In business and marketing, many of us are probably familiar with the story “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game”. However, the majority of us probably see it from an data analytics and statistics point of view. In other words, the practice of looking into data and statistics to drive a team of misfits to win championships.
In fact, there is a lot more to Moneyball than crunch data; it’s about successful leadership and team management practice.
When Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane is faced with a challenge after the Yankees bought three of his team star players, Beane took to sabermetrics. In doing so, he turned the tables. His hiring method was questions by many, who described this team as “an island of misfit toys.”
Billy Beane wasn’t fazed and proved, not only to the world of sport, but business and leadership that: “the sum is greater than its parts” (ego sum qui sum – the latin phrase).
Baseball is a team sport but one where the individual players are given individual values more than the team itself. And this is because of the nature of the game. If you’re batting, it’s really up to you, to make it to first base. This is unlike basketball or football where it’s a matter of trying to get in the open for your teammates to pass the ball. In baseball, the number of walks is associated with the value of the player.
Sabermetrics shows that a player’s value isn’t always about how he/she performs alone. But the performance metrics of each player in combination, defines the value of the team and probability of winning. Hence, the method brought new meaning to baseball, and a new balance between overpaid and underpaid baseball players.
In digital marketing, we call this attribution modeling. Focusing on a single player’s performance is like focusing only on ‘last-click’. More importantly, it’s not just about the data, but Billy Beane’s leadership style and fair-view.
Baseball isn’t about the most-valuable player (MVP), but the most valuable team. This is ideally what all businesses look for in leaders: the ability to build a winning team. And a winning team doesn’t always have to be made up of the best players, but made up of players that best complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Billy Beane’s moneyball and sabermetrics only further emphasis the importance of team synergy to win. And this applies to any team, from sports, study, research, and of course digital marketing.