Management consultant, author, and blogger Jeff Angus has a new title called Management by Baseball, and as an avid reader of management books, I was eager to dive into it.
I’m a firm believer of Aristotle’s words that to be a master of metaphor “is the mark of genius,” and feel that a properly applied analogy is perhaps the most valuable of all teaching tools. To me, war has always seemed to serve as a superior metaphor for business than sports, but recognizing both are well aligned, I wanted to see how Angus mapped baseball to management.
So far, I am not disappointed even though I am not particularly knowledgeable about baseball. I suspect that a manager well versed in the game would find the book riveting.
He hits his stride early with an example that will apply to many corporate blogging initiatives. On the subject of managing your talent, Angus cites an incident at a Seattle Mariners game where manager Maury Wills signaled slugger Jeff Burroughs to steal second base. Wills was talented at stealing bases and thanks to wishful thinking projected his inherent ability onto Burroughs, who did not share that strength. Burroughs was slightly injured as a result, and was tagged out.
We’ve seen avid corporate bloggers try to get specific co-workers to blog because they thought they’d have a lot of good content to contribute, as they project their own enthusiasm onto others. The result is often disappointing, as their posting frequency can be dismal. They may have good content, but have little enthusiasm for posting. It appears a far better approach is to find someone who is eager to post, and then help them develop high-value content.
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