By now, hopefully, you realize that baseball sabermetrics metrics in the decision-making process that utilizes them are literally years ahead of the metric practices in corporate Talent Management. Most baseball metrics are provided in “real time” so managers have them at the precise time when they are needed to make a decision. Other baseball metrics are forward-looking. These “predictive talent decision metrics” accurately guide executives in important talent decisions including who to hire, how much to pay and how long a player will continue to add value.
Even “old school” baseball managers now realize that the use of metrics for talent decisions can result in more productive hires, increased revenue, and significantly more wins. But in the corporate talent management world, there is for some reason still major resistance. In my view, the time has come for the corporate world to focus its attention on how major-league teams use metrics and how their approach can be converted for use in the corporate world. Already other sports have made the transition, including Olympic sports, soccer, basketball, and football. Unfortunately, corporate talent metrics (with the exception of Google, the world’s only data-driven talent function) are still in my estimation, at least, five years behind. So I suggest that you jump at any opportunity to work with baseball professionals and avoid the “trial and error learning” that now dominates corporate metric teams.
Dr. John Sullivan will be speaking about this and more at BPI’s TalentBall with the Texas Rangers in April. Joining Rangers’ top executives including GM Jon Daniels, its CFO, Head of Analytics, VP of HR and others, Dr. Sullivan will be bridging the gap between the successful Moneyball tactics and corporate talent and business results. Click here to register today for TalentBall.
