Take My Picture

Marshall Faulk walked into the lobby and tried to get in our photo.

This was 2007. We are at the NFL Studios in Culver City, CA, every day. We’d just finished a death march at the NFL building NFL.com, Game Center, and a new media organization. Infra from the ground up. The senior partner had promised the no-shave club a swanky Beverly Hills barbershop trip if we hit the deadline. We did. Ten of us, beards intact, met in the lobby.

The rule for the consultants on that project was simple. Do not talk to the talent. Period. Terminable offense.

I ran back to my desk for the camera. Marshall walked in just as I returned.

“Hey man, would you mind taking a picture real quick?”

Hall of Fame running back. Super Bowl champion. He said sure, then walked past me, smiled with that starlike swagger, and got in the middle of the group. Ready to be the picture.

“Um, no. I need YOU TO TAKE the picture.”

He paused, looked at me like I’d asked him to do quantum physics on the fly, then worked it out.

“Oh. I guess so?”

I handed him the camera (a Canon PowerShot S400) and said something I still think about: “It’s not always you. Sometimes you’re the blocker, and the other guy runs down the field and scores.”

He snapped the picture, handed back the camera, walked off. All the swagger gone.

I almost got fired. The project launched. We got our barbershop trip.

What I took from that moment has aged better than the camera I was holding.

Leadership keeps trying to convince you that being seen is the same as being valuable. It’s not. The work scoring touchdowns happens because someone else made the block. The polish on the deliverable happens because someone else absorbed the chaos. The promotion someone got happens because someone built the runway behind them.

Take the picture. Be the blocker. Prop up the people around you and let them be the ones in the frame.

Offensive linemen make it to the Hall of Fame too.