Allen Park — It’s a leadership lesson Rod Wood says he learned early on in his business career. And as he sits in a conference room inside the Lions’ practice facility, the NFL team president admits it’s one he has shared a time or two with his management team.
It’s the story of Spanish conquistadors colonizing the Americas, coming ashore and then sending their boats back out to sea and sinking them, “just to let the people know, ‘We’re not going back,’ ” Wood says. And with a chuckle, he then draws a parallel to his own arrival in a strange land — officially hired two years ago this week by owner Martha Firestone Ford and her children — while talking about the “Same Old Lions” and the new identity he is trying to build for the franchise, in big ways and small.