Business
What It Takes to Win in Business and in Sports: Jerry Reese Talks About What it Takes to Find and Keep Talent in a Competitve Environment
You were involved with the Eli Manning acquisition years ago, as well as Justin Tuck and now Victor Cruz. Tuck and Cruz kind of came out of nowhere, at least from the outside. What is it that determines whether or not you are going to go for like a big name free agent or just develop someone?
Reese: We’re not going to pigeonhole ourselves with this template and say this is how we’re going to do it. We just, what do we need, and we look for it. We might get it in the draft. You might get lucky and get a Victor Cruz. In a Victor Cruz situation for us, he was a local free agent. We had him rated just like everybody else. Right now at this point, people like to say, wow, you guys were smart because you got Victor Cruz.
We were just like everybody else. He was just a local free agent. We had him ranked as a guy with a couple of redeeming qualities that we liked and that’s the beauty of personnel, because you can get a guy like Victor Cruz, and he can just blossom and take off and that’s really what happened to him.
You mentioned Justin Tuck. Justin Tuck was a third round draft pick and he came out as a junior, but he had some injuries his junior year, so that probably pushed him down on the draft board for some people because he had some injuries. He played really good as a sophomore. We liked him and he has blossomed, and probably if he had stayed his senior year, he probably would have been a first round draft pick. You have to look deep in the draft. Again, you have to get lucky sometime in the draft and be able to sign some undrafted free agents like Victor Cruz, who did a tremendous job for us last year. If I’m an entrepreneur and I bump into you and I say, “Hey, I deal with a lot of the same things you deal with; talent, keeping talent, affording that talent. Give me a nugget of wisdom. Help me.” What would you say?
Reese: I just think my thing here is you try to make everybody feel good about their job;not just our players here, but everybody in the building. Everybody is important to me and I want everybody to feel good about their job here. That works for the New York Giants, and if you don’t feel good about your job, let’s talk about it. Let me know what’s going on and why you don’t feel good about your contributions. I want everybody to feel good about their contribution.
We go to the Super Bowl, everyone [in the organization] goes to the Super Bowl, just like [head coach] Tom Coughlin goes to the Super Bowl. That’s important to me. I think that’s the number one thing. You treat people like you want to be treated and people will work hard, as long as their respected and they feel good about their contributions.
We don’t ask people to do more than they can do. Do what you’re supposed to do, we’ll be successful. Even on the football field, we’re players. Do your job, we’ll be successful. Do your job to the best of your ability, we’ll be successful.
