I’m an avid Pittsburgh Pirate fan, which means I’m not thrilled about the performance of our team right now. The Pirates have gone into an extended period of not being able to win. On May 27th they were 9 games over .500 and today they are 3 games under .500. They have lost 15 of their last 20 games. While baseball is just a game, professional baseball is a business. What can we learn about leadership in our workplaces from the Pirates “June-swoon” and the organization’s response to it? Here are four leadership lessons I see in the current downturn of the Pirates:
1. Managers (leaders) always look good when their team is winning, but as soon as the team starts losing people look immediately to the manager (leader) as the problem. It’s interesting that when a team is winning everyone says that it takes everyone contributing to win, and the manager just needs to “stay out of the way,” but when the team is losing it’s always the manager’s fault. Indeed, a manager/coach/leader can and DOES make a major difference in any group of people. Consider that the Pittsburgh Penguins were a below average team in the middle of their most recent season. They fired the coach (leader) and hired a new one. From that point forward the Penguins were the best team in hockey, and recently won the Stanley Cup. Does that mean if the Pirates fired Clint Hurdle right now they would start winning? I don’t think so. The situation among the Penguins and the Pirates is different. While it’s easy to point fingers at the manager/coach/ leader when things are going wrong, and sometimes replacing the one in charge does makes an immediate difference, in this case it’s unlikely that replacing Clint Hurdle would “turn the team around.” Why? Because Clint Hurdle HAS turned the team around. Before he became Pittsburgh’s manager they hadn’t fielded a winning team in half a generation. Now, they’ve made the playoffs, albeit via the wild card game the past three seasons. All indications in April and May were that this was another playoff contender. It’s far too early to say the team’s losing streak is due to Hurdle’s leadership or to write them off. In this case, we need to look somewhere else to find the cause for this extended slump by the Pirates.
2. If you don’t score runs and stop the other team from scoring runs you will lose a lot of baseball games! Early on the Pirates were either leading the league or near the top of the league in team batting average, scoring runs and many other offensive statistics. Not so during the losing streak. If you don’t score runs you can’t win baseball games. At the same time, the starting pitching has become as ineffective as the middle and short relief crew had been throughout the season. In April and May the Achilles’ heel of the Pirates had been their middle and short relief pitchers. Now their starting pitching has given up a boat load of runs and the with the Pirates’ bats not providing much punch on most days, the team isn’t winning. While this isn’t rocket science it points out that in any organization that relies on different people, groups, or divisions to do specific jobs, when the people, groups, or divisions DON’T do their jobs the organization loses. Leaders from the top of the organization to the bottom must apply effort to determine the cause of the ineffectiveness and then make necessary corrections in order to stop the losses. In baseball, you can win games if your hitters aren’t doing so well, if your pitching is great. Or of your middle relievers are giving up runs, but you’re scoring a lot of runs you can win, too. Right now, the combination of few runs scored and many runs allowed is producing the predicted results: losses.
3. You have to “play” with the personnel you have. I’ve noticed that the string of losses the Pirates are enduring at the moment have taken place concurrently with a lot of players experiencing “discomfort,” which seems to be the new term for injuries in major league baseball these days. In one game they lost four of their starting players during the game. Three of them had been hit by pitches, which undoubtedly will cause “discomfort.” All organizations go through stretches when key personnel experience “discomfort” and are out of the “line up”. In those times, the leaders’ task is to put the best available replacement in the situation and make the best of it until the “first string” returns. Clint Hurdle has done his best to put together a starting line-up that has not included all his best players on a consistent basis in June.
4. Perseverance is the most important attribute during downturns in an organization. It’s easy to quit or give up when your team is losing. If you’re just a fan then it really doesn’t matter, but if you’re one of the players or leaders, it’s essential to keep playing through the tough times, because tough times nearly always come. AND just as important, sometimes the team with the best record through the course of the season, doesn’t win the games when they count the most. (Just ask the Golden State Warriors who won more regular season games than any team in NBA history, but fell one win short of their goal of a second straight NBA championship.) We all want to be the champions in whatever endeavor our organization pursues. The reality is no one wins the championship every year. No one is the sales leader every quarter. Sometimes people don’t commit their lives to Jesus even when everyone on the church staff has done their best. In those times, it’s vital to continue to analyze the situation, to confirm that the leadership is headed in the right direction, keeping working at improving or correcting your skills, encourage folks through their times of “discomfort” and keep showing up for the “game.”
I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. As a pastor I believe it ALWAYS matters whether we win or lose, because the stakes of the “game” are eternal, but whether we’re talking about the eternal souls of men and women, or the success of a business, or the health of a family or the wins and losses of a sports team, the goal is to win. Perseverance makes winning much more likely over time. After all, character is seldom built during winning streaks. It’s when we face a week or month of losses that we’re tested to keep working on the fundamentals, honing our skills, giving our best efforts and to keep on showing up. Those are the traits of winners in any area of endeavor and over time winners tend to win.
Here’s to leading better by persevering through the tough times–today!