Sports Authority

Great managers of sports teams seem to be very good at evaluating the subjective factors involved in picking the right person for the right job. They see not only the objective statistics that the player racks up, but also the subjective way that the individual will fit into the organization. That combination of evaluation skills is where the real synergistic benefits to the organization develop. For example, not too long ago, I heard Walt Jockety, general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, talking to a group about baseball player Jim Edmonds. Jockety had traded a couple of decent but average players in order to get Edmonds. Everyone knew Edmonds could hit the ball, but he was underperforming in his current organization because the players and management of that organization did not mesh well with Edmonds's personality. The statistics alone would never have suggested that Edmonds could become an anchor player on a baseball team. However, Jockety thought Edmonds would do better under a low-key manager like Tony LaRussa in a city with fans who are not too hard on the players, like St. Louis. Sure enough, within weeks of his arrival in St. Louis, Edmonds was racking up numbers—in terms of both batting average and home runs—that far exceeded anything he had done for years at his old organization. And these numbers continued to be good years into the future.

This is just one example from my own hometown. Stories like this abound in the sports world among managers from Joe Torre of the New York Yankees to Scotty Bowman of the Detroit Redwings. They see more than the objective skills of a potential player. They understand which players will fit well into their organizations. That is what makes them invincible.