With Vikings owner and president Mark Wilf at his side

With Vikings owner and president Mark Wilf at his side, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah strolled up to a stage a sembled between the hashmarks of the Vikings' indoor practice facility in Eagan. Sporting a suit with a purple tie and a Vikings lapel pin, he looked out at a crowd that included local reporters as well as team executives and staffers. To his right, his mother and fiance looked on with pride.Le s than 24 hours earlier, Adofo-Mensah had signed a four-year contract to become the Vikings' next general manager. Now here he was, speaking publicly about his new job for the very first time.Adofo-Mensah's introductory pre s conference couldn't have gone much better. He was thoughtful, insightful, and charming as he described how he got to this point and what his vision for the future of the Vikings' franchise looks like. It was easy to see what drew the team's internal search committee led by the Wilfs, Andrew Miller, Rob Brzezinski, and several others to him in this proce s.Making a strong first impre sion is important, but it's also ultimately meaningle s. This was the easy part. Now the real work begins, as Adofo-Mensah embarks on the quest to become the first GM Breece Hall Jersey to bring a Super Bowl victory to this state that so desperately desires one. As soon as his media obligations ended, it was off to the races. He now faces the challenge of learning on the fly, getting acclimated with the entire organization, and diving into a coaching search and offseason that will define at least the first few years of his tenure.Scroll to ContinueLet's get to some key takeaways from Adofo-Mensah's pre ser. The coaching search is about to heat upOne of the first orders of busine s for the Vikings' new GM is to hire a head coach to join him in leading the next era of this football team. The search committee already interviewed eight candidates for the position but that was before Adofo-Mensah was hired. Now he becomes the leading force in the next stage of the proce s.Adofo-Mensah and the committee have already had initial conversations about candidates, and those got more specific and detailed right away on Thursday afternoon. It shouldn't be long before we see the team begin its next round of interviews with Adofo-Mensah at the forefront. Whether those are limited to candidates who have already met with the Vikings once, or if the list is Jarrod Wilson Jersey going to expand, is unclear. But there are major football decisions to make ahead of free agency, so one would imagine a hire could be coming by the end of next week."Were going to dive into this head coaching search and bring a partner for me and this organization thats going to lead us where we want to go," Adofo-Mensah said. "We know what we want to find we want leadership, we want somebody who is going to value the collective over the individual, we want somebody who has a vision, who can communicate, who has a solid football foundation, Quincy Enunwa Jersey who understands how football is interconnected and what that means. Thats been our focus in these last few days honing in on what we want. In terms of specific names, were going to meet after this and talk about that further."Three logical people to keep an eye on are the coaches on the Vikings' initial list who are still alive in the playoffs: 49ers DC DeMeco Ryans, Rams OC Kevin O'Connell, and Rams DC Raheem Morris. They'll all be available for second interviews after Sunday's NFC title game. Plenty of other names not currently on the list could come up as well. Adofo-Mensah declined to specify if he will be the one making the final decision on the team's next head coach, but did say that it won't be a solo effort."If you know me, whether I say I make the decision or not, its going to be a collaborative proce s," he said. "Im always about different viewpoints, different ideas. Not to be all 'algorithms are life,' but you find that the best decision-making engines combine information that isnt related to each other or even the thing youre trying to find. So what its really saying is you want information that covers the blind spots of the other things. Thats a core belief of mine. So any decision-making room Im in, Im always seeking the other opinion, trying to put everything together, then come out on the other end." He wants to learn from others and create an inclusive cultureOne of the primary things the Vikings were looking for in this proce s was someone who would help bring about a change in culture. Leadership, communication, and collaboration are the three words Wilf used over and over when describing what they wanted in the team's next GM and head coach. They want everyone to be in alignment and moving in the same direction, which was mi sing to some extent at the end of the Rick Spielman-Mike Zimmer era.They believe they've found the perfect guy for the job in Adofo-Mensah." Kwesi immediately stood out to us in his interviews because of his vision for long-term succe s and his comprehensive information gathering and his intentional decision-making proce ses," Wilf said. "Hes a tremendous leader who believes in connecting people, building consensus and having strong communication throughout the organization, all of the traits that we spoke about when we began looking for new leadership a few weeks ago."Beyond diving into conversations about the coaching search, the Shaq Lawson Jersey other task that was at the top of Adofo-Mensah's to-do list on Thursday afternoon was to start calling Vikings players and getting to know them and their viewpoints. If he's going to help shape the environment surrounding the team, he wants to know everything the players would like to see in that regard."I'm the new person in the culture, so I want to make sure I learn what it is to its full detail," Adofo-Mensah said. "That starts with having conversations with players. Right after you guys let me go, I'm going to start calling them and really learning about what makes them proud to be a Minnesota Viking. I'm going to talk with other members of the front office, this organization, and really learn this culture from them and ask them what they want it to be.""When you get to a culture, you first want to see what it is and see what people think and see where they want to grow. Again, when I get off with you guys, that's the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go talk to the leadership council and see what they have to say. I'm a consensus builder, I love information. So nothing they say is going to shock me or be anything negative. I want to take it into consideration. We have general thoughts on what we want in a head coach but hearing from players is not going to hurt that and I look forward to having that dialogue with them." He doesn't like the word 'analytics'Adofo-Mensah gets attached to the NFL buzzword 'analytics' New York Jets Jersey a lot because of . He has two degrees in economics, worked as a commodities trader and portfolio manager on Wall Street, and then spent seven y