In-Depth
World Congress 2020: Scott O'Neil
Chief Executive Officer, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment
On how to approach unprecedented challenges:
O'NeilGetty Images
For us, we talk about preparation quite a bit. We always say prepare, prepare, prepare. We had a task force going about 10 days before the NBA season was shut down, and it was 10 people. And so, they had built out protocols, work-from-home protocols, communication cadence, meeting cadence, kind of some disaster planning if you will, preparedness planning in terms of food, and a redundancy in our systems. So, we had fortunately preparation, preparation, preparation.
A lot of the first week or so, our focus was wholly on getting people settled and making sure they were healthy and that if there were a problem, they knew how to get tested quickly. We wanted to make sure that people understood the importance of staying inside, eating healthy, getting exercise, getting your proper amount of sleep because we need to keep our immune system strong, and then giving them the latest and greatest information from the access we have to incredible health and infectious disease specialists.
We need connection, and we need purpose. And so, the order is about how can we help people that aren’t accustomed to working at home. … What does a day look like? What does a meeting schedule look like? How should we be improving ourselves? Is there an online class you can take? Do you want to learn Excel better? Do you want to learn Spanish? And then there’s the purpose of why we’re here and what we do.
On what he learned from working with David Stern and Adam Silver:
O’Neil described the lessons he learned from former NBA Commissioner David Stern of how a leader acts amid crisis.getty images / NBAE
There’s so many lessons I’ve learned from [David Stern] and from Adam Silver, who was always at his side and now leading the charge. One is be decisive. In many times when there’s a crisis, David went to command and control, and while that’s not always instinctive for a lot of us to go to command and control, when all hell breaks loose, the first thing people need to see is they need to see you. There’s no ostrich leadership. David was always visible, and so I try to be visible. He would be calm, so there wasn’t screaming or yelling. It was calm under fire and pressure. And third, he was very decisive in his decision-making.
On the role of sports when games resume:
On one hand you might say, “Really, you want to play a sports game?” And I’ll say, “Really, we need sports more now than ever.” This is a place we come together. It’s a place we come together as a family, as a community, and as a nation. And I feel proud and privileged to be in this industry with that opportunity as to how we consider what that relaunch looks like and whether that’s the relaunch of this season, or just playoffs, or whether we go into next season and we have more time to plan. But I will tell you when we’re considering this, we’d like to come back. We’d like to come back big.
