The baseball movie Moneyball, based on Michael Lewiss book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, details the issues facing the Oakland A's - a major league baseball team that has a low budget and at the same time needs to field a championship level team in order to remain competitive and profitable.
It's a situation that many businesses in every single category face today: how do you compete against those companies that have larger budgets allocated for advertising and for recruiting the best talent?
Moneyball is also about challenging the status quo by introducing innovative systems aimed at developing a winning and profitable infrastructure when the talent market is thin and there's an attraction to work for the "big boys." When this occurs, the questions arise:
- Where do you recruit new staff?
- How do you successfully compete in the talent market against bigger companies?
- How do you ensure you're getting the best return from those who are working for you?
While these questions are challenging, the answers just aren't clear cut, as many companies attempt to build and maintain a championship level team of people.
Simply, how do you measure specific talent performances that are tied to profitability?
Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland A's realized that to find good people, he had to turn the old system of recruiting upside down and look for "hidden gems."
Beane recognized that by hiring players that had a higher percentage of getting on base, rather than hiring the multi-million dollar home-run sluggers, he could field a highly competitive team.
How does this apply to you? While we're not advocating you become as statistically oriented as noted in Moneyball, maybe there's something to this?
If you want to be more profitable, what performance statistics should you be tracking? Do you know for example, which people in your company attribute most to growth?
Simply, how do you measure specific talent performances that are tied to profitability?
Moneyball is a reminder that there is a way to overcome the odds and field a championship level team that can compete with the best.
Moneyball is a lesson to turn things upside-down and inside-out and analyze the performance of your complete team.
And finally, Moneyball is a lesson that implores us to not settle with tradition, but to seek out new ways to win ... and find those "hidden gems."
