Tackling Business Fallacies
Now that that one game is over - the Super something or other - it's time to start using analogy from THE REAL American sport. What baseball has created better than any other sport is debate. People spend countless hours debating the merits of Hall of Fame candidates, MVP possibles, and All-Star Selectees. But the debate that is most intriguing is between traditionalists and intellectuals. We'll call it the battle of "Scouts vs Statheads." The Statheads have spent years trying to debunk old myths about how to achieve victory (the sac bunt, intangibles, the need for a speedy lead-off hitter), myths that the Scouts (generally former ballplayers and people on the inside of baseball) have long held as absolute truth. I firmly believe that the new guard of baseball thinkers has enhanced the quality of competition. They've made the game better by exploiting inefficiencies, introducing new ideas, and improving the metrics by which players are measured. These metrics have helped put better players are on the field, and once they are on the field, they are, more and more, being managed in efficient and productive ways.
The old guard vs the new wave. Challenging assumptions. Debunking myths. These are all things that have been especially prevalent in the last ten or so years of business. It's great for business, it's essential for progress. It's why people like Phil Rosenweig are so damn important. If people like Phil weren't out there uncovering business delusions and the flawed logic behind them, business might plod along, but would never progress. We should thank him for writing The Halo Effect.
This book focuses primarily on 9 popular business delusions. The most prominent one is "The Halo Effect." When a company has good sales and profits, people assume that the company must be executing great strategy, led by a grand leader, with perfect employees, and an immaculate corporate culture. This is like saying a baseball team that wins must be doing everything right. Sometimes, teams win in spite of the decisions a manager makes. And the opposite is also true. When companies go through bad stretches, people think it's simply bad leadership, crummy employees, and faulty strategy. When the White Sox win, Ozzie Guillen is brilliant and revolutionary. When they lose, he's an obnoxious firecracker blowing up his team's chances for victory. In reality, little has changed (in biz and for the White Sox), but company (or team) performance "creates a Halo that shapes the way we perceive strategy, leadership, people, culture, and more."
There are 8 other delusions that we all must become aware of. If we keep assuming what the old guard tells us...wait, let me explain the old guard a little. The old guard consist of business leaders, publications, authors (even well-respected and bestselling authors), and academics. There a lot of different groups of people that make up "the old guard," but the one thing they have in common is that they all perpetuate certain delusions about what makes businesses succeed. So again, if we keep letting the old guard harp on these delusions, we will not progress. It's that simple.
The business world can, and has, learned a lot from the way new baseball thinkers have attacked old baseball tactics and strategies. Let's hope that more people like Rosenweig continue standing up to conventional business thought the same way these folks and these people consistently try to uncover what works, and what doesn't, when trying to assess ballplayers and win games.
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