I’m not a huge baseball fan, but I love baseball movies.

“The problem we're trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams — then there's 50 feet of crap. And then there's us. It's an unfair game.” - Billy Beane

Oakland's Big Problem

Oakland's manager Billy Beane must adapt to compete with rich rivals.

• True story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics season

• Innovative strategy to win more based on statistics

• Great example of challenging conventional wisdom

• Most importantly, illustrates the value of hard data.

2002 Annual Spending

2002 Dollars per Win

New York Yankees - $114,457,768

Oakland Athletics - $39,722,689

New York Yankees - $1.4 million

Oakland Athletics - $230,000

Stats aren't just for nerds.

"Best" practices don't exist.

...but better ones do.

Economist Peter Brand has a plan — focus on what matters most.

• Data does not speak for itself.

• “The data speak only through an interpreter that converts the collection of digits into analog lessons — that decodes the otherwise inscrutable numbers and provides a persuasive explanation.” (Behn, 2003)

• In Moneyball, these interpreters are Billy Beane and Peter Brand.

Moneyball is

Performance

Management

• Brand values players almost entirely on one key metric — the number of times players get to first base, even with a walk.

• The duo uses this these statistics to recruit the 2002 team, a motley crew described as "an island of misfit toys."

The hyper-detailed nature of baseball statistics is a dataset readymade for performance management.

To ratchet up performance a notch or two, leaders often do not even require a “best practice” — all they need is a better practice.

Behn (2006) calls this "that one good idea."

At its core, leadership is about coping with change.

Effective leadership is, by definition, transformational.

"There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening. And this leads people who run Major League Baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams. People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players. Your goal shouldn't be to buy players. Your goal should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. Nothing else matters." -Peter Brand

"Doing what was done yesterday, or doing it 5% better, is no longer a formula for success. Major changes are necessary to survive and compete effectively” (Kotter, 1990).

Moneyball: Data Driven Leadership

Beane has the vision to realize that in order to be competitive, Oaklands needs a radically different approach to baseball. His motto is “adapt or die.”

So how

does it

all end?

Logan Seacrest • 12.5.2016 • UNO PA8100

At first, Beane is terrible at communicating his vision.

Expect pushback.

The strategy of short term wins

Beane eventually adjusts his leadership style...

• Without short-term wins, too many people give up or actively join the ranks of those people who have been resisting change. (Kotter, 1995)

• Don't try to solve problems by establishing one cosmic performance target.

• In baseball terms, focus on getting to base instead.

• Organizations with a strong sense of tradition, find it difficult to innovate and adapt to change.

• The Oakland talent scouts, are too steeped in tradition that devotion to doing something the “correct” way displaces devotion to results.

• To counteract this kind of institutional inertia, the new vision must be clear and easy to communicate.

This is a problem, because according to Kotter, “if you can’t communicate the vision to someone in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are not done.” (Kotter 1995)

...and the A's win 20 games in a row.