Three Business Lessons From The Cardinal Way. Or how the St. Louis Cardinals Win Year After Year

The 2015 season may be over for the Cardinals but they have played in 12 of the past 16 post-seasons. So how does this small market organization generally outperform higher paid rivals from the big cities?  The Wall Street Journal wrote an informative article on the subject  (see http://www.wsj.com/articles/its-in-the-cards-why-ballplayers-want-to-be-cardinals-1444239032?mod=trending_now_3), which boils down to – you guessed it – people!

First, players prefer to play for a winner. Employees feel the same way about the companies for which they work. They want to know that the business model is sound, strategy compelling, and the company is in control of its destiny. If 50% of your employees say they don’t either know or agree with the direction of your company you are in trouble. In great companies, 80% of employees are both aware of and agree with the company’s direction.

Second, players want to play for a team that has a caring culture. Yes, even huge ego athletes that earn millions of dollars per year want to know management and the fans care about them. A caring culture in St. Louis enables professional baseball players to perform better in a Cardinal uniform than any other. This actually helps the club compensate for a lack of payroll due to the small St. Louis market. They simply get more production for their payroll dollars than the competition. Of course, this makes sense for any business.

Third, Cardinal management are “eternal optimists.” The “Cardinal Way” includes a consistent approach to the game that is aggressive and disciplined. Management supports players for playing aggressively and rewards them whether the risk works out or not. This support helps the players feel safe in taking the risks which are required to win consistently. Giving employees the space to take risks and expecting the best is a good recipe for profitable business growth.

Playing to win, caring about employees and encouraging risk taking is nothing new. The Cardinal organization is just one of the few that does not just talk about it but does it. The results speak for themselves.   Do you agree with these lessons?  Let’s continue the dialog.

C-Level Partners was created to help companies experiencing market turmoil or who are moving through different phases in their lifecycle.  Contact me at ddrent@clevelpartners.net to see how we can apply Business Lessons from the Cardinal Way to your business.

Business Lessons from THE INTERN

I don’t normally do movie reviews; in fact, I have never done them and this won’t be the traditional movie review.   However, I wanted to write something about a movie I saw Saturday nite called The Intern, with Robert Di Niro cast as a 70 year old retired executive who took up the role of an intern to a young female CEO of an e-commerce start-up.

I enjoyed this movie for several reasons.  First, it takes place in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, NY, not too far from where I grew up.  I resonate with things New York City.  Second, the context of the movie is an e-commerce start-up run by a young 30s woman who founded the company and is the CEO.  I can relate to that because I am an angel investor with TechCoastAngels and I have heard pitches from similarly situated women (and men) and have been a coach and mentor to these types of companies and even worked for a few of these companies.  Third, The Intern is a senior citizen and is recruited to the firm when they thought that hiring senior interns was the right thing to do.  I can relate to that character as a former executive and on the “wrong” side of 50.  Di Niro feels he can have fun in the job and has the passion and energy to help out.   I can relate to that as well.

Other than relating to the movie, the location, and the characters, I found a few take-aways from a business perspective.

1.  Everyone should find their passion.  Age is not an issue for sharing passion, having energy, or smarts.  Witness Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger, or Sam Walton when he was driving around in his F-150 visiting stores in person across the country, or Arthur Blank, or countless others who have a vision and desire to make a difference.
2.  It is hard to manage two families- a business family and a home family. Startups are like children and need to be nourished.  It is tiring and taxing to manage the business and the people at work, and then go home to switch gears and be a husband or wife or parent.  
3.   Leaders have to learn to delegate and not take on everything themselves. In the movie, Anne Hathaway, the founder/CEO tried to do everything herself and that caused part of the stress and almost caused her to lose her company and her family.  A few months ago, I wrote a blog on two words that can help an entrepreneur (or other businessperson) achieve success.  Those two words are FOCUS and PODFU.  The CEO needs to focus on what is important and then plan, organize, delegate, and follow-up (that’s the PODFU) to ensure things are on target.
4.  Age is a state of mind to a large degree. I have seen young executives who have no vision nor energy nor the passion and drive to succeed.  I have seen young executives who don’t fit the culture of a company whereas some of the “middle-people” felt right at home.  And interestingly, I have seen a senior generation fit in to a younger culture because each group was willing to learn and listen.  Why?  It’s what you bring to the table.
5.  Context and experience cannot be taught but can be applied.  In The Intern, years of management experience by Di Niro’s character proved helpful.  And so did his affable, approachable and helpful nature.   He even taught the younger generation what it meant to be a gentleman. Remember your handkerchief.  As Di Niro said in the movie, he is everyone’s “uncle” yet his expertise from his prior career coupled with his character helped the young CEO cope with the stresses of her business and family.

I enjoyed The Intern as a good way to spend a couple of hours and highly recommend it. It probably had more meaning to me given the premise of the movie, where it took place, and the start-up environment.  Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 59.   I gave it nine pizza slices out of a possible 10.

Let me know what you think and feel free to write to me at dfriedman@prodigy.net or at dfriedman@clevelpartners.net. 

Execution is the NOW Strategy

by David Friedman, Managing Director

I was thinking back to my days in the mid-80s as an executive with a communications company where I had responsibility for both strategy and execution. Their logic for combining the two functions was because they felt that a hand off between two people – one leading strategy and the other leading execution – was a problem because of “interpretation” of what the strategy meant. And in some way, this corporation was prescient because strategy and execution are the yin and yang or two sides of the same coin. In fact, to me, strategy and execution have to intersect.

In the 80s – for those of us who are historians – companies had chief strategy officers who developed all the grand corporate strategies. Now ask yourself today: How many companies have strategy officers? I believe that very few do other than maybe the mega companies in corporate America. How are strategies set? Imagine a football team. (I like sports analogies). 

Let's say that the head coach looks at his players and the other teams in the league and says, “Our strategy is to run the ball because of a, b, c and d. He deduced (call this a DEDUCTIVE STRATEGY) because he used facts about players and experience in games to derive a conclusion. Now, imagine the first game of the year where the opponent studies this team and stacks players against the run. The strategy might have been fine, but execution failed. Or the strategy needs to be reconsidered. Let’s say that feedback from the players on the field and the other coaches indicate a weakness in the secondary of the opponent. The strategy now shifts to one where passing becomes the norm and, by so doing, the game is won.

 Did the fundamental strategy of the team shift? Or did it become opportunistic? What happens if the same process repeats itself in the next game and the game after that? The coaches may now shift entirely because success was due to an effective execution of a different strategy. In fact, in this case, by reason of INDUCTIVE STRATEGY, the team becomes a passing team and goes on to win the superbowl!!! (OK, I am dreaming that the New York Giants do this, but I am a long suffering fan!!)

It really doesn’t matter what is the initial strategy. What matters is that there is an initial direction and initial concept of the “why and how” of winning. Yet based on results or creating the plan and executing on that plan, the team uses that information and results and adjusts. I call this contextual strategy. Think about this. Todays’ world is based on AGILE – agile development, agile (responsive) web, and agile personnel who can perform in multiple areas. In essence, execution and the results achieved either support the initial strategy or adjustments to the initial strategy must be made so you can win the business game. That is the most critical part. As Don Nelson, my former boss and mentor at US Cellular said: “You have to be fast, fluid and flexible.” So true. We are not abandoning strategic thinking, but rather moving it to a new level.

]Using the football analogy, that is why many coaches script the first 20 plays of the game and make adjustments during the game and again at half-time. Their strategies change – to a degree – and hopefully their results improve.

I want to share a short checklist that is necessary to implement execution as a strategy and to start a robust dialog on whether you agree or disagree with this assertion.  

1. Develop a baseline strategy. An initial strategy is a stake in the sand. Strategies may include an overall corporate strategy, sales strategy, R&D strategy, marketing strategy, brand strategy, operations strategy, people strategy, and I am sure others specific to certain industries.
2. Focus on Results. Do you focus on quantifiable results that are specific, measurable and achievable and within a logical time period? Is there one person responsible for a specific result? How are results shared with the rest of the team, company or other interested constituents?
3. Align executives. Do all executives buy into the strategies and understand the interrelationships? For one company, the strategy seemed very clear. Yet when we asked what that meant and how that strategy would be implemented by them, we had a clear case of misalignment.This detracted from results.Based on some serious discussions at a “strategic offsite” the overarching strategy was changed and each executive understood their role and the effect on the strategy and execution. Executive buy-in and commitment are critical for success.
4. Engage executives in development of the strategy. This is a correlate to number 3. It is also human nature to own those things in which you take part. By having all the executives participate and contribute, and even challenge the strategy and how it would be executed, the chances of success increase. In fact the key is to sketch out the actual execution plan – or at least the first few “plays.”
5. Define a dashboard. Every company needs a measure of success. Let’s not get bogged down by so many metrics that people get lost in numbers. Normally, though, we can develop 6-10 metrics that can be used to judge success. Should one of them break down, those responsible can peel back the onion – do a deep dive – into the subordinate and supporting metrics to find the root cause and then fix it. Yet everyone should be privy to those things important to the success of the company.
6. Obtain the right tools and support. You can have a brilliant strategy to develop a low cost item. However, if you don’t have the equipment to produce the products or the people to run the machinery, or the customer service systems to support customers with problems, or a good quality process, the business is doomed to failure, or at least wasted energy.

Lewis Carroll said: if you don’t know where you are going any road will take you there. Companies have to set a course, a direction and have clarity in their destination. Yet as new ideas surface, new competition, new customer demands, or changes to the economic environment occur, companies need to be agile. They need to adapt their strategies based on the results they are achieving and as measured in their dashboard. By so doing, execution becomes the strategy.

We would be glad to hear your points of view and continue this dialog. Please contact me at dfriedman@clevelpartners.net.    

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