Success = Business & Baseball

Baseball season has begun. And for my hometown team, it’s been a great start to the season so far! Are you a baseball fan too? It’s America’s pastime after all—what’s not to love!

And, there is another favorite pastime in our country: making money! That’s what I love to do! Come to think of it, baseball and business have a lot in common. What stands out most? Both require great management and leadership in order to achieve true success. This goes for both business and baseball!

Sit down and watch a ball game sometime. Better yet, read the analysis of the game the following day. The actions of the team’s leadership might just teach you a thing or two about improving your business!

Leadership & Management – analyze & adjust

Good quality leadership is critical to the success of your business, just like it is in baseball.

What was the first thing the Boston Red Sox did last year, at the end of baseball season, after they completed their most dismal season in decades: Fire their manager! What would you do if your business was perpetually underperforming?

During the baseball season, when a team struggles to win games, the manager must figure out what is going wrong. Is it the pitching or hitting? If the team can’t score enough runs to win ballgames, then it’s probably the hitting, and something needs to change. This is where quality leadership comes in. The manager conducts some analysis and makes well thought out decisions and changes in order to try to improve his team.

Similarly in business, a good leader should regularly evaluate his business’ progress. Then a good leader would adjust his business plan according to observed problems or successes.

In business, it is important that we regularly evaluate our goals and achievements. When we miss our benchmarks, we readjust our game plan, just like in baseball.

One of the more famous managers of Major League Baseball, Earl Weaver, once noted that though it is the ball players who win or lose the games, it always remains the manager’s job to do everything possible to set up his team to win.
And, it’s difficult for the team—baseball or business— to win without adequate resources, oversight and leadership.

Leadership & Management – analyze & tailor

There is one major difference between business and baseball. In baseball, players are traded regularly. They are treated like replaceable assets. I see business employees differently. In business, employees are team members and they are integral to your business. They are not commodities, but rather critical components who come together to form the thriving mechanisms that make for a successful business.

Just like in baseball, each staff or team member has specific skills and strengths that help your business succeed. Rather than viewing employees as disposable and/or replaceable, your business could do better by thinking about tailoring responsibilities and tasks to the talents of the individuals.

As a baseball manager might juggle his lineup, a business manager, so too could adjust his plans to better utilize his employees and maximize their aptitude and abilities.

Leadership & Management – analyze & decide

Good managers don’t just let decisions and/or changes happen. Rather, good leaders make change and make decisions—constantly.

Sometimes it is hard to make decisions. Sometimes those decisions backfire or fail. Think about the baseball manager who walks out to the mound to talk to his pitcher. His pitcher has been struggling. The bases are loaded. The manager has got a big decision to make—let his pitcher work out of this jam or bring in some relief. If you watch baseball, I’m sure you’ve seen this many times. Sometimes the relief pitcher who comes in can’t get the job done and the other team scores. Sometimes he ends the inning with no damage done. Whatever the outcome—it took good, quality management to analyze and decide

Business managers and leaders, just like baseball managers might make literally hundreds of decisions each day.

Good leaders don’t wait for the perfect solution before making their decisions. Rather, they analyze and decide proactively.

Leadership & Management – analyze & plan

Another commonality between business and baseball is the ever existing need to plan for the future of the organization.

In baseball—whether it be planning for wins later in the season by not over pitching a top prospect, or effectively grooming the farm team so they are able to help win ball games in future seasons, planning for the here and now as well as the future is imperative to a baseball team’s success.

This translates straight to business. A strong leader must be able to plan and lead for today’s successes while simultaneously planning for his organization’s future successes.

The sport of baseball is filled with great lessons for business managers, and vice versa. Strong, quality leadership is key to success. And one of the main lessons for managers to learn from baseball about business is that planning, deciding and adjusting are their solutions for achieving success.

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