Draft Day – 2014 Movie

What to learn from it?

Fist of all, the movie seems like a race against time, following for 24 hours the character named
Sonny, General Manager of the Cleveland Browns Football team. We are in Draft Day, the moment
Sonny need to build up a whole new team, and we will follow him through his decisions.

The movie depicts sports as the only hope in Cleveland, a true pride. Sonny has the burden to build
the best team for his past and the future, the Browns need to win next season.

We will here go through the movie in the framework of decision making: Diagnosis, Decision,
Command.

Diagnosis is about setting up the field, collect information, determine what is to be done. Here, as
we described before, the pression is huge over Sonny, he needs to make a lot of calls, meet his
stakeholders, make the right deals.

We will see here the conflicts that occur often when big decisions need to be done, and when the
managers seem to take actions on his own, without advising his stakeholders, that is what will occur
a lot through the movie, first with the coach of the team. Sonny made the first deal without advising
anyone, with a large price in return, we will come to that in the end again, and understand why that
was.

Decisions are rough and undisputable on Sonny’s side, which is not welcome, as we already said. He
has a plan, but he does not want to talk about it too soon, which leads to those conflicts and overall
incomprehension by everyone. Sonny more than once put everyone at their place, as he said he
wants everyone to let him “do his job”, or saying to the coach already mentioned before “I put
together the team you coach” no discussion.

The deal is made. He needs a quarterback and will get it if he gives next first round pick for three
years, the price is huge.

The whole point of the movie is whether to choose between a lower-ranked line-backer with a
“questionable” past or a famous quarterback “with a questionable future” he made the deal for.

All decisions are made hours before Draft, the time constraint is stressful already, but Sonny needs
to deal with a lot of influence in his environment in addition: family, city, stakeholders. He will follow
his “guts”, sending the first ticket without the team’s consent.
Command

It turns out that even with the “guts” aspects and all backlash, criticism over Sonny’s decision, all
was planned as we mentioned. His first pick was chosen since the beginning, and he chooses the
future. For him fame but with a questionable future was no pick, he surprised everyone, but with
that decision, he was able to make pression over his first deal to “cancel” it, the situation turns out
completely. And in the end, the Cleveland Browns got everything they needed.

Conclusion

Through this scenario, we saw how much each side, each contact to a manager can influence his
decisions, but also his own mind, personality and feelings. We can understand from that maybe that
for difficult decisions, with enough pression it is better to preserve ourselves and others by not
consulting everyone, sometimes decisions need to be endorsed by a single manager. Also, time is
the main constraint and waiting for everyone to give their point, knowing a lot of them will not agree
anyway is a waste.

I would nuance that saying it is a movie, its exaggerated and romanced, but I like the idea of going
straight to the point, race against time, and sometimes need to follow our “guts” and feelings, even
though we know they could be bias in other situations and we should be careful about it.