“This franchise is in shambles.” That’s what a Worcester Red Sox fan behind us muttered last night as the WooSox fell behind 15-0 in a sea of home-team incompetence, indifference, and embarrassment. By “franchise,” he meant the entire Boston Red Sox organization from top to bottom. Indeed, the parent club had just lost their fourth straight to the Tampa Bay Rays in, yes, a raging sea of incompetence and indifference.
Peter Drucker famously wrote that, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If that's the case, context most certainly eats strategy and culture for lunch. Leaders, strategies, and organizational cultures are often discounted or even doomed when they fail to acknowledge their operating context. It is imperative that leaders understand their context - conditions, history, competition, resources, and expectations - and learn how to succeed within that reality.
This is why many of us knew that Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom would not succeed in Boston. It’s not really his fault, either, since his bottom-dwelling, “value” approach to talent acquisition and retention reflects an ownership mandate. He’s running a first-tier MLB franchise with the bargain-basement mentality of a small-market team. That’s not Boston and never will be. Boston is not Tampa Bay, from whence Bloom arrived. It’s not Milwaukee or Oakland of previous Billy Beane “Moneyball” fame, either. A small-market mindset cannot possibly succeed here, and this is obvious - or should be. Oh, and how many championships have those three small-market teams garnered over the past quarter century? None! Zip!
We are told that Bloom is rebuilding the minor league system, which was supposedly devastated by previous Sox leader Dave Dombrowski - the architect of Boston’s 2018 championship. Well, yes, Bloom in entering his fourth year as Sox leader has vaulted the farm system from 24th to 11th place. That’s useful but no compensation whatsoever for what Sox fans and business partners face at the major league and upper-minor league levels. Plus, some of the Sox best young players and prospects such as Tristan Casas, Marcelo Meyer, and Brayan Bello were acquired by Dombrowski.
Oh yes, we’re told, this will take time. Well time may be the single most important context variable that Sox ownership fails to understand. The organization does not have 10 years to run this experiment. Bloom had all the time he wanted in Tampa Bay because so few fans and business partners care about the Rays in any way.
This is a leadership lesson for us all. A leader and a strategy can succeed in one setting and yet utterly fail in another context. For baseball fans, it's happening right in front of us.
Image courtesy of MarTech.