Baseball And Business: The Motivation of "New"
Welcome to my newsletter. I hope to share with you insights and ideas from myself and the team at CEO.works in this space. In this part of my conversation with Tracy Smith, we candidly discuss the state of the ASU Baseball program when he joined as Head Coach; the pressure of helming a program with a 58-year legacy; and, the disruption that was necessary to bend the curve and land once again in the conversation for the National Championship. Coaching a PAC 12 Conference team successfully, year after year, is not very different from leading a multi-million dollar business to sustained profitability, as you may have discerned from my chats with Tracy.
The following is an excerpt from our whitepaper titled "In the Field: Talent to Value Wins in Baseball.":
CONNECTING TALENT TO VALUE
At the beginning of 2018, ASU Baseball still had a great brand. But it lacked a real ambition.
For two seasons in a row, the Sun Devils had not lived up to their tradition of excellence. The team had struggled in games and lost. For the first time in the school’s history, the MLB had not drafted a single Arizona State player. No one thought the team was performing at an acceptable level. Everyone was talking about the past and how great things used to be: no one talked about the future and how great the Sun Devils were going to be tomorrow.
It was around this time that Tim Fitzpatrick, then director of athletics at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, introduced me to Sandy Ogg, who also shared our love of baseball. In our dialogues, Sandy related to me as a “CEO” and trusted me with some of the invaluable leadership insights he had gathered over his 30-plus years as a global leader and executive advisor. In particular, the distinctions he shared from the Talent to Value process he was developing piqued my curiosity and, eventually, became the framework upon which I built a plan to get the Sun Devils back into the conversation for the National Championship.
Putting that plan down on paper reinforced my belief that “connecting talent to value” was the route we needed to take to become champs once again. One of the first insights Sandy shared with me about CEOs and value creation really brought this home for me.
He indicated that the CEO of a business is responsible for defining an ambitious future that honors the history of their organization. That aspirational vision articulates what everyone will aim for, when they will get there, and how. That vision is what the CEO must align the business’s entire ecosystem of internal and external stakeholder groups around.
Over the course of his career, Sandy had observed countless CEOs in very challenging situations. Some would think big and start big, trying to get everyone moving quickly on many things all at once. Consequently, they created so much confusion and chaos that everything would move slowly. Almost without exception, these “think big, start big” CEOs would fail and end up getting fired.
Winning CEOs, on the other hand, did two things differently. They would think bigger in terms of creating and capturing value to change the trajectory of the business. But they would start smaller. They would identify a few vital initiatives to focus everything on in year one, another vital few in year two, and another vital few in year three.
Then they would rapidly assemble enough of the right talent and resources at these hotspots, precisely where value delivery mattered most. In this way, they didn’t overwhelm the people in their organization or its ecosystem of stakeholders. The most important things could gain real momentum and move faster. And if, once things got moving, the value curve didn’t bend in the direction or at the speed they wanted, they would tweak things along the way. These “think bigger, start smaller” CEOs ended up succeeding where the others had failed.
At this point, I could have chosen to simply fall back on old success formulas from my past and say, “Hey, this is the way head coaches have always done it; this is the way we’ll do it again.” But to me, that’s a very dangerous statement in business and life. It doesn’t show any interest in evolution or growth. People in almost any organization will tend to resist change. If our baseball program were to succeed, I would have to evolve my own thinking and leadership. Adopting a “think bigger, start smaller, move faster” mindset made perfect sense.
You can think big, start big, move slowly, and get fired.
Or you can think bigger, start smaller, and move faster.
To read the complete whitepaper, download it here: "In the Field: Talent to Value Wins in Baseball."
I hope you are enjoying this conversation with my friend Tracy Smith. Be on the lookout for our next video in two weeks.
Executive Vice President at The Center for Leadership Studies
3 年God help me I love this stuff...and think it is so frighteningly relevant! I work for a company which has been around for 50 years...which on the surface is is a really good thing...but it is also a challenge of significance because nobody cares (understandably) what happened 50 years ago. Not unlike ASU baseball...we were "relevant then"...we need to focus on being "relevant now"! Excellent perspective!
Retired IBM General Manager US Financial Services Sector | Mainframe Modernization & Cloud Migration Advisor | AI | Board Advisor & Investor
3 年I've found the most successful CEOs and Coaches talk about "the reality of today's performance and the promises of tomorrow". It has to be a balanced discussion. Where the team is falling short has to be called out and quantified. In addition, realistic aspirations for growth have to be shared so the team understands the objectives and why & how implementing the actions called out will lead to the desired RESULTS. CEOs and Coaches should focus on the "top three" actions to achieve the promises of tomorrow. Most people are unable to focus on more than three things. "The Power of Three" is a well understood management discipline and when implemented helps improve performances.