Golden Knights Owner Bill Foley said his expansion NHL franchise in Las Vegas will make money, but he is taking a long-term view on both building the business and the organizational culture. Speaking yesterday at the '16 Motorsports Marketing Forum in Vegas during a session called “Team Building And Creating A Winning Culture Within Your Organization,” Foley said, “I’m going to have a lot of fun, and enjoy learning more about hockey and learning more about the expansion draft, amateur draft, trades and the cap. The reality is we will make money. We won’t make a lot of money. What we will have is an appreciative asset. That’s the end game.” Foley outlined the qualities he was looking for in building out his exec team and how he targeted both longtime NHL GM George McPhee and business exec Kerry Bubolz. He said, “I am looking for people where ego is not going to get in the way of getting the job done, and they have to be a team player.” Foley talked to around seven candidates for the GM post, but said of McPhee, “George and I hit it off. He just seemed more mature and ready.” Bubolz previously worked for the Cavaliers, and Foley said, "I just felt that Kerry had the experience and the personality to fit into our organization in the right way.” McPhee talked about the interview process, saying, “I’m not sure what got me the job. I was certainly well prepared. I had the experience, I had rebuilt another club [the Capitals] and that club is doing well. ... I told him that history had shown that the expansion clubs that had hired experienced GMs over a first-time GM have done fine, so I thought that would be a big part of [being hired].”
MAKING QUICK DECISIONS: In talking about organizational structure, Foley said he prefers a flat organization. “Two guys work for me, Kerry and George,” he said. “They both have the responsibility and authority, and I want them to drive both responsibility and authority all the way down through the organization. The organization needs to be very flat. We need to make decisions quickly and implement quickly. If we don’t implement quickly, we are going to have a problem.” Foley talked about his penchant for making quick decisions, saying, “It’s not 'ready, fire, aim.' It is 'ready, aim, fire,' but it’s accelerated. You have to look at a lot of different things all at once, make the decision and drive on. Because there are a lot of other decisions that have to be made. If we make an incorrect one, we reverse it quickly. We are course-correcting all the time.” McPhee compared it to working at the Capitals, where he was for 17 years. “This organization is flatter,” he said. “There, I reported to Dick Patrick and then to Ted [Leonsis]. It worked fine for a long, long time, but it wasn’t easy, because you had different individuals who had different ideas on how things should get done. It wasn’t easy, but we were successful. ... Here it’s flatter. And I like and respect what Bill stands for personally. We all work for people, and people will do what they are told to by their boss. But if you respect the person you work for, it works a lot better.” McPhee also said how much he appreciated being involved in the hiring of a team president. “One of the things that Bill did was to let me be a part of the hiring and to make sure Kerry and I were compatible. I had never been in that process before, so I really appreciated it.” Bubolz has been on board for about a month and said, “I did not have an appreciation for the visibility and the eyeballs on this franchise until I got here. ... I have tried to take that responsibility and communicate to our business team that we have a really, unique opportunity here." He added, "We have a unique opportunity to set the market on what people will pay for our product, so let’s set the market.”
