One Management Takeaway from Baseball

Shawnee Love   •  
November 4, 2015

I have learned a lot about team building and team effectiveness from watching and playing team sports.  While watching baseball, I am often struck (pun intended) by the many decisions players don’t have to make.  Certainly there are opportunities to make key play, but many of the basic decisions are already made for players.

For example, everyone knows to throw to First if there is no one on base and the batter hits.  No one has to think. The play is to First.  baseball bases

If there is a runner on 3rd, and the batter hits, the play is to Home Plate.  If you can’t get the runner out at Home, then try to pin the batter to a base.  These are the baseball version of “If Then Decision Trees” and they are long established to the point of being almost written in stone. They teach them at Little League Level and by the time you play in the Big Leagues, it feels like common sense.  The decision making process behind these plays has almost been erased.  As a player, you don’t need to think, you just throw automatically.  But watch any Little League game where these decisions aren’t “common sense” yet, and you will see how working through the decision making process can affect the game.

In work environments, those established decisions can be equally beneficial. Knowing that the “First to Arrive” turns on machines and makes coffee allows everyone else to get started working once they arrive.  Agreeing that when the emergency phone rings, the response order is “Joe Techie” and if he doesn’t answer on the 3rd ring, the call transfers to “Jane Techie” means everyone else in the team sleeps well at night.  No one wonders who will answer and the client gets served.  Similarly, laying out a break schedule means staff won’t all bend over backwards trying to let other people take their breaks first and waste an extra 15 minutes debating who should go first.

These established patterns give your people more time and energy to deal with the bigger questions and challenges of their day.   But the preset decisions only work if:

  1. You tell your staff about them. The best time to tell staff is during the Orientation Process and certainly anytime you make changes.  It doesn’t hurt to remind every now and then as well.
  2. You are able to flex if the situation requires it.  In baseball, there are extra branches on the decision tree if there are more runners on base.  Similarly, the more complex situations at work require more branches as well. And, you will want to ensure your staff understand the reasoning behind the rule of thumb you have created. Teach the decision but also explain that the intention and reasons behind it.  Then, when the rule stops being efficient and effective your staff will know it is time to take another look, so you don’t end up being the company limited by how you have always done it”.

Do you have preset decisions or steps for how to handle situations in your business?