Thoughts on baseball players and derailed executives

April is of course the start of baseball season, and it made me consider a question: how far would a baseball player advance if they rejected coaching?

On one hand it is easy to understand why some derailed executives would reject coaching. Many derailed executives don’t understand why they should change because the company has promoted them three or four times for being the way they are. Why is someone coming in now and telling them that what got them to that spot is not going to keep them there? Naturally there is a resistance to change an approach that has been so successful for so long. It is a very legitimate concern to wonder why you should take the leap of faith and change. Will this new behavior prove equally successful?

There is a common idea in the business world that you should stick with what works. There are a number of old sayings that reinforce this, from “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” to “Don’t change horses mid-stream.”

The reality for executives is that when you rise through the ranks of an organization, you’ll find that each individual level has a different set of rules because you have a different function. So what works at a director level is not going to work at a vice president level. The issue is that no one ever sits down and tells you the rules and then tells you how those rules change.

For example, when you’re not doing the work, but rather being the strategist to get the work done, the unwritten rules and expectations are different.

To use another sports analogy, when you’re in single-A, minor league baseball, the game expectations are one thing. But when you start to get to Triple-A or the major leagues, it’s a whole different ballgame (pardon the pun). And if you don’t make those adjustments, you don’t survive.