Theme Week- My Thoughts on Team Management

[AdamEss 58]

Obviously let's establish that I've never GM'd in this league. That said, I do have numerous accolades, titles, awards, and a reputation for GM'ing elsewhere. I also believe that a lot of concepts for good GM'ing are universal. With that in mind, I'm going to share my thoughts on how to be a good GM. Usual Womp shenanigans will return at a later time.

 

Let's start at the start, so to speak. You need to have a singular mindset and goal. Are you a dev league GM? Your goal is developing players. Are you an expansion team? Your goal is to establish that team's identity and culture. Are you taking over a team? Your goal is to take whatever situation they're in and improve it. When you have a solid goal and you work towards it, you give yourself a much better chance to succeed than when you start losing focus or muddying the waters. Make sure the goal itself makes sense. You wouldn't want a VHL team trying to do nothing but develop young players. We have not one but two leagues for that. You wouldn't want a VHLE team trying to stockpile VHL free agents to get promoted. That's not even a thing. Finally, and most commonly across all leagues, dev league GMs should always remember that you are DEV LEAGUE GMs. So, you've got a goal. Now you need to establish the proper plan to execute that goal. That plan should almost always be a long term heavy plan at the top level. You should be looking 4,5,6 seasons down the line and trying to build the team to that. Teams that go all in on winning now don't really succeed that often in sim life or in real life. You can't trust a sim engine to do what it "should" do at any given point, so why risk everything on that? I believe the best thing you can do as a GM is plan to just keep putting your team in position to win. Though I am more than happy to share a league with GMs who are going to make those mistakes. They're my favorite training partners.

So, you've got a goal, you've got a mindset to achieve that goal, you're thinking properly on where your team is. The leads me to the next big thing. Locker room. A locker room will make or break a team much faster and more efficiently than any strat or depth chart. If you don't have the right kind of locker room to fit your goals, it can all disappear in an instant. People don't re-sign. Free agents don't want to come there. Rookies drift off. You lose the people with the wrong LR. And the people ARE the game, folks. I don't give  afresh hot Alabama shit how good your strats are. Without people you can't run 'em. So get your LR together. Figure out the mood, tone, and culture you want there, and actively seek out players who fit that. Talk to them. Ask them questions. SCOUT EVERYBODY. Or anybody in some cases. I personally swear by interviewing each prospect personally and then taking the ones I think fit and inviting them into a prospect specific area of my locker rooms where they can interact with the team itself. You can get so much good info on dynamics, personalities, who gets along, etc.

 

Finally, build a war room that is willing to disagree with you. You are not the reincarnation of Vince Lombardi. You need other voices giving you other ideas. They need to be on board with the mission, the tone, and the long term plans. That's on you to set. But they need to be providing alternate routes, extra information, other possibilities you can take. They need to be your editing squad. Doubly so for a GM partner. You need to be able to bounce ideas, find every possible solution to problems, and have informed people on the same page as you who can be around to act as your strong right arm when you're not there.


Yes all of these take time and effort. You took the gig. Put in the work. Good luck.