At Home Plate - Corporate culture is key to success

At Home Plate

Written by Jonathan Leshanski (Contact & Archive) on September 18, 2009

For my birthday this year, I went on a little trip overseas, sadly my laptop did not survive the outbound leg of the journey and with it went two columns I had written for AHP. Thus while sitting on a beach half a world away I found myself unable to keep writing, but with plenty of time to do some thinking. The question I pondered most was just why are some franchises so successful, while others languish in seeming oblivion.

MLB certainly has a successful corporate culture.

Photo by billaday, used under creative commons license.

Clearly there are many factors at play when creating a good team. Salary helps, just look at teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Angels, Phillies and even this year's Tigers, all of whom are playoff bound, are in the top 10 in payroll in the Majors. But money is hardly a key to success, plenty of owners including George Steinbrenner, Peter Angelos, Fred Wilpon, and the Tribune Company have authorized their General Managers to spend the big bucks to bring a championship home, and more often then not they've failed to do so. That's not to say that well spent money doesn't help immensely (just look at how often teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Angels have made the playoffs in the last decade), but it hardly assures success.

So if we discount money as the sole key to winning, what allows teams to be competitive, often seemingly year after year despite the lack of money. One of baseball's greatest general managers knew that being competitive had a least an aspect of luck (for a good example of bad luck just take a look at this season's version of the Mets), but behind it there had to be a plan. Or as Branch Rickey himself had phrased it "luck is the residue of design."

And design is the reside of a corporate culture. Now you might well be thinking, corporate culture? What the heck does that have to do with baseball?

The answer is everything. While it's possible to "catch lightning in a bottle" and come out of nowhere to contend for a season or two, that is about finding chemistry on the field, something hard to sustain, since teams often have a lot of turnover especially in this day of free agency. Maintaining the quality of play on the field isn't just the managers job, its the job of everyone in the front office - from the owner, to the general manager, the director of player development, the scouts, and various other support staff who help plot the direction that the team will take either year by year, or for years to come.

Cultures vary from organization to organization - some are light and virtually unfelt by the players on the field, except so much as they impact the personnel on the field, playing time, and job security. Others start with the players - setting rules and guidelines for both baseball activities and outside deportment, as their behavior is seen to reflect on the team. For the Rockies its a basis in a strong Christian ethic (thus earning them the nickname of "the God Squad" by many), which is reflected in their draft picks, off field expectations and charitable works. For the Yankees it's about appearance (no long hair or beards), respect for tradition, interaction with the media and behavior on and off the field. Several other teams have similar guidelines for their players.

Opinions vary as to how important the type of culture a team chooses to impose on its players. Some favor a light hand and prefer not to meddle with the players themselves fearing it may disrupt the formation of chemistry and synergy among it's players. Others figure that by putting a corporate culture in effect at the players level that they help the players find commonality, and level the playing field which helps form of bonds and promote synergy.

Regardless, its an element which effects how the players are seen as the face of the organization, but is it the one which causes a team to win? Probably to a degree, but the big decisions, who to draft, how to develop players and how the team will spend it's payroll dollars is certainly more important. After all if there isn't enough talent on the field no matter how good the chemistry is, the team isn't going to win consistently.

While that sounds easy enough, it certainly isn't. Creating a successful front office culture requires some of the same skills needed on the field - including teamwork and synergy to get everyone working in the same direction and as part of a greater plan. It requires an owner who'll stay the course, if not necessarily stick with a manager or general manager, for the long run.

Of course thats hard.

Especially since many teams are trying to use the same basic model for their plan. That entails trading away big name players who'll make big money for prospects and trying to develop them into major league players. No doubt any of you can reel off a list of smaller market teams who seem to have that culture figured out and who either seem to be on the rise and poised for years to come like the Tampa Bay Rays, or those who've maintained that competitive edge for years like the Twins.

But you can just as easily see the teams who've been trying this for decades (the Pirates, Reds, Orioles and Royals) without success and a number of teams who thought they had developed (like the D'Backs, Blue Jays, Mariners) solid cores but have been unable to sustain it.

Baseball teams, like other businesses need to be adaptive to new ideas and new ways of looking at things. The Red Sox before their great run the last few years brought in a creative GM (Theo Epstein), hired two of the best baseball SABRmetrics men in the business (Bill James and Voros McCracken) as analysts to help structure and plan how they were going to build their team. The results have spoken for themselves.

And every plan is unique at least in some respects. Be it in choosing to build a team which is designed to win via playing small ball without any real superstars, or a team with a core of star free agents, to focus on pitching, or hitting, to seek common values and aim for chemistry - or focus on pure talent. There even has to be flexibility which allows teams to deal with players who've tested positive for steroids, or deal with media frenzy when a player has an extra marital affair with Madonna. if it's not built in to their plan an organization needs to have savvy enough personnel to adapt to the situation when an unforeseen change occurs either off the field, or in the paradigm of how teams draft, train or due to an unexpected injury.

Failure to adapt means a hard fall (just look at Billy Beane's lack of success with the A's, after other teams adapted to his Moneyball approach) but offers a chance to change courses and rebuild while adapting again. That is something a good GM like Beane should and will survive so long as he holds the faith of ownership that he can change his strategies to turn their team into contenders again.

Finding and retaining great general managers who are capable of developing a plan for their team and are capable of implementing a culture of success is even important for small market teams which can't afford to purchase expensive talent to patch on the field holes. However knowing which GMs are capable of doing this is hard to predict - after all the Blue Jays brought in J.P. Riccardi and the Mets brought in Omar Minaya, because of their pedigree with other organizations, yet neither have even lead their teams to the playoffs since being hired.

While this could be seen as a failure of those general mangers, it could also be seen as the failure of a corporate culture due to the demands of ownership to "win now," despite the costs.

In either case, the corporate culture has failed (and in the case of the Mets has failed spectacularly with media fiascos like the firing of Willie Randolph on the road at a ridiculous hour, the bizarre story of Tony Bernazard, Omar Minaya's rant at reporter Adam Rubin, and the general lack of a team leader), and that failure in the front office to prepare for this has lead to a lack of success on the field.

There is an old adage that a fish rots from it's head. That's certainly true in baseball. Good organizations who compete year after year tend to have a solid corporate culture. One with a steady hand, single direction where all the parts are working towards a common good. Its the cornerstone upon which great teams and even dynasties are built.

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