In a League of Its Own
Workforce
May2003,
Vol. 82 Issue 5, p34, 4p
Michael Welber
Describes
how baseball recruits, trains and develops people and the lessons which business leaders can learn from it. Role of
baseball scouts in recruiting players; Characteristics of the mentoring system
in baseball; Focus of the player-development departments of baseball team; Factors which influence the retention of players.
In a League of Its Own
Could
a business that's as poorly run as baseball be an
example of anything to the working world? The game is without equal in how it recruits,
trains, and develops people. As the season warms up, here's
a look at what the Great American Pastime does right, and what business leaders
can from it.
Like
scores of other young athletes who dream of making it into the big leagues, the
17-year-old rookie from Loma de Cabrera, in the
Fortunately,
his manager, Ralph Henriquez Jr., recognized his
prodigious talent and drive and made sure that he had every opportunity to
develop his natural potential. Henriquez took him to
the gym early to lift weights and drilled him on his bunting while the rest of
the squad still languished in their beds.
Henriquez's job is straightforward: do whatever it takes to
help young players get to the majors. He takes kids used to playing 60 games a
year and helps them adapt to baseball's rigorous 162-game schedule. Using solid
communication skills, he instills a real work ethic--the clichéd blue-collar
one--so that young kids can achieve that elusive goal of making it big. When Furcal showed up, Henriquez saw
his singular motivation right away and worked with it. "His first, second,
and third priorities were to be a major leaguer" Heriquez
says. "That's how I knew he had a chance."
Henriquez's role as manager is a significant part of the
ball club's elaborate and finely tuned mechanism for finding, developing, and
promoting talented newcomers. Corporations could learn something by observing
the way baseball nurtures and retains young talent. Few institutions know more
about researching a prospect's character and skills, developing a recruit
to the best of his abilities, and finding ways to retain a promising individual
than major league baseball. In these areas, the sport has developed methods
that could serve the business community well and are potent reminders of the
impact of dedicated training, attentive mentoring, and familial bonding.
Furcal's meteoric rise to the Braves' big-league team
includes winning the National League Rookie of the Year award in 2000, just two
years after he took his first swing in Rookie Ball, the lowest level in the
minor leagues. Though he is exceptional, the story of how Furcal
was managed is fairly typical of the way baseball
teams, through their coaches and managers at every level, nurture talent. Henriquez would come in several hours early to give Furcal the extra work he wanted and asked for. He
personally took him out to the ball field, where he set up a bunting machine so
the young player could practice the proper technique, over
and over again. And, significantly, Henriquez kept the lines of communication open so that the
young player and all the other athletes in his charge would learn to trust him.
When players get discouraged, Henriquez, who also
works with high school kids in the off-season, helps them to understand and
over come challenges. Whether it's a chat in his
office or taking a player aside on the field, Henriquez
makes sure that communication runs in both directions.
The
Braves like to draft players young so that they can be
indoctrinated in the club's way of doing things. Furcal
was drafted when he was just 16, and the results were
spectacular. After only two years in the minors, he was
promoted to the majors and led all National League rookies in runs,
walks, stolen bases, and on-base percentage. He was
considered the hardest to double up (get out in a double play) in the
entire major leagues. And if that weren't enough, he
set a record for stolen bases by a 19-year-old, breaking the legendary Ty Cobb's record. Naturally, Furcal's
native abilities played a large role in his success. So did the kind of
development process begun in Rookie Ball by Henriquez.
As
baseball teams lose vast sums and sign extravagant personnel contracts, it
seems impossible that a business this poorly run could teach another enterprise
anything at all. And yet, as the example of Rafael Furcal illustrates, baseball does excel in one important
area: finding and nurturing the most highly skilled personnel in the world. How
do they do it? It begins with recruiting.
Murray
Cook eats, sleeps, and lives baseball. He broke in as a player with the
Cook
is well aware that baseball success depends on the quality of the recruits
that scouts unearth in small towns and cities throughout the world.
"R&D in this game is much more extensive and much more a part of the
game itself than in most industries," Cook says. "Without that
diligence, you don't have a successful product."
Because
the financial stakes are so high, baseball scouts undertake a remark ably thorough
scrutiny of each player during the recruiting process. Scouts get to know each
prospect personally. They travel to their homes and talk to their parents to
find out more about each boy's back ground and
commitment to baseball. "As scouts we not only observe their athletic
skills carefully at the ballpark but also confer with their coaches to find out
more about each player's motivation and drive. Some scouts go further and check
with a prospect's teachers to ascertain what sort of student they are and
assess whether they present any disciplinary problems," he says. While
scouts meticulously measure a prospect's time from home plate to first base or
record the number of home runs he hits, they regard a prospect's
"make-up" as even more critical.
John
Mirabelli, assistant general manager of scouting
operations for the Cleveland Indians, defines makeup as "what makes
players tick: their mind, certainly their heart. We try to find out their
aptitude, their drive, their desire, their ambition."
Baseball's
recruiting diligence is rarely equaled in the
corporate arena, says executive sports recruiter Buffy Filippell.
Filippell's firm, Team Work
"In
executive recruiting, it's not nearly as scientific as what the baseball scouts
do," Filippell says. "They will look at
athletes and run them through a very thorough athletic, psychological, and
physical analysis measuring their running times, testing their strength, and
even administering standardized psychological tests. Our firm and others like
it don't do nearly that amount of background checking"
Baseball,
by its very nature, is a game of failure. An outstanding player in the major
leagues succeeds at the plate only one-third of the time. Ted Williams, one of
the greatest hitters in history, surpassed the .400 mark--succeeding only 4
times out of 10--just once in his career. No one has done it since. It's easy to see how young players can become discouraged,
even as they hope to make it big.
To
help players maintain their focus, the scouts who initially recruit
a Player often remain involved in his development while he's
toiling in the minor leagues, particularly during the first year. "It's
the scout's job not just to give us an indication of how a player will perform,
but also to develop a future relationship with this person," Mirabelli says. "When we get a player into the Indians
organization, he's got someone that he's comfortable with already who he can
consult if he encounters any particular challenge."
Having
either an external recruiter or an internal human resources recruitment
specialist remain in touch with a new hire and monitor his or her progress will
help ensure greater employee success in the long run.
Some organizations are already doing this, according to Bill Curran, director
of human resources and leadership development at the multinational technology
company PerkinElmer. "Assigning someone to help people transition smoothly
into your organization and become productive faster and stay longer would be an
effective strategy" Curran says. "When you
spend all that money recruiting, and then bring the person into the system and
find out that a) it was not the right person or b) they left disgruntled six
months later, it's an enormous strain on the organization."
All
baseball teams have player-development departments with a single focus: to
ensure that players reach their highest potential. Teams devote enormous
resources to giving each player the attention he needs to succeed, beginning in
the minor leagues and continuing to the majors.
The
Cleveland Indians' media guide lists 15 people who coordinate developing
specific skills, including fielding, pitching, defense, and hitting. However,
teams also provide cultural development so that players from disparate
countries learn how to work together, sports psychology to teach players how to
mentally prepare for competition, and good nutrition
to guarantee that young men often accustomed to eating junk food consume the
proper diet. Some teams even teach their players how to deal with the media,
practicing television interviews and answering questions from reporters.
Ross
Atkins, assistant director of player development for the Cleveland Indians,
makes sure that minor league managers in the club's farm system clearly grasp
the development process. "A good minor league manager understands that we
need to develop in a winning atmosphere at the current level, but not at the
cost of the player's future," Atkins says. "Someone who endangers a player's
physical well-being or even mental state to win a minor league game is not a
good manager."
The
commitment that baseball teams make to their employees goes beyond that of many
corporations, he adds. Baseball works to develop the complete person. Curran
says that high-tech organizations such as his tend to stress training in
technical skills and business acumen. "You need a balance of both" he says. "We need to overlay the soft side
and train on the basics of understanding people, understanding differences in
people, and understanding how people operate in a team environment. In that
way, companies can get the most out of people."
Retention does take more than money
Many
ballplayers don't need much more encouragement to
stick it out in the minors than what they see at the end of the rainbow--the
huge salaries that major league baseball pays even its moderately successful
players. A batter hitting in the mid to high .200s can make millions each year.
Getting
to that pot of gold might take years, however, and more than 90 percent of
players don't cash in.
Young
players face serious hurdles. Many are away from home for the first time,
playing for minor league teams in far-flung places. As a result, baseball, much
like many corporations, still faces retention issues, particularly at the minor
league level. Some young ballplayers get discouraged and quit, especially if
they don't see a position open at the parent club. So
what does baseball do to retain players?
One
approach cited by Al Avila, assistant general manager of the Detroit Tigers, is
to create a family atmosphere in which everyone collaborates, starting at the
minor league level. "You've got to make young players feel they are now
part of a family made up of managers, coaches, and instructors who are helping
them every day. You want them to feel that we are all in this together, pulling
together for the same common goal--to get them to the big leagues and help us
win."
Baseball
takes this kind of attitude very seriously and implements it on every level.
The value of making people an integral part of the team doesn't
get the attention it should in corporations.
"Precious
few companies seem to 'get it' in terms of understanding the psychological
power of having someone come in and feel a part of the organization,"
Despite
baseball's deplorable track record on controlling
expenses, handling labor relations, and maintaining a viable business model,
there are things it can teach the business world. Whether corporate America can
take the sort of care that baseball does to screen its potential recruits,
work individually with all employees to ensure that they live up to their
potential, or do whatever is necessary to make sure employees stick it out is
an open question.
"There's
a fine line in an organization between someone who will follow orders and
someone who is committed," Curran says. "The person who will go the
extra mile because he or she wants to, because there's something about this
place that the person connects with, is the goal. I fear that in much of
corporate
By
Michael Welber
Michael Welber is a
freelance writer based in