ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- Bob Quinn heard it over and over again. He heard it from his old boss, Bill Belichick. He heard it from friends who had worked in New England and then left to try to run their own teams. It was a common message, and it's something that has stuck with him in his first seven months in Detroit.

"Don't try to be Bill."

"Bill" is Belichick, the New England Patriots head coach who also overseen all of the football operations for the most successful franchise in the NFL over the past 15 years. It was Quinn's pedigree under Belichick that helped land him the interview and eventually the job as general manager of the Detroit Lions.

A lot of what has immediately changed in Detroit is a direct reflection of it. It is what Quinn knows and is comfortable with. It's also what he learned under Belichick, and it has proven to be a success.

Don't expect Quinn to turn into Belichick Lite, though.

"I'm not going to try to be Bill, because I can't. People that have left before maybe tried to be him, tried to act like him even though their personality might not be exactly like his," Quinn told ESPN. "So you have to be your own man and bring your own way to communicate with people, communicate with the team, communicate with staff.

"So to try and be Bill Belichick is impossible. I knew when I was coming here that I couldn't do that. I needed to be my own person. Needed to make my own decisions."

So don't expect "Do Your Job" to find its way onto the walls in Allen Park, although Quinn has a small drawing of the saying in his Lions office.

Quinn did bring some ideas from "The Patriot Way" to help and revitalize a Detroit franchise that has one playoff win in the Super Bowl era. It starts with the way the Lions scout and how they grade players. Quinn and his top lieutenant, Kyle O'Brien, came up together under Belichick in New England.

They understand the philosophies Belichick has tried to instill and what worked in becoming a successful franchise. Since being hired, Quinn has been adamant about looking anywhere and everywhere in terms of player acquisition. Belichick's thoroughness carried over to Quinn with free-agency preparation and the importance of improving special teams. Some of the players he signed and traded for -- safety Tavon Wilson, linebacker Jon Bostic and running back Stevan Ridley -- are former Patriots he knew well.

The way he and his staff prepared for the draft was also different. Coaches and scouts traveled more than the prior regime, something Quinn called "the new norm" in April -- as was how the franchise evaluated prospects.

"The grading scale is very similar to what we had in New England," Quinn said. "I made a few tweaks here and there based on things that I've talked through here with my staff and how we're trying to construct this team, but the general scale and how you look at players is pretty much the same."

That isn't the only thing Quinn brought over from the Patriots. Soon after his hiring, Detroit revamped its weight room and hired Harold Nash, the former New England strength and conditioning coach. It made renovations to the team's locker room and upgraded other facilities.

In remaking the front-office staff, he hired people with whom he was familiar -- many with New England ties. That included O'Brien, the director of player personnel, scout Ron Miles and Kevin Anderson, the chief of staff and assistant to the general manager.

He also hired a nutritionist, Sarah Snyder, changing how and what the players eat. That included eliminating vending machines in the facility. The options available in the team's cafeteria somewhat mirror those of the Patriots.

"We have everything from fish to chicken to beef. It's all three different kinds of proteins you can have. You have a variety of vegetables," said Ridley, who played with the Patriots and New York Jets before signing with Detroit in the offseason. "It's not like you just come in and you have one choice. You don't have just beef today and mashed potatoes.

"You have to really balance your diet, and they give us really a great array of options to do what we need to do. Similar to what we had in New England and what we had in New York, also."

The changes Quinn has made have ranged from large -- the grading system and personnel -- to small. One of the things he implemented soon after his arrival was having the team's daily schedule on all of the televisions in the facility. That's not something the Lions did earlier.

"He's added a lot just in terms of direction, focus, energy just from a personnel standpoint, the whole gamut," Lions coach Jim Caldwell said. "So he has a wealth of experience and, he's one of those guys, too, that is very, very open.

"He's analytical. He does a great job, I think, of taking information and being able to adjust according to the situation that it best fits in trying to get us in some of the best programming that we need for our players. That's from nutrition to facilities to, you name it, all the way across the board. He's pretty in-depth in those areas."

One of the things Ridley noticed when he arrived in Detroit was a similar attitude and "the vibe around the whole locker room" in Detroit as he felt in New England. That's something that might not have been there under the previous regime.

There were things Quinn knew to leave behind, things either only Belichick could do or the Patriots could pull off.

Trying to mimic Belichick was one. Another was the actual staff. He knew he couldn't bring the people behind the scenes who helped build the Patriots, the people no one outside the organization knows about but that make everything run smoothly.

"I know a lot of those people that worked beneath Bill that might not get a lot of recognition are indispensable," Quinn said. "They know exactly how Bill wants things done, and they don't have to ask a lot of questions on a daily basis of how to run certain parts of the organization.

"So that's one thing that I've learned in seven months here -- that you can't duplicate having some of those core people, even if those jobs might not be out in the public. They are behind-the-scenes people that make that thing run very smoothly."

If anything, that's a model for Quinn. He knows he can't bring the actual men and women with him from New England, but he has been searching for his own variations of those people in Detroit. They, he believes, will help the organization run smoothly in the future.

He started with O'Brien and Anderson, two of the people who know him the best. He has also found others to help create an atmosphere similar to New England's as far as how easily everything operated.

"That's part of what I'm trying to do," Quinn said. "Those guys have been great for me here. I can sleep a lot sounder at night knowing that those guys are on my team because they can do a lot of different things for me around the building that I don't have time to do.

"So yes, that's helping me but there are other things that you just can't duplicate. You can't try to duplicate the Gillette Stadium offices into Detroit. It's just the way things there are so smooth, that you try to replicate, and it really takes a lot of time."

In doing so, Quinn is hoping to build a winner in Detroit -- something the franchise hasn't done consistently in the Super Bowl era.