More Than Football

We serve the interests of business owners and executives in multiple ways here at Ingram’s. Among them: Gathering data on regional companies, covering of emerging trends and important developments in key industry sectors, providing expert guidance on relevant issues through our guest commentaries.

But where we really hope to elevate and inspire business leadership in a metro region of 2.2 million people is with programs like this month’s Executive of the Year and C-Suite Awards, which begin on Page 14 of this issue. In it, we introduce you to six pillars of business leadership for several of the highest-flying companies in this region.

They share a common trait: A commitment to excellence. You’ll see it in each of their individual profiles. They go about it from different perspectives across their organizational structures, but all are oriented in ways that drive success.

That connection came to mind this season, and especially during this playoff month, as this lifelong Chiefs fan watched the team make NFL history. Kansas City is the first NFL franchise to reach five Super Bowls in a six-year span. And the team has positioned itself for an unprecedented third straight Lombardi Trophy as Super Bowl champions.

The interesting thing about this year’s run is the way it highlights organizational excellence over time. Sure, it helps to have a Mahomes-to-Kelce foundation on offense, a scoring machine like Harrison Butker knocking in field goals and a Chris Jones anchoring a resolute defensive line year after year. But the team’s success goes far deeper than that high-visibility core: Only those four, and four others on this year’s 53-man roster, were Chiefs when they won Super Bowl LIV in February 2021, just five seasons ago.

That, friends, is organizational excellence: Taking a decided majority of new faces and bringing them into the culture, the processes and the mindset of a consistent winner. Likening it to our C-Suite winner this year, the lessons for all businesses come into focus:

CEO: Clark Hunt, team owner and chairman, drives the organizational structure, setting expectations for performance, values and mission. He makes the key leadership hires—none bigger on his watch than bringing Andy Reid on board in 2013—then turns them loose to do what they do best.

President: Mark Donovan, the man behind the curtain running the business side of the enterprise, which goes well beyond supporting the player roster. Like a chief administrative officer, his duties touch every aspect of the organization, its ability to maximize revenue and its multifaceted community-engagement efforts.

General Manager: Brett Veach has that title, but in terms of on-field personnel, he’s the equivalent of the Chief People Officer. He “hires” through the NFL draft, through savvy trades, acquisition of missing pieces that might have been rejected by other teams. He assesses talent, then matches it to on-field needs in ways that maximize the skills of other members of the squad. 

Chief Operating Officer: The other leaders put pieces on the chessboard; Andy Reid is the grand master who envisions game strategy and execution. We see it time and again in critical situations that so often have made the difference between winning and losing. That pass to a wide-open Samaje Perine to ice the AFC championship against Buffalo was a perfect example—a dagger in the solar plexus, delivered by a player on his only touch of the football in that game.

Given that pro football teams are under a constant media microscope, it’s a lot easier to see the results of all that each weekend than it is to see how their peers in the traditional business world are doing the same things. We try to fill that visibility gap year-round with things like our industry ranking lists, awards for biggest and fastest-growing companies, and recognition of exceptional individual performance through features like our 40 Under Forty, Women Executives-Kansas City, Top Doctors and several other programs.

As with the Chiefs’ leadership, there is much we can learn—all of us in business—from those who make a commitment to excellence a core value of their daily labors. And as we cheer on the red and gold in their quest to raise the bar in the NFL even higher, we celebrate the championship-level performance of this year’s Executive of the Year and C-suite Awards winners.