A baseball pitch for building a better team
If you work in teams, like a great many of us do, you know what a big difference the right team can make. A great team just clicks. Other times, all the individual pieces might be fine, but somehow it just doesn't come together.
Can we learn how to build great teams...from baseball?
Baseball is known for its use of stats: RBIs and TOBs and BAs...(and for its love of acronyms.) Those statistics are a huge part of player evaluation and team design. The practice dates back to the 19th century, when a sportswriter named Henry Chadwick applied some statistical analysis to his baseball reporting. It didn't take long for people to go as wild for numbers about the game as they did for the game itself!
Fast forward to the 21st century, and analytics has changed the way we work, play, and learn. From racking up your own stats on your fitness tracker, to gathering learning data to help students who are struggling.
And that takes us back to baseball.
A few weeks ago on Spark, mathematician Cathy O'Neil spoke of her disillusionment with the way algorithms and big data are used to regulate more and more aspects of our lives. She calls them Weapons of Math Destruction. But mathematical modeling isn't always so toxic. Cathy outlined one field where a statistical approach is a hit, or even a home run -- baseball.
So baseball stats are transparent, but are they the best measure of success? Does running the numbers give a holistic picture of a person?
In baseball, like in the workplace, there are lots of theories on the best way to hire and promote individuals, and build a great team. In both those environments, using individual performance results as a metric is a simple, measurable way to evaluate people. Hard skills, like a player's batting average, or an employee's monthly sales. Which is a pretty good way to build a high-performance team. But is it the best way?
Right now in baseball, we're starting to see a shift. Using so-called "soft-skills" as a metric combined with those hard skills. All to paint an overall picture of a person, rather than just a bunch of numbers associated with a player.
The Chicago Cubs are known to screen players for things like character and personality. And maybe most importantly, response to failure. According to The New York Times, Theo Epstein, the President of Baseball Operations for the Cubs, believes in "Scouting the person more than the player." He has his scouts look for examples of how players have faced adversity on the field, and off.
This, ahem, out of left-field approach, has made The Chicago Cubs one of the best teams in Major League Baseball. Could it work elsewhere?
It's easy to see why hard skills would be valued when hiring, especially in a results-driven field. But placing value on soft skills like adaptability, dependability or leadership qualities may help companies build better teams too. No matter what kind of team you're on -- whether it's a in a corporate environment, or a volunteer committee, or even a World-Series-worthy baseball team, measuring the immeasurable can be a tough nut to crack.
But maybe looking beyond all the hard data and taking the time to see people as whole human beings is what it will take for any team to make it to the big leagues.
What do you think? If you were going to build a dream team, what qualities would you look for?