by Michael Sansolo
Keeping up with the competition is never easy. It requires investments of time, money and personnel. It rarely is cheap and often is uncomfortable.
But also is essential, especially if you have any interest in improving your sales and profits.
Leading off as an example of managerial ineptitude: Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies, the misplays of which even non-sports fans can appreciate as a cautionary tale for any organization ignoring a changing competitive marketplace.
The Rockies, if you don’t know, are currently losing games at a pace never before seen in baseball. Just last year, the Chicago White Sox set a record for the most losses in a single year in modern baseball history and now the Rockies seem destined to smash that.
Let’s be honest: Baseball is a sport of enormous inequality. Rich teams in big markets – the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Yankees, and now, finally, the New York Mets – are able to spend heavily to build strong teams and deep farm systems, while those from smaller markets struggle to keep pace.
But the Rockies seem to be finding a unique path to losing.
First off, they are based in Denver, in a spectacularly beautiful ballpark. They have a massive regional area from which to draw fans – the closest MLB team is the Kansas City Royals, some 600 miles away, which pretty much guarantees the Rockies strong crowd support.
Sure, they have a unique challenge – the altitude makes it easier to hit home runs, and therefore harder for home team pitchers to achieve strong (and marketable) stats. But that isn’t their current problem.
As Yahoo Sports recently reported, the Rockies are setting new standards for failure almost by plan. Unlike virtually every other team in the sport, the Rockies are eschewing modern technologies and analytics used to provide insights on player performance and therefore the ability to improve.
It’s almost as if the team has decided to stick to landlines while all their competitors are using smartphones.
And the Rockies can’t claim to be a victim on a small market for support. Denver is more populous than many other major league cities and again, can draw fans from throughout the Rocky Mountain region. Besides, teams in smaller markets such as Tampa, Baltimore, St. Louis, Boston and Cleveland, seem able to field far more competitive teams.
As Yahoo reported, the problems run throughout the organization. Beyond the lack of technology, the Rockies seem to have a very insular executive team, meaning they are blissfully unaware of changes made elsewhere among competitors. As one rival executive said, that lack of input has the Rockies thinking they are actually running their organization well because no one is telling them otherwise – that is, beyond the terrible performance on the field. They take misguided solace in the team’s continued ability to pack beautiful Coors Field, ignoring the reality that the team stinks.
Denial, as we’ve long said here, is an affliction for all types of businesses.
Ask yourself if your organization is keeping pace with the technological and analytical tools being used by competitors; a fairly challenging question as the industry is increasingly challenged by the likes of Amazon. (KC, reporting last week from the WAFC convention, laid out how quantum computing may offer the next great opportunity for technological and analytical advancement – retailers who ignore this technology in the near future may do so at their own peril.)
Also consider whether your team is focused on developing and nurturing talent and staying laser focused on rising competitive standards. If the answer is no, there’s a team in Colorado you might want to start following.
Most importantly, question whether you are getting honest feedback. Start by asking business partners, suppliers, staffers, board members, etc.— how well you are performing versus industry standards. Harsh feedback is never fun, but it’s far more fun than failure.
So consider this a cautionary tale in self-delusion. Then challenge yourself and your team to explain why you aren’t the Colorado Rockies and play much better than they do.
Michael Sansolo can be reached via email at [email protected].
His book, “THE BIG PICTURE: Essential Business Lessons From The Movies,” co-authored with Kevin Coupe, is available here.
And, his book “Business Rules!” is available from Amazon here.
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