Befitting the time of year, I’m reading a book about baseball.
I don’t actually like baseball. I find it boring, and the few times I allowed myself to be talked into going to a game I spent most of my time reading.
However, I'm utterly taken with Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Published in 2003, Moneyball is about the Oakland Athletics and general manager Billy Beane. Despite a financial disadvantage compared to other major league teams, Beane built a competitive edge by using an objective statistical analysis called sabermetrics to scoop up cheaper ballplayers whose talents were undervalued or completely overlooked by traditional scouts.
Although I understand only one sentence in four and I still have no desire to actually watch a baseball game, Moneyball is compelling to me. Why? Because Michael Lewis is an excellent nonfiction writer, and that means he’s a good teacher.
You can’t overestimate the power of a good teacher or trainer. A learning and development course may have a lot to offer in terms of material, but if the subject matter experts who present it don’t have the skills to engage their audience, what's the point?
We’ve all been to seminars where it was a struggle to stay awake, much less to stay completely engaged. How can we expect our coworkers and employees to embrace the theory and practicality behind training courses if we don’t also provide them with well-trained trainers? A good leader makes sure the right person is stepping up to bat.
What does your batting lineup look like?
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1 comments:
I happen to love baseball (got hooked on it as a kid going to games with my family) and I read the book when it first came out. The ideas in it were pretty revolutionary to the way baseball was then being looked at. Several teams over the years, besides the Oakland A's, have adopted the statistics-minded approach to managing baseball. For some it's been successful; for others, not so much.
What I liked about the book and the concept was the ability of a team to take a leap, to take a risk and go against the grain because they thought something new might work. It is often so hard to do that in the corporate world when everyone has certain expectations (i.e. stock/shareholders). If you fail, you're out! So many people just stay the course, even when what they're doing isn't working because the alternative, should they fail, would be disastrous. Of course, if they don't fail, the could become really successful! That's the rub, isn't it?
I myself am not a huge risk taker, at least not without lots of calculation, but I appreciate those who are. The world certainly needs them or we'd all be stuck in the dark ages!
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