledge.

Featured image: All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.