{"id":16997,"date":"2023-03-17T09:43:02","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T09:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=16997"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:11:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:11:18","slug":"jack-easterby-there-are-questions-i-wished-id-asked-in-houston-and-new-england","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/jack-easterby-there-are-questions-i-wished-id-asked-in-houston-and-new-england\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Easterby: \u2018There Are Questions I Wished I\u2019d Asked in Houston and New England\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 17 Mar 2023 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Jack Easterby: \u2018There Are Questions I Wished I\u2019d Asked in Houston and New England\u2019 <\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/jack-easterby-there-are-questions-i-wished-id-asked-in-houston-and-new-england\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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In the first part of our interview, the Former Executive Vice President of Football Operations at the Houston Texans explains that a leader needs the right inputs.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
How does a leader in sport make sure they are choosing the right ownership group?<\/h6>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a very tough question to answer because you don\u2019t always know everything about what everyone\u2019s doing,\u201d says Jack Easterby, the Former Executive Vice President of Football Operations at the Houston Texans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt becomes important to look at wide windows of decision-making patterns. Most of these owners have other businesses. You can study some of their investment strategies or their potential investments in those businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Easterby, who also worked with Bill Belichick, the General Manager and Head Coach at the New England Patriots, believes a prospective leader can learn from studying how the owners structured their C-suite and delegated responsibilities.<\/p>\n

He does, however, issue a caveat. \u201cIt\u2019s not good to do that based on the media because the media doesn\u2019t always tell the story of what owners are really about,\u201d he continues, \u201cbut it is incumbent upon the leader to pick the right place because that alignment is key, from jump street\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the first part of this interview with the Leaders Performance Institute, Easterby explores the art of the inquisitor, the questions he thinks should be asked by the leader, and the questions he wished he\u2019d asked in the past.<\/p>\n

Jack, what is the risk to the leader in failing to ask the right questions?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JE:<\/strong> People are going to give you information, and when you have whatever reporting structure you have set up, people are going to come to you and say: \u2018hey, this needs to be done, this needs to be dealt with\u2019; and they\u2019re going to do that based on their tension points. \u2018We need a better bathroom for everyone to use\u2019 or \u2018we need a better cafeteria\u2019. You don\u2019t just want the inputs you get to be based on their problems. You want the inputs to be based on what\u2019s going to make the program better. Sometimes, if you don\u2019t ask good questions, and you don\u2019t persist in the deep questions that you feel are better for everybody, what happens is that you get a lot of issues \u2013 but the issues that you hear about are not the real issues. So you may solve a lot of problems but you\u2019re not actually getting better. As a leader, I think the question is not \u2018do you solve problems?\u2019 \u2013 every leader has to solve problems \u2013 it\u2019s \u2018which problems are you solving?\u2019<\/p>\n

What are the important questions?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JE:<\/strong> The ones that make the biggest impact on the clubs that I\u2019ve been part of are the ones that solve the big questions; and in order to solve<\/em> the big questions you\u2019ve got to ask<\/em> the big questions. \u2018How do we function as an overall group? How are you held accountable for your job? How does each individual person feel cared for in their professional and personal existence? How do we create a better version of ourselves year by year? What are the inputs of information and how we receive data from the outside world? And how do we store data on the inside world and how do we communicate with each other?\u2019 Things like that \u2013 when you ask those questions you\u2019re going to get systems, past experiences, a lot of stuff that people throw at you. You can go through it and be able to say \u2018here\u2019s what we do from here to go to next place as a group\u2019. But if you don\u2019t ask really good questions you\u2019re just going to get a newspaper of today\u2019s problems sent to your desk. That\u2019s good, but that\u2019s not always the long term best information that you want to go through.<\/p>\n

What are some of the questions you wish you\u2019d asked in previous roles?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JE:<\/strong> How do we build or how do we digest the multi-phase implementation of a program? Meaning that I think we all want to win, we all want to be great, but that\u2019s a question I would have asked in Houston, maybe even in New England. How does the leadership team or the executive team digest a multi-phase program and how do we make sure that we\u2019re all going to stay on track no matter how many phases it takes? Because when you diagnose a problem and you go from A to B to C to D to E and you\u2019re trying to elevate slowly to get to a place of prominence, you know that\u2019s going to take some time and phases. It\u2019s going to take some iterations. You might be at phase two and everyone is like \u2018we\u2019ve got to get this done\u2019 and so you\u2019re not really at phase two because everybody is ready to abort the mission. I think that\u2019s something I would have asked going in. \u2018How does everybody in here receive the multi-phase vision and how do we keep everybody on track to a multi-phase vision so that we\u2019re not evaluating the ham when it\u2019s only been cooking for 15 minutes?\u2019 You can\u2019t pull it out, you have to leave it in there and let it cook because then you can really push out different challenges along the way and say \u2018hey, remember we\u2019re at phase two of six\u2019 versus \u2018this is the next thing\u2019 and I probably didn\u2019t do a great job of that. I was just trying to sell that next thing as we all got excited about growing. You\u2019re trying to sell that next version of yourself versus \u2018hey, this is version two of our nine-step process to get us to where we can be the best version of who we can be here within the club\u2019.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is not always obvious at the time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

JE:<\/strong> That\u2019s exactly right. Hindsight is 20-20. It\u2019s like the stock market, which tells us every day where we are at the moment. You have forecasting but you also have that daily metric on where you are; up down or whatever. When you\u2019re leading, you need to be able to do both of those. You need to be able to forecast and then come back to today and say \u2018this is where we are within that forecast\u2019. If you\u2019re buying a bond or something that\u2019s going to mature over time, you need to be able to know, \u2018OK, I\u2019m going to remind you. It\u2019s not going to mature today, it\u2019s going to take a second\u2019. And if you do that, your checkpoints are going to be a little easier because you\u2019re not looking for the best possible result within a short period of time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

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