Thank you for calling New England Patriots how may I address your call?

Welcome to the Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. I'm the author of the

Fernum Street blog, a website dedicated to mastering the best of what other people have

already figured out. In the Knowledge Project, I host guests from a wide range of disciplines

to better expand our minds and challenge our thinking. The guest on this episode is Michael

Lombardi. Michael is the former general manager of the Cleveland Browns and current member

of the Cochis staff on the New England Patriots. He's widely regarded as one of the shrewdest

evaluators of people in the NFL. And as we'll see in our conversation, a lot more

goes into that than just measuring talent. Among other things, we explore the four elements

of leadership, decision-making, game plans, and the role of systems and processes. Before

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All right, so let's delve in. Where did your passion for football start?

You know, I think a lot of times your passion goes from what you see and there's a kid

growing up in New Jersey and watching a guy with the same last name as you on a sideline

achieve such notoriety and such success and become an idol. That, you know, his dreams

and his path really became my dreams and something that I really wanted to become. Only

because it was the same last name and it looked like he could have been in any one of my family

reunions. I thought that. And so, you know, I just really got passionate about learning

about him, learning about his life, about what he tried to do. And that set me on the path

...