#255: Clark Hunt, Chairman and CEO of the Kansas City Chiefs – Be quick to give others credit

0:00It gets back to putting other people first. If you're willing to do that, that's going to allow you to break through and people are going to be willing to embrace your vision and do whatever it takes to be successful because they know that you care about them. Well, we did it. We survived another offseason. And now football is back. And I have just the guest to help you kick off this year's NFL season. Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm David Novak. And every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader you can be. My guest today is Clark Hunt, chairman and CEO of the Kansas City Chiefs.

0:44Now, you don't have to be a big NFL fan to know that no team has dominated the league quite like the Chiefs. They've won the AFC West nine consecutive times. They've made it to the Super Bowl five out of the last six years, and they've won three of them. So how do they build this kind of dynasty? As a leader, you know, it's really hard to deliver results year after year after year. Today, we're going to go point by point through what I believe are the five key things that every dynasty does, not only to achieve success, but also to repeat it. And as we do, you'll see when Clark talks about the success he's built, he is constantly giving credit to everyone else around him.

1:32Sometimes we think humility is just an aw shucks kind of modesty, but it's so much more. Listen closely today and you'll see how it's a powerful motivator and a real driver of success. Plus, you'll hear some great stories about how the Super Bowl got its name, what it was like to have Taylor Swift at Arrowhead Stadium, and lots more. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Clark Hunt.

2:04I got to start by saying thank you, because I'm a Kansas City Chiefs fan. I grew up in Kansas City, went to high school, Raytown High School. I've been rooting for the Chiefs ever since Lynn Dawson, Bobby Bell, Willie Lanier, Otis Taylor, all the way up to Patrick Mahomes. My grandson, Luke, had the opportunity to take a picture with Patrick Mahomes when he was here in Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. So we are all part of that Chiefs kingdom, and you've done such a great job. So I want to start by just saying thank you, Clark, for everything you've done. Yeah, well, I appreciate your support.

2:41So glad that you're a fan. There's no doubt that it's been an unbelievably special time for the Kansas City Chiefs and our fan base. What an amazing decade it's been. It sure has been. And you've won three Super Bowls as chairman and CEO of the Chiefs. And what will you always remember, Clark, about holding up that Lombardi trophy for the very first time? Well, of course, what made it so special was the 50-year journey between Super Bowls. We played in Super Bowl IV, beat the Minnesota Vikings. And my parents at the time thought, well, they would just be back every couple of years because the team had played in Super Bowl I.

3:20And of course, it took five decades for us to get back to the big game, win Super Bowl 54 against the San Francisco 49ers. and I'll never forget the moment on the stage where I was handed the trophy and then let my mom have it and she kissed it. It was just so special, you know, getting to be there with her because, of course, she was around for Super Bowl I, Super Bowl IV, you know, saw that part of the Chiefs history and she was so thrilled for the team to be back. And so that was really the special moment for me. That is so cool. You know, and one of the things that I've noticed about great leaders like yourself is that when you get to hold that trophy, you hold it, but you very quickly turn it over to somebody else.

4:06You want everybody to be able to touch that trophy. How important do you think that is? Well, it's really important because the truth is you don't win a Lombardi by yourself. Nobody, not even Patrick Mahomes, wins a Lombardi by himself. Football is the ultimate team sport, right? An active roster of 53, 17 guys on the practice squad, a coaching staff that's over 30 people, and a total of about 300 employees in the organization. And it takes every single one of them to be successful. They're all incredibly important. And it's a message that I deliver to our players every year that everybody in the organization has a piece in the success that we have.

4:50And so it's fun to be on that stage with my family, who obviously their support is so important. But with leaders like Andy Reid and Patrick and Travis Kelsey, Chris Jones, our key players. And it's fun to see them pass that trophy around and just how special that moment is for them. Yeah, it's incredible. And do you have a behind-the-scenes story about winning one of the Super Bowls that you haven't told anyone before? I don't know that I per se have a behind-the-scenes story. Of course, our success in Kansas City has been fueled by the combination of Andy Reid, Brett Veach, and Patrick Mahomes.

5:31and the drafting of Patrick back in 2017 is really what started the momentum on the success that we've had for the last seven or eight years. And there was so much that went into that. There was the scouting of Patrick while he was in college, which Brett Veach wasn't even our general manager at the time. He was in our scouting department, and he just became convinced that Patrick was the guy that could lead us to the promised land. and he began putting tapes of Patrick on Andy's desk every week. Patrick played for Texas Tech. Brett would get the tape and put it on Andy's desk and say, hey, you have to watch this.

6:13And after about a year of that, Andy told Brett, hey, I get it. I get it. The kid's special. And then that then led into the draft in 2017. We had to move up from the 27th pick to the 10th pick. to select Patrick. There was a little subterfuge involved in that because we couldn't let the rest of the league know why we were moving up because we were afraid somebody would then jump us to take Patrick in front of us. And we pulled it all off and held our breath in the draft room in 2017. And when Patrick was still there, we executed the trade with the Buffalo Bills and got Patrick. And we were all incredibly excited.

7:03I don't think in retrospect, we really knew how excited we should be because it put in motion this amazing decade that we've had. How could you? I mean, how would you possibly know it could be that fantastic? And, you know, it's interesting that you made that pick, you know, through the Buffalo Bills. And then this last year, you got a great receiver through the Buffalo Bills. The Bills have got to be kind of kicking themselves. I would think so. And I know they thought highly of Patrick in that 2017 draft. And, of course, they ended up in a great spot coming back and drafting Josh Allen a year or so later, who's one of the top quarterbacks in the league and certainly somebody who's capable of winning a Super Bowl.

7:49But I will say that I was surprised a year ago when the Bills were willing to trade with us in the first round again that allowed us to move up and take Xavier Worthy, who a lot of people felt was really sort of the missing piece from our squad. We didn't have the speed receiver that we had when Tyreek Hill was with the team. And so adding Xavier, who set the combine record for the 40-yard dash, I think at 4-2-1, they thought that was going to be the perfect compliment for Patrick. And the Bills were good enough to oblige and do the trade with us. Yeah, that had to put another smile on the organization's face.

8:30And speaking of the Super Bowl, your dad, the late, great Lamar Hunt, was the founder of the AFC and the Chiefs and actually coined the term Super Bowl, as I understand it. Can you tell us that story? Yeah, absolutely. Going back to the 1950s, the late 1950s, my dad decided that he wanted to get in the professional sports business. and he picked pro football over baseball because he felt the game televised well. And of course, televised sports was relatively new in the late 1950s. He went to the NFL to try to get an expansion team for his hometown of Dallas. And the NFL commissioner told him two things.

9:15First of all, we're not interested in expanding. And secondly, Dallas is a horrible market for pro football, which of course today is absolutely laughable. But it didn't deter my dad. He kept working on it. Eventually, he tried to buy a piece of the Chicago Cardinals, and that is the same team that now plays in Arizona. They went from Chicago to St. Louis to Arizona, and the same family actually owns the team. And my dad tried to buy the team across several years. And at the end of the day, Walter Wolfner, who was the owner of the team at the time, told my dad, you're not the only guy who's come to see me about buying a team.

10:01And so that turned a light bulb on in my dad's head, and he made the decision to start his own league, which became the American Football League, which launched in 1960. Initially, the NFL acted like they didn't care anything about this new upstart league. It wasn't going to be competitive. But very quickly, they realized that the AFL was going to be a threat to them. The AFL was trying to sign the same players that the NFL was signing. There were two different drafts. So there was real competition between the two leagues. Ultimately, that led to a discussion in the summer of 1966 to merge the two leagues.

10:43And my dad was actually the one who cut the deal with Tech Schramm. They sat in a car at Love Field, the airport in Dallas. and sort of hammered out the details of the merger in April of 1966. However, there were a lot of meetings that had to happen for the merger to become complete. And my dad was in one of those meetings, and there were a bunch of owners from both leagues. And they were talking about this new championship game that would have to start because there was an AFL champion, there was an NFL champion, but you needed an overall champion. And one of the owners in the meeting looked at my dad and said, which game are you talking about?

11:26Are you talking about one of the conference championship games? And my dad said, no, I'm talking about the last game, the final game, you know, the Super Bowl. And he just threw it out there like that. And everybody sort of stopped and looked at him. And then they went back to their business. However, the owners and later the staff in the league office began referring to this new championship game as the Super Bowl. The only problem was that the commissioner at the time, whose name was Pete Rozelle, who was a tremendous commissioner for the NFL for several decades, he actively disliked the term Super Bowl.

12:01He thought it lacked sophistication. And that's the reason, if you go back to Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II, those games were originally called the AFL-NFL World Championship game. But over time, the media heard the term Super Bowl. The fans heard the term Super Bowl. And by the time you get to Super Bowl III, everybody was referring to the game as Super Bowl. So Pete Rozelle threw the towel and said, hey, we're going to call this thing the Super Bowl. So that's how it became the Super Bowl. My dad, after the fact, was asked, how in the world did you come up with that? And he said, well, it was really just an off-the-cuff thought that I had in that moment.

12:43But it probably comes from two things. First of all, I've always been a big fan of college football. And I've been to a bunch of Cotton Bowl games. In fact, I think at one point he had a streak of 35 or 40 straight Cotton Bowl games that he had attended. So that's where the bowl came from. And then in December of 1965, my mother had given me and my older siblings the latest, greatest toy of the day, which was a Wham-O Super Bowl. And I was one year old at the time, so I don't think I was doing much with my Super Bowl, maybe other than gumming it. But my older siblings, who were about six or seven years old, they had those balls, and they were bouncing them all over the house and in the driveway and over the house.

13:29And my dad said, you know, that just stuck in my mind, and I probably took Super combined with Bowl, and that's how we got Super Bowl. I love that story. I never heard that. That's fantastic. Hey everyone, it's Kula from How Leaders Lead. And if you've watched our podcast for any number of episodes, you probably know that a common theme from all of the great leaders we interview is that they are active learners. They have this commitment to continuing to learn and grow so that they don't stay stagnant and so that they continue to see success in their leadership and in their life. This theme of active learning is so important and it's what David's latest book, How Leaders Learn, is all about.

14:07It's all about helping you develop that skill of active learning so that you too can continue to see success in your leadership and in your life. The book is really entertaining. It pulls stories from some of our greatest podcast guests and pairs those stories with insights that you can incorporate into your leadership and into your life right away. Grab How Leaders Learn on Amazon or wherever books are sold. And I think you're really going to love it. You feel David's personality through the pages and through his storytelling. and it's a really powerful way to level up your leadership. Clark, under your leadership, the Chiefs have made the playoffs 12 times.

14:44They won the AFC West nine consecutive times. You've appeared in five Super Bowls in the last six years, winning three of them. This is what I would call dynasty performance, unquestionably. And when I was the CEO of Yum Brands, we wanted to build a dynasty. That was our objective was to build the Young Dynasty. And we didn't want to get results just one year. We want to get great results year after year after year. And that was our goal. So I went out and I visited, you know, the best companies in the world at that time with my team. We went to Walmart, Southwest Airlines, Coca-Cola, General Electric was on fire at that point in time.

15:25These were the great companies. And we codified what we called our dynasty drivers. You know, there were five things that we said the great, great dynasties do. And I believe when I see what's going on with Chiefs, you have all these five. So I'm going to ask you about each one of them. And you already referred to one. The first thing that I learned from the dynasties is they create a culture where everyone counts. And you talked about the important meeting with the team earlier, you know, in the year, talking about how every piece of the Chiefs really does make a difference. Can you share a story of how you do that with the team and you consistently reinforce that point, Clark?

16:05Because I know you believe that. Absolutely. And something that you'll hear throughout today is how important the example that my parents set for me. I learned so much from my dad in terms of how he ran the organization, how he valued people and his humility. And he really set the tone by making sure everybody who was a member of the Kansas City Chiefs, whether you were the star quarterback or the guy working in the equipment room, you felt like you were part of our extended family. And to this day, we go to great lengths to make sure that everybody who works for the organization and their family feel like they're part of the Chiefs family and part of the Hunt family.

17:01That's incredibly important. My dad had many wonderful qualities. He obviously was quite a visionary, but he also had tremendous humility. and the way that he treated people, you know, caused them to want to literally run through a wall for him. They loved him that much. And my dad's been gone now for 18 years. And literally every couple of weeks, I have somebody come up to me and tell me their Lamar Hunt story. And a Lamar Hunt story usually goes something like this. I was a 20-odd-year-old, you know, nobody. And I was sitting in an airport terminal waiting for my flight. And this guy next to me struck up a conversation with me.

17:50And after about 15 or 20 minutes, I figured out, wow, this is Lamar Hunt, founder of the AFL, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs. And this guy really cares about me. And people love sharing that type of story with me. And it's just such a great example for how to treat people. So coming back to the football team, I really have two opportunities each year to try to set the tone with the team. The first actually just happened a couple weeks ago. We had our rookie minicamp. So we brought in all the players that we drafted this year, as well as some college free agents that we'd signed, and then a bunch of tryout players who had a weekend where they had an opportunity to try to convince the coaching staff that they can be a member of the Kansas City Chiefs.

18:46And we have a dinner for them the first night. And there's not a lot of program other than me getting up and welcoming them to Kansas City, to the Kansas City Chiefs, and telling them a little bit about the culture of the organization and what will be expected of them. And I typically will share a little bit about our history, tell about the founding of the team. Of course, for these young men, that's all a very, very long time ago. But it's a great opportunity to hear about the roots of the Kansas City Chiefs. We also, at that dinner, have about 20 of our ambassadors. Our ambassadors are former players who work in the community for the team.

19:33And so they come and those ambassadors share a little bit about themselves and about their journey and the career that they've had. And it includes a lot of times it will include Pro Football Hall of Famers, Willie Lanier, Bobby Bell, you know, were there this year. And so the combination of having these Chiefs legends share a little bit about their journey and me having the opportunity to talk a little bit about who the Kansas City Chiefs are and the culture that we have and our expectations for them, I think helps lay the groundwork. Then I'll come back in late July when we start training camp, and we have a team meeting the first night of training camp that has all 90 players on the roster at that point, the entire coaching staff, and approximately another 50 people from our football side of the organization.

20:35So it's a big meeting. But I get in there and talk to them about who the Kansas City Chiefs are and what our values are. And it's just a great chance for me to share it with him. Of course, for it to stick, you've got to have great team leaders like we do with Travis Kelsey, Patrick Mahomes, Chris Jones, because those guys are reinforcing those values in the locker room on a year-round basis. But I think it's a great chance for them to hear it from me. Obviously, Coach Reed has created an amazing culture within the team and really helps reinforce the principles that we lay out. You know, that's great.

21:20And the second dynasty driver that we codified was the fact that the great companies, great organization are maniacal about their customers. And in your case, your fan base. And, you know, the Kansas City Chiefs have a rabid fan base for sure. Or how do you keep building the Chiefs kingdom? How do you keep pouring fuel on the fire? Well, I'm going to go back to my dad again, which I told you I would. Probably the greatest lesson that he taught me and my siblings is that the pro sports business is really about the fans. And I think a lot of us, when we think about pro sports, the first thing you think about is the star players, the coaches, the great general managers.

22:10But one of the points that I make sure that I mention to the players when I have that opportunity to talk to them is to tell them, hey, this is really about the fans. They are the ones that really pay you. The Hunt family doesn't pay you. The Kansas City Chiefs don't pay you. It's our fan base. That's why all of us have this amazing opportunity to be part of the National Football League and the Kansas City Chiefs. And so I encourage them that anytime they have a chance with our fans, whether it's at training camp, during the season, at a public appearance, to make sure and tell them thank you.

22:52right? Because without that fan support, without that passion, the Kansas City Chiefs are not the Kansas City Chiefs. You mentioned that we have an amazing fan base, and we do. It's now in the top two in the National Football League in North America, and we've focused internationally over the last decade. And in most markets, we're either number one or two in terms of the favorite team of football fans who live overseas. So we've made a lot of progress. Obviously, having championship teams, a bunch of Super Bowl appearances is very helpful to that. But also having players like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey that fans can relate to and cheer for is a big part of that as well.

23:42Absolutely. And tell us a story about Red Friday. So Red Friday is a great tradition in Kansas City, something that was started by my dad 40 years ago. And on the Friday before the season opener in Kansas City, the entire city of Kansas City is encouraged to wear red. And almost everyone does wear red. Over time, we've also turned it into a great opportunity to give back to the community, which is one of our core values. Again, something that my dad instilled in the organization. Initially, we sold newspaper inserts that had a special section on the Kansas City Chiefs. And then over the last decade, we've started selling Chiefs kingdom flags.

24:41And I should mention, we're really not selling them. We're actually getting donations for these flags. And the beneficiary of Red Friday in recent years has been the Ronald McDonald House of Kansas City. And we've raised over a million dollars for the Ronald McDonald House through the distribution of these flags on Red Friday. So it's a great opportunity for the community to come together, show their excitement and enthusiasm for the upcoming season, but also a great opportunity to raise money for a charity that does really important work for families with sick kids. You know, that's fantastic as well.

25:21And another, you know, big dynasty driver with which the great companies do, the great organization do is they try to really differentiate themselves and everything they do competitively. You know, what do you think you guys do differently that really make you stand out and drives the kind of sustainable performance that you've had? Well, I think you mentioned a key word there in sustainable success. When I took over the Chiefs 15 or so years ago, one of my goals was to build a team that could consistently compete for championships. And at the time, I'm sure when people heard that, they were like, well, we would like you to be able to compete for one championship, much less consistently compete.

26:09Because we had some pretty mediocre teams and then some pretty bad teams back at that point. I knew if we just focused on some of the principles that I believed in, in terms of building a championship team, that over time we could achieve that. The most important asset that you have in a pro sports organization is your people. And, you know, that typically starts with your head coach. And then I would include our general manager and then the president of the organization. So at the Chiefs, those three people report directly to me, and they run their respective areas of the team. And I believe that we have three of the best in the National Football League in Andy Reid, Brett Veach, and Mark Donovan.

26:59All three of them do an amazing job. So getting the right kind of leaders into the organization was very important. And that took me a few years. We had a misstep in the football operation, ended up with a couple of coaches that didn't work, had to make a couple of changes at the general manager position. But we finally were able to get that right. And then, of course, I was so fortunate, so blessed to be able to bring Andy Reid into the team back in 2013. team. It's not very often that a coach with the type of success that he had enjoyed in Philadelphia is available. And at the time, a lot of people thought it wasn't a sure thing.

27:49Andy might need to take some time away from football. His last two Eagles teams had not been very good. He'd had some issues in his family where he'd had a family tragedy with one of his sons, and they thought he maybe needed some time away from football. But I could just tell in my interview that he was the right guy for the Kansas City Chiefs. He was the right guy for our fan base. He was the right guy for me and our family. And he has been nothing but incredible and is a certain pro football Hall of Famer when he retires one day. So getting Andy was a key piece to it. But coming back to building a championship team that can actually sustain success, as you're aware, the NFL makes it very hard for a team to repeat as a winner.

28:48There are a lot of mechanisms in place that make it a challenge. So let's start with the salary cap that constrains what you can spend on your roster. And when you have championship teams, part of that undoubtedly leads to players wanting to improve their financial situation with new contracts, extended contracts. And at the end of the day, you just can't afford to keep everybody. So almost every year, you're saying goodbye to players that you would love to keep, but you know you just can't because of the salary cap. Of course, if you have a lot of success, you're also drafting at the bottom of the draft.

29:28And I would mention that the draft is really the key to building sustained success. If you don't draft well, you're in, you're out. You absolutely have no chance. You cannot fill all the holes with free agents. Just the system's not set up where that works. And so I want to give the credit to Brett Veach and the job that he's done over the last seven years of really having one outstanding draft after another that has put us in a position to have the sustained success that we've had and hopefully will continue to have in the future. You know, continuing that talent pool is so important. And, you know, one of the other dynasty drivers that we, you know, said this is what the great groups do is they process and discipline around what drives outstanding execution.