Failure™ Magazine

Pay For Performance, Stupid

What suits can learn from the summer’s hottest baseball book, “Moneyball.”

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Business, Sports

To date, at least one other major league club has taken Beane’s against-the-grain approach to heart. In November of 2002, the Boston Red Sox hired Theo Epstein, 28, as senior vice-president and general manager, making Epstein the youngest GM in baseball history. Not surprisingly, the Red Sox have taken considerable flak for appointing such a young man to such a critical position, the criticism exacerbated by the organization’s longstanding reputation for making boneheaded baseball decisions. While the jury is still out on the hiring of Epstein, the Red Sox should be applauded for making such a bold move. Anyway, it’s not like the team’s former front office executives were getting the job done before he arrived; the Red Sox haven’t won a World Series title since 1918. In 1920 then-owner Harry Frazee sold the now-legendary Babe Ruth (“The Bambino”) to the archrival New York Yankees and the fortunes of the two franchises turned. Since then, the Bronx Bombers have won 26 world championships while the Red Sox have been plagued by bad management and bad luck, a condition that some now refer to as “The Curse of the Bambino.”

If you want to know why your favorite baseball team is underachieving, it’s most likely because the front office is unable to evaluate talent. Of course, that’s one of the great shortcomings of the vast majority of businesspeople. Just as baseball scouts tend to become enamored with isolated measuring sticks like speed, arm strength and physical appearance, ordinary employers narrow-mindedly scan résumés for acronyms like MBA and count years of “relevant experience.” But just because a prospect can run like a deer and looks like he was born to wear a baseball uniform (or just because a man or woman has studied marketing principles and looks sharp in a business suit) doesn’t ensure success when the game is on. That’s why high first-round draft choices and MBA’s from prestigious institutions of higher learning often end up being an employer’s worst nightmare—expensive and functionally useless.

In much the same way the A’s, and even the Red Sox, have begun challenging traditional baseball thinking, the employers of the world might want to consider alternatives to the “résumé, degree and years of experience” system. After all, a degree and experience says little about a candidate’s past performance. What an employer really needs to know about is talent, motivation, work ethic, work style and how a candidate’s personality fits into their organization. Perhaps applicants should simply assess their own abilities the same way draftniks evaluate potential professional athletes, providing “Strengths,” “Weaknesses,” and “Achievements,” plus a “Summary” that focuses on potential for future success on the job. More traditional measurements like education and experience could always be considered later. In this system, the most talented, passionate and compatible candidates would be rewarded with interviews, instead of those who might offer nothing more than the path of least resistance.

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