by Sheri Osborn

What makes baseball a cultural phenomenon? Why do people get so fired up about their teams? Why do they sit for hours in the sun over a period of months and watch thousands of pitches and hundreds of hits when they know that only one team will win the World Series and the rest will not?

Maybe it’s the clarity of how the game is played. Clarity is something we don’t experience in very many areas in life. In baseball, both teams follow very precise rules. Hits and errors are tabulated. Having the best players at any position may or may not affect the outcome of a particular game. Who wins the World Series? Simple–the team that wins the most games. But to spectators and players alike, watching the game is thrilling and the winner celebrates for only a short time before preparing to start all over again the next season.

What if you could build the same kind of clarity that baseball enjoys into a business strategy? It definitely can be done, and it can impact your bottom line. Here’s how.

Step One: Define Your World Series

The first step in strategy development is to know the reward you are seeking and when it will be obtained. It may be a defined pile of money by a certain date or a specific stock price or it may be market leadership your category. Define a world series for your company so that your team will be working towards the same reward – focus.

Step Two: Define the External Game Structure

The baseball season doesn’t begin with the World Series, it begins with player recruiting and spring training. Next comes the seasons with many teams in the competition. Then playoffs determine who the best teams are. Lastly the World Series defines who wins the trophy.

For your market or markets, define the teams and players in your league. Analyze how the competition plays the game: their strengths, weaknesses, your own strengths and weaknesses. Review one game (one market segment or major industry) at a time. If this game was the World Series and they were the only opponent, who would win and why – analyze.

Step Three: Define the Scoring System

There are two scoring systems in baseball: one for collection of games as a whole and the other for individual play. The baseball season is composed of a fixed number of games. The four teams with the best of seven playoff games will make the semi-finals and the two that win there go to the final. Then only one wins the trophy.

In the business world, the market defines the season scoring system: stock price, revenue, profit margins. Many organizations consider “scoring” the business the territory of the CFO or CEO alone. But if you’re seeking a winning business strategy and organizational excellence, it pays to bring this scoring system to bear within each function of the organization. Players need to know how they contribute to the success of the organization in generating revenue, increasing profitability and if a public company, raising the stock price. Don’t be an organization that rewards the sales teams and the product teams and leaves the majority of the team to sit on the bench.

The individual “game” scoring system will prevent this. The team with the most runs wins. Simple? No. Underneath the team win/loss record there’s a game-scoring mechanism to measure the team’s performance and the individual’s performance. Just look at the number of statistics measured in MLB. Every strategy development effort should include the delineation of a strike, ball, out, base hit, RBI, home run or grand slam. Organizations often get caught up in one of two games here: “ship the product and collect the money” or “ferocious competitor” mode.

The dangers of not working through this portion of strategy are:

• Most employees won’t know how their own work advances the company effort
• The organization will miss the opportunity to know early enough in the game to adjust their strategy until it is too late to recover.
• The organization will miss the opportunity to reward your employees that indirectly help your organization succeed because no one knows what it means in their department to hit the home runs and grand slams.

Each department and individual employees should have clear guidance and specifics on how to score in the big game. Employees contribute so much of their lives to their work–help them know when they’re scoring runs, throwing strikes or getting outs for the team – measure the results.

Baseball is called America’s game. Something about the game causes people to root for their teams regardless of whether they win the season or finish last. Building this kind of loyalty into every function in your organization can transform your company into a competitive team playing at the top of its game.

So many areas of life are unclear. The clarity of baseball’s rules can give your people the expectation that hard work will be measured and rewarded, that everyone is playing by the same rules and that the team with the most runs at the end of the day wins. Clarity brings focus, and focus brings results. Who says business can’t be like a day at the park?

Image Source: Bob Jagendorf