Customer Reviews

Management by Baseball: The Official Rules for Winning Management in Any Field

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a thoughtful and funny book that anyone in business can learn from. It is always good to see things from different and new points of view. Jeff Angus proves that baseball provides us useful insights into our everyday management challenges. All of us who have spent sunny afternoons at the park can relate to this approach. Mr. Angus represents these ideas with pace and humor that is rere today in any nonfiction let alone a business book.

MANAGEMENT BY BASEBALL: THE OFFICIAL RULES FOR WINNING MANAGEMENT IN ANY FIELD could also have been featured in our sports section, but it's reviewed here for its applications of baseball principles to management theory. Baseball managers can be better role models for leaders in business than current business models because they have learned how to implement innovations, overcome resistance to new ideas, adapt to changes, and lead team efforts: any new manager and baseball fan will relish these 'how to' guidelines.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I normally hate how-to books and management titles. But this one is a different animal. Mr. Angus's advice is smart, practical, and connected to the game of baseball (which makes it more fun as well as more understandable). If you enjoy baseball, and want to learn a few new moves to help you manage better, I urge you to read this book.

"Management by Baseball" shows how the game and its business side have professional lessons for all of us. It's broken down into four parts, "Getting to First Base - Mastering Management Mechanics", "Stealing Second Base - the Players Are the Product", "Advancing to Third Base - Managing Yourself", and "Crossing Home Plate - Managing Change".

Baseball fans will enjoy the discussion of innovators such as John McGraw, Connie Mack, Babe Ruth, Branch Rickey, Earl Weaver, and Joe Torre, although the last is now dated. Fans will also relish new perspectives on scouting and signing players, juggling lineups, pivotal seasons, batter plate adjustments, and of course the ever changing rules.

Everyone will benefit from the business analogies to the gradually evolving, iconic sport. Key concepts are listed throughout as "Rules" making the book scannable. The author also maintains a website and blog under the name of the book to expand and update. In the words of Tom Peters "...an insightful management primer".

It seemed like a good idea - try to associate or apply the so-called management skills of baseball managers with managing in the business world. But it just does not work. Management 101 will not make a baseball manager but it might in the business world.

Managing a baseball team and a game is a very visceral enterprise that demands a lot of quick decisions with immediate consequences. Baseball managers are leaders, respected for having been through the battles themselves, not schedulers and planners. They don't break their day down into one-tenth hour segments to see how their time and their employees' time is being utilized; they don't create cross-departmental checklists. Most business managers have mandates to produce a concrete product in a specific time frame. Planning and coordination with other departments and suppliers is usually necessary. The payoff on a business world project may be months down the road - a one game series. A 67 percent winning percentage would be failure in the business world for a project. Business managers seldom have the independence that a baseball manager does to establish an entire workplace environment that fits their and their employees' personalities.

The author attempts to intersperse anecdotes that supposedly demonstrate the applicability of baseball management to the world of business. The result is as herky-jerky as the windup of a Latin pitcher. He abruptly introduces business terminology for which there seems to be limited correspondence in the baseball world. After a while, it gets old trying to keep up with the jumps between the two worlds and struggling to see the connections.

Baseball players are millionaires with guaranteed contracts and are in a union. Most people in the business world have no such security or rights. That alone makes the approach to baseball players drastically different than one to typical employees. Even successful baseball players and teams fail at least half the time, players hitting at a rate of 30 percent and teams winning at about 50 percent. And players have others throwing a ball at 90 mph at them. Presumably in the business world employees can generally do their job at nearly a 100 percent rate without a win-loss record being kept on a daily basis.

The bottom line is that there really is very little overlap in managing in baseball and business. Both worlds require savvy operators with talents finely honed for those very different situations.