Every Business Has a Moneyball Moment

I watched Moneyball again the other night.

Every time I do, I end up thinking the same thing...

This movie really has very little to do with baseball.

The movie wasn't about spreadsheets. It was about judgment. Billy Beane figured out what moved the needle and had the conviction to build a team around it.

I've worked for, and with, companies with robust KPIs, dashboards everywhere, reports generated every Monday morning, and meetings filled with charts. 

I have often asked a pretty straightforward question...

"What's the one thing holding this business back?"

Responses varied, reference to market conditions and opportunities, lack of capital, or team bandwidth, costs, labor, vendor quality or service issues, sometimes silence.

I think we've become really good at measuring things... and not nearly as good at deciding what matters.

To me, that seems to be the lesson from Moneyball.

Billy Beane challenged conventional thinking. He questioned assumptions that everyone else accepted as fact. He ignored the noise and focused on what actually produced results.

Business is similar. Every company has things they've done for years because "that's the way we've always done it." Sometimes that's the problem.

The best leaders I've been fortunate enough to work with aren't driven by collecting more information.

They're driven by asking better questions.

What really drives profitability?

What's slowing us down?

Is there a better way?

If we could only fix one thing this quarter, what would it be?

Those are the conversations that change thinking, and change the business, rather than another metric, report, or dashboard.

One last thought...

Business doesn't improve because we have access to and collect more information.

Business improves when leaders identify what matters, make good decisions, and stay disciplined enough to execute them.

That's a lesson worth remembering.