Love the movie Moneyball. It is a great example of what numbers can do to answer those tough questions you have about your operations. How you can build a team around statistics rather than emotional decisions is paramount in it’s simplicity.
However my love for numbers speaking louder than words came before my love of baseball but it is so well displayed in this movie and is so good.
What’s the problem?
This post is a continuation to my TABLE POUNDERS post last week and how certain inputs can derail your ultimate goal. One of my favorite moments in this movie is when Billy Beane is sitting around the table with his scouts (see pic above and the link “What’s the problem?”) talking about potential players having the right attributes like hair on their ass, strong jawbones, cracks of bats, eye candy tests, and ugly girlfriends. His response is “You guys are just talking. La la la la. Like it’s business as usual.” No substance. No real value to their input. Nothing to back up their notions. And I say ‘notions’ as a compliment. It’s really a bunch of B.S.
There’s another great line in the movie when the character Billy Beane (when he has proven to the baseball community that his methods are substantial after winning 20 games in a row with a fraction of the salary of the big boys in MLB) says to the owner of the Boston Red Sox trying to recruit him, I’m here because “I think science might offer an answer to the curse of the Bambino.”
John Henry, the owner of the BoSox, replies “I know you’re taking it on the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody. Always. ‘This‘ is threatening not just the way of doing business but in their minds it is threatening the game. But really what it is threatening is their livelihoods. It’s threatening their jobs. It’s threatening the way that they do things. And everytime that happens whether it is government, or way of doing business, or whatever it is, “the people” that are holding the reigns, they have their hands on the switch, they go batshit crazy! I mean anybody that is not tearing their team down right now and rebuilding it using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’ll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.”
The best part is that he was right. Within 2 years of that incredible 2001 season that the Oakland A’s had displayed, the BoSox won the World Series after an 86 year drought! If that new way of thinking can make the BoSox become World Series Champions, imagine what it can do for you…
As much as I would like to think that I am Brad Pitt playing Billy Beane, I am more the Jonah Hill in the story. However, like Jonah’s character I am looking for that Billy Beane. Do you want to “threaten how they do things”, do you want to make a difference? If you are my Billy Beane then you are the person I want to talk to. If not, then your the dinosaur. It is that simple.
What MOSIMTEC provides to our clients, ‘this’ new way of doing business, is coming. So you can either become a part of the change or become extinct like the dinos.