The Benefits of Strategic Assessments

Regardless of the grand situations (predictable and unpredictable), the strategist and his team of implementors performed the following:
• Gathers competitive intelligence data;
• Assess the data; and
• Builds the Tangible Vision.

Once the team connects to their strategic overview, they create "what-if" scenarios. Searching for situations where they can gain a strategic advantage.

Even the wise seeks opinions from reliable sources.

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Bill Walsh Read Mock Drafts

By Michael David Smith
Tags: N.F.L. draft

Mock drafts become a national obsession in mid-April, as fans across the land try to figure out whom their favorite team will pick. But when coaches, scouts and team executives are asked about mock drafts, they usually turn up their noses and insist that they would never lower themselves to caring what Mel Kiper or Mike Mayock or some other lowly media “expert” thinks. However, it turns out that at least one former coach did care what those experts thought, and it was a coach with a very good track record. Mike Lombardi, a former employee of several N.F.L. front offices and now an SI.com columnist, writes today that Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh always wanted to know what the mock drafts said. Lombardi says that in 1985, when he worked for the 49ers, Walsh summoned him to his office:

Walsh, in his eloquent voice and serious tone, told me: “I need to know what Will McDonough of the Boston Globe is going to have in his Mock Draft tomorrow. Do you know anyone in Boston who can read you the morning paper? I have Dr. Z’s mock from Sports Illustrated in front of me here, but we need another reliable source to determine how high we may have to go to get one of those great wideouts.”

According to Lombardi, it was Walsh’s studying of mock drafts that convinced him he ought to trade up from the 28th pick in the first round to the 16th in order to select “one of those great wideouts,” Jerry Rice. The 49ers were coming off their second Super Bowl title in 1985, and with Rice they won three more. It’s a good thing for the 49ers that Walsh didn’t think mock drafts were beneath him.

Michael David Smith also writes for FanHouse, Pro Football Talk, College Football Talk,Football Outsiders and The New York Sun.

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/bill-walsh-read-mock-drafts/

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/football/nfl/specials/draft/2008/04/14/lombardi.mocks/index.html?eref=T1