At What Point Does Nepotism Destroy Your Business?

It’s when the second generation gets involved.

That’s the point of destruction.

That inherits the moneymaker have unearned egos.

Must be nice to start at 3rd base thinking you actually hit a triple to get there.

Right?

I hope there is a sense of urgency with Mr. Mara (Mr. Tisch seems aware) otherwise we’ll see half measures again. The problem may be that the Giants franchise makes money even when it is a laughing stock, hence no urgency for real changes except for the window dressing.

I do agree there have been too many empty suits running the Giants for too long.

businesses have thrived keeping things in house. The key is did the following members earn it.

I have no idea of Chis Mara's ability to select players nor other family members serving in that role. All we see is that the Giants have been bad for a long time.

One thing I do feel confident in is that John Mara is terrible at identifying what is causing the losing and more importantly he seems incapable of identifying a Head Coach. He needs to remove himself from football decisions. With pressure mounting I think the other family member will have to go as well but we will still have the same issue. Who is going to select the next leader of the Giants?

The question for me is was DG told to fix the organization at his discretion? I don't believe he had.

But there is a massive statistical probability a business will fold each time it passes on a generation. So think something like 60% it won't survive the 2nd generation and 90% it won't survive the 3rd.

Again, I can't remember the exact percentages, but its glaringly high like that.

and I had a philosophy that you can not be too close to the employees. There has to be some distance. If you become friends, especially outside the business environment, then it becomes more difficult to discipline that employee and even more difficult to fire them. I would think when employing family members it would be next to impossible.

become more important that the results. When a mindset of "this has always worked for us in the past" becomes more ingrained than thinking about how you improve, the business becomes stagnant. It can also happen when the employees become friends and family and not employees.

At some point the owners need to decide if they are in this as a business, or a hobby. Unfortunately the Giants will remain profitable despite losing, so there is little incentive to not run it like a hobby.

somewhere around 90% do not survive three generations. I could be wrong, but I thought I have heard that stat on more than one occasion. Coincidentally, John is the third generation if I have my Mara family tree in order.

Tim (1st Gen)

Well-Jack (Second)

John-Tim--Tisch (3rd).

ordinary business. The Mara's floundered for years in the late 60's and all of the 70's, living off TV money. Few other businesses could survive that way. Other businesses typically don't have a godfather type who steps in and forces it to take on someone else to run it.

I think Wellington learned from that experience, and from George Young on how to manage a franchise. I believe TC and Accorsi were Wellington hires, going against advice, and both worked out. Maybe John gets to that point, but I see no evidence yet. The problem with nepotistic hires isn't that they aren't necessarily unqualified, it's that they are immovable once they are installed.

Chris Mara runs personnel, the personnel has sucked for his entire tenure, forcing HC and GM changes, but Chris still has the keys to his office. There is no accountability.

so directly. I'm a lifelong fan but also a customer and it's hard to keep investing time, money and interest in a grossly substandard product that is so substandard, as best we can tell, because of the nepotism at the Giants.

I hope we keep bumping this thread up so that the sports media start commenting on this subject (assuming they read BBI, but I think at least some do). Some posters have voiced the view that reporters won't report on the Giants' nepotism for fear of losing access. I hope they're wrong. This is definitely a coverage-worthy issue.

its been my experience that the 3rd generation is business killer.

Founder (1st gen), starts with nothing and builds the business, but still not wealthy enough to become arrogant. The 2nd gen (sons or daughters) of the founder grew up playing as kids at the business (cuz the old man was working ALL the time), and as a result learn the business at a very young age.

Now the Family is starting to show strong wealth through the second gen and in comes the privileged 3rd gen, who's parents didn't want what happened to them to happen to their kids so they keep them away from the business, and send them to an Ivy. This 3rd Gen is the gen you have to watch out for, they don't know the business, and think their new found degree is sufficient to deal with customers, vendors, lenders, business process, etc... It's usually not and that is when the business goes south.

We sit in credit committee's on family run businesses and one of the first questions is always, "what generation is now running the business". When the answer is 3rd, everyone typically sits up and starts asking more questions.

So as someone pointed out, Tim J is 3rd Gen, a sale may be the best route before it gets better. Of course that's not going to happen, so bringing outside people in to run the football operations may be the next best thing.

But I agree that 3rd generation is a lot of risk. Imo, I think 2nd generations do really well.

Now, we have to be careful about causality because what I see is that cashing out 1st generation is emotional, done by the second generation taking paper but does not hamper the business (and its not at its larger size or cash needs) or its ability to go to outside sources if needed.

Cashing out the second generation often seems to be done with borrowed money into future cash flows, be first position on the balance sheet and therefore a restriction on future borrowing.
Depending on how much, this can handicap the 3rd generation a lot.

The next thing I see is diversification off the core business and an unwillingness to take an axe to a mature value proposition. Lots of barnacles accumulate unchallenged when no outside report need be issued. You can drown in non for profit charity and say yes to Suzys kid as an intern and before you know it you loaded up with non essentials.

But we mainly have to consider that competitors challenge enough that no 3 generation business goes without change in order to stay in the race.

imo, the issue is not if the NYG are 2nd or 3rd generation owners. I think nepotism can work if the folks are actually in the business and the business is their expertise. I don't think the owners of the NYG are actually in the business. I think they are knowledge challenged financial owners with a different timeline and metrics of success from the key employees ( whose metric/value is reputation in the sport).

Lastly, I think a football team is a bad business to own for any follow up generation. Its a vanity business where the majority of revenue comes in unearned from your personal performance or skill ( NFL based TV and Merch money). There is very poor reward or punishment for being anything above average in the NFL

I think loyalty might play a part in it as well.

I can't remember the specific book, but one of the ones on the NFCE that had a lot of Giants coverage went into specific detail on the Giants front office operations under Wellington and the problems they faced during the 60's-70's. Apparently, Wellington steadfastly refused to fire scouts, many of whom he considered friends (or were friends of his who were hired into the position). That loyalty went beyond reasonable bounds at times; even well into the 2000's, when apparently they drafted a PK named Markham who they hadn't scouted, apparently because he was a friend, neighbor or relative of one of their scouts.

Look at the scouting department now - there's a Boisture in there, Tom has been gone for 20 years. A couple of the scouts have been there over 30 years. They might be great at what they do - but there has been seemingly no turnover (just going by the list of names) throughout this slow motion train wreck. How do you dismiss the head of college scouting and the GM and all the scouts remain the same?

are related issues.

Last Updated: August 2, 2019

New York Giants Team Administration – Ownership:

President and Chief Executive Officer: John K. Mara
Chairman and Executive Vice President: Steve Tisch
Treasurer: Jonathan Tisch
Senior Vice President of Player Personnel: Chris Mara

New York Giants Team Administration – Football Operations:

Senior Vice President and General Manager: Dave Gettleman
Vice President of Football Operations/Assistant General Manager: Kevin Abrams
Director of Player Personnnel: Mark Koncz
Director of Pro Personnel: Ken Sternfeld

New York Giants Team Administration – Pro Personnel and College Scouting:

Director of College Scouting: Chris Pettit
Executive Scout: Jeremiah Davis
Regional Scouts: Steve Verderosa and Jeremy Breit
Area Scouts: D.J. Boisture, Marcus Cooper, Donnie Etheridge, Patrick Hanscomb, Ryan Jones, Brendan Prophett, Chris Watts
BLESTO Scout: Marquis Pendleton
Assistant Director of Pro Personnel: Matt Shauger
Assistant Director of Player Personnel: Tim McDonnell
Pro Scouts: Nick La Testa and Corey Lockett
Scouting Coordinator: Chad Klunder

Your senior VP of player personnel is a Well Mara son and the assistant director of player personnel is a Well Mara grandson.

I phrased that poorly - the book implied that Wellington had these people under contract for so long that they essentially became family to him and he refused to hold them accountable for the team's poor performance.

I hadn't realized that. Tom Boisture was definitely a major dude in Giants history - he "became the Director of Player Personnel for the New York Giants in 1980 and was named Vice President of Player Personnel in 1998. He retired in 2000.... Giants like Lawrence Taylor, Mark Bavaro, Carl Banks, Michael Strahan and Amani Toomer were among the players who helped the Giants reach four Super Bowls during Boisture's tenure." So, another Boisture in the player personnel group.

I wonder if that fits the description of what you were talking about.