Let Leaders Lead: Why the NHLPA Shouldn't Have Fired Paul Kelly

A few weeks ago, the National Hockey League Players’ Association fired their executive director, Paul Kelly. The secret-ballot vote took place in the middle of the night, following an 11-hour meeting, and produced a 22-5 result in favour of ousting Kelly.

Kelly was the NHLPA’s third executive director in four years.

What happened?

Details are still emerging, but one of the main sore spots for the PA was that Kelly allegedly read the minutes from a meeting between the association’s executive and the board (in that meeting, the players had awarded a contract to general counsel Ian Penny).

As reported in The Hockey News, Kelly “never categorically denied reading the minutes in question and there have been suggestions he was glimpsing it to see if the union’s constitution had been contravened”.

So in other words, Kelly was looking out for the players – his constituents – as any good leader should.

But that’s not how the NHLPA saw it, unfortunately.

One of the more interesting commentaries on this whole situation comes from retired NHLer Jeremy Roenick. In a story in The National Post, Roenick points out how most of the NHLPA's members are young and easily swayed by the union’s leadership: "The education of those players is going to be very low…not to put athletes down - but they are not the brightest bulbs in the box.”

Roenick’s comment on the intelligence of the players aside, his point more than anything illustrates the NHLPA’s desperate need for mature, experienced leadership – which is exactly what the association had in Paul Kelly. In many ways, Kelly was saving the players from themselves.

To make matters worse, the NHLPA fired Kelly without any thought as to what might come next – yes, Ian Penny has stated he only wants the executive director job on an interim basis. But given what’s happened, Penny’s position – even if it’s interim – raises a few eyebrows. In the executive search business, we are always stressing the importance of a succession plan. Not only does the NHLPA not have one (they have yet to set up a search committee), but they’ve also put into place an interim leader whose very presence rubs more than a few people the wrong way.

When and if the PA does get around to forming a search committee, it's critical for the players to bring impartial and experienced advisors to the table to help them find a new
executive director.

At the end of the day, the NHLPA forgot that the point in hiring someone like Paul Kelly was so that he could run the association in the best interests of its constituents. What the
association wants instead however, is “my way or the highway”.

My verdict on the NHLPA's behaviour over the past month? Below the line.

The Biggest Leadership Challenge of Your Life: How Steve Jobs’s Fight With Cancer Might Finally Force A Succession Plan at Apple

Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at a routine iPod product update in San Francisco a week ago, his first public appearance since October 2008. Jobs had been on medical leave, and had recently undergone a liver transplant due to his ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer.

If you have any interest in Apple, you know that Jobs and the company are intrinsically linked.

Although an understatement, The Toronto Star’s Chris Sorensen perhaps said it best: “While the health of key executives is not normally a burden for most corporations, the relationship between Apple and Jobs is believed to be particularly unique.”

So what happens when a leader who is so firmly entrenched with a brand – both to consumers, but particularly to shareholders – becomes seriously ill?

Again, a succession plan is critical. When Jobs was first diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, the company took a lot of flack from shareholders: information about Jobs’s health, when it was released, was cryptic at best and sometimes contradictory. The real question loomed – if Jobs is sick, who will run the shop?

But in Jobs’s absence, product marketing head Phil Schiller has been emcee’ing all company events, and COO Tim Cook has been managing the company on a day-to-day basis. According to
an article in Bloomberg, written post Jobs’s appearance last week, shareholders and the investment community seemed satisfied and are “…comfortable with Apple’s existing management team in addition to Steve.”

Jobs’s personality is notorious - mildly put, he's been accused of being aggressive and demanding. But he's also been called a creative genius, a perfectionist and an innovator. In many ways, his personality has defined the corporate culture at Apple. In the 2008 bestseller, Inside Steve’s Brain, author Leander Kahney notes that “Jobs's ceaseless pursuit of perfection has become its own process that is used throughout the company and will continue to be, no matter who is in charge”.

I hope Jobs beats the odds and sticks around for a long time. But it’s the true sign of a leader’s impact when his values and behaviours are so pervasive that they live on in an
organization – with or without the leader’s presence.

In my view? The management team and the board at Apple are "Above the Line" for putting together a short-term succession plan that's pulled them through a crisis none of them could have predicted.