When Intangibles Trump Data, Bad Things Can Happen

Red Sox Nation (a virtual entity composed of the many thousands of fans who take the seasonal exploits of the Boston Red Sox baseball team to heart), was stunned last week after the team experienced the most storied collapse in the month of September in baseball history, another dubious distinction for the historic Boston home team.  What caused the wheels to fall off an almost certain playoff berth?  Team management will no doubt perform an exhaustive and private root cause analysis (RCA) of the collapse, but publicly, someone had to take the fall.  That someone was the Nation’s beloved manager, Terry Francona, the man who brought two world championships to a generation of fans who no longer had to "wait until next year."

 

In all honesty, this author is only a casual fan of the game and the home team in particular, but what Mr. Francona said in his press conference last Friday night spoke volumes about the culture and leadership intangibles necessary for a sports team or a manufacturing enterprise to succeed.  Like it or not, these intangibles separate world-class manufacturers from the competition.  

 

Baseball purists grimace at the approach to the game described in Michael Lewis' 2003 book, "Moneyball:  The Art of Winning an Unfair Game."  The book provides an accounting of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane's use of empirical data analysis to select baseball players.  At the beginning of this season, the Red Sox looked so good on paper that some baseball analysts predicted the team would win 100 games and picked the Sox as a "lock" to represent the American League in the World Series. 

 

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