Money Can't Buy You Love
Although sports metaphors are routinely overused in business, sports do offer lessons in leadership, strategy, talent development, and the how-tos of motivation for organizations of every kind.
This week offered an excellent example, once again from The Athletic, the sports section of The New York Times. In a follow up to their survey which I wrote about last January guaging which major league teams across all sports were most respected by their peers, The Athletic last week polled 40 baseball executives and senior decision-makers about which front offices they most admired.
Respondents were asked to rank their top five choices, excluding their own teams, by allocating specific numbers of points to their top three. They were then interviewed, but quoted anonymously so they could speak freely.
Unsurprisingly, the 2024 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers came in first.
The Dodgers are famously rich, thanks to long-term broadcasting contracts in the lucrative LA market, high stadium attendance, and big merchandising deals. Yet despite the rap that the Dodgers risk becoming like the “Evil Empire” Yankees of the early 2000s— whose wealth translated into a dynastic talent advantage— those polled cited not money but the quality of the Dodgers’ front office decision- making as the chief reason for their success. (Also please note: the Yankees are still richer than the Dodgers, and have had the highest payroll every year except 2022, when the Houston Astros, who at the time had the 18th highest, won the World Series.)
What stood out about the Dodgers for those interviewed was what The Athletic called “the true foundation of their success: an ever-flowing pipeline of homegrown talent, and the many options for team-building that come with that.” As one executive noted, “They’re not just competing for the highest-end major league talent, they also have a healthy farm system. That’s the deadliest combo.”
In other words, the Dodgers don’t just pay for talent, they develop it.
One lesson for companies is that talent development is not an option, not something that can be discarded when an organization has the resources to outbid competitors or when the economy slows, as is happening now. Internal development is key to building a consistently winning culture, as opposed to scoring random wins on the basis of high-priced hires.
This lesson was borne out among the teams that ranked second, third, and fourth in the survey: the Tampa Bay Rays, the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Cleveland Guardians. All three teams are among the least wealthy in the major leagues, ranking in the bottom 6 out of 30 when it comes to payroll.
Yet the Rays (second poorest in the league) came in second in the Athletic’s poll of most admired teams. Competitors noted their highly intentional culture, decisiveness about talent acquisition and development, and the sensitivity with which they apply insights gained from the extensive research data that has long distinguished the team. Said one general manager, “They are able to make objective, data-driven decisions, but in a way that understands it’s human beings on the field doing the work.”
The Rays’ approach underlines the need for organizations to retain humanity in an era when AI provides an all-too tempting means for analyzing performance and making hiring decisions. Certainly, it can create efficiencies and identify hard-to discern patterns, but this capability must be balanced with the kind of intuitive insights that only human experience can provide.
The third-place Brewers were respected for figuring out how to always do more with less. One GM noted that “the big spenders keep poaching their people, yet Milwaukee keeps right on winning.” When their GM left for the Mets in 2022, and their manager went to the Cubs in 2023, the team owner promoted assistants from within. When talented players leave or are traded because they’ve become too costly for a small market, the team adapts its on-field style to meet the moment, emphasizing power hitting one season and athleticism the next. “They don’t miss a beat because the organization’s culture carries itself,” said one admirer.
Culture, consistency, humanity, and decision-making smarts: these count for more than money in the MLB, when it comes to managing and leading. Certainly, money has brought the Dodgers love, along with winning titles. But it has not done the job alone.
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