Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s Approach to GM Job

Jeff’s reference about Adofo-Mensah’s comments about being thoughtful and intentional is a phrase the Vikings GM did use a few times during his introductory press conference. And yes, it’s a bit of a broad brush.

But I thought he also explained his approach in a bit more detail to another question that came his way about his numbers-based background and how that will translate to his new role.

“Both of those things are information. Somebody watches a game, a player, right, they’re making high level assumptions and observations about what that player’s doing. Now, humans are really great at that higher-order, complex thinking. And so, a lot of times, that gift becomes a curse, in a sense, because you sometimes will miss the simple thing. So analytics, or simple observations, allows you to write those simple observations down as data and be able to go back later and study them historically. Very simply, you can go back and say, ‘Hey, is there any information that would’ve helped us make this decision better in the past?’ In a simple manner. But that’s the same thing that a scout watches and does with his process. He goes and says ‘hey, of all the great players that have come in the league that I observed before, what worked?’ What predicted the right thing? And as I said, it’s combining both. You appreciate that they’re different. You want one to cover the other in terms of blind spots. So really, it’s just that combined approach. They honestly are the same thing, they’re just two different avenues to get there.”

That’s a lot to digest. But the end of that answer, where he references the blind spots, is the key for me.