Steal Like a Pirate. Lead Like a Champ.
Do you spend enough time encouraging your employees to steal?
If not, check out this episode of The Energy Detox, where you'll hear:
1) how a theft-based culture can actually be the key to sustained success; and
2) why it's up to you as a leader to implement rules that make it easier for your employees to steal.
Curious where the inspiration for this unconventional leadership advice comes from?
Well, look no further than the Pittsburgh Pirates, who have have used every tool (sword?) at their disposal—including roster construction, data analytics, and MLB's bigger bases—to lead the majors in steals and, more importantly, to lead the National League in wins (…at least as of the recording of this episode).
Synopsis
Major League Baseball implemented several rules in 2023 aimed at making the sport more "sustainable" for future fans who may not have the attention span needed to continue enjoying baseball in its traditional form.
Regardless of what you think about those rules, you can use the following MLB-inspired leadership questions to help you put a championship-caliber team on the field each day:
1) How can you "shorten the basepaths" and encourage your team to take more calculated risks? Just as MLB's safety-driven decision to implement bigger bases has led to more steal attempts, you can implement some changes that make it easier for others to get out of their comfort zone and run a bit more.
2) How can you "speed up the game" and condense communication? Just as MLB's pitch clock has condensed the same amount of baseball into much shorter games, you can make some tweaks to meetings and conversations that impact your "fans" faster and more effectively.
3) How can you reduce the number of daily "disengagements" and remain focused on what's most important? Just as MLB pitchers can now only step off the mound twice per batter, you can find ways to cut down the amount of time you spend turned away from the person "in the batter's box" awaiting your pitch.
4) How can you take advantage of having less people "on your side of the field" than the data say you need? Just as the new rules prohibiting teams from putting 3 infielders on one side of second base "allows infielders to better showcase their athleticism," you can turn being understaffed into an opportunity to showcase the talent of your team in ways that would have been masked by "proper" staffing levels.
Related Content
“Pitch Framing Principles to Keep Your Leadership Performance Above the Mendoza Line” (The Energy Detox, Episode 81)
Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Well, the 2023 Major League Baseball season is only four weeks old today. But already there have been plenty of baseball related headlines in the news, especially if you're here in Pittsburgh, where the pirates have been surprising everybody with our phenomenal start and currently sit on top of the National League in terms of record tied with the Atlanta Braves after the pirates dominating victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers last night, who the pirates will be playing today on this absolutely perfect spring day here in Pittsburgh. All that being said the pirates are also in the headlines because yesterday, they formally announced the biggest contract and Pittsburgh Pirates history signing outfielder Brian Reynolds $207 million contract over the next eight years. And that's newsworthy not just because the pirates typically don't spend a whole bunch of money on players but because it's actually the biggest contract in terms of guaranteed money for any Pittsburgh athlete. Yes, the Steelers have paid people more per year than the pirates are paying Brian Renner Reynolds. And yes, there have been some other contracts that have had some some extra some bonuses but in terms of guaranteed money. The pirates have all teams have set a new record here in Pittsburgh, which is also funny because the pirates are the reason they're in the headlines is because the penguins are not in the playoffs, which they typically would be. And the Steelers even though today's Draft Day, and typically in late April, lots of people would be talking about who the Steelers are going to draft and that is going on. But it pales in comparison to the pirates right now, in part because the Steelers don't have quite as much interest in the draft as they did last year, of course when they picked up a new quarterback. All that being said the pirates are also in the headlines this morning, thanks in part to some unfortunate news. That being the passing of Dick grote who died last night, this morning, actually at the age of 92. And for those of you who don't know, de grote was a phenomenal player for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was actually just announced as a member of the upcoming new class of Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Famers. Unfortunately, he was snubbed for the actual Baseball Hall of Fame. And that's a story for another day. But Deke wrote, who would be worthy of his own podcast was a phenomenal athlete. He was actually drafted third in the NBA Draft long ago, but thanks in part to his military service, when he came back, and the pirates said, hey, you need to choose, he decided to choose to stay in his hometown in his home region here of Pittsburgh and play for the pirates. So that being said, of course, condolences to the Grote family. But again, a noteworthy person who worked up until he was 90 was a broadcaster here in Pittsburgh, and again, could talk for hours about Detroit when it comes to leadership and all of those things. But today, we're gonna focus on some other headlines, and he's go beyond the world of Pittsburgh. And those are related to all of the new rule changes that have been implemented for the 2023 Major League Baseball season. And we're going to jump into those rule changes not to talk about them from a baseball standpoint, of course, but this being the energy detox, we're going to talk about how some of those rules marry very nicely, some leadership rules that leaders especially within the energy industry, can follow should follow in order to sustain momentum for their teams for their company and for their industry, much as all of the rules for Major League Baseball are meant to sustain momentum for baseball for generations to come. Sustainability again, not in an environmental sense, but in terms of maintaining that interest of people who may not have the attention span anymore to to watch what is a relatively slow game, right. So that being said, let's jump into the first new rule for 2023. That being the size of the bases, so the bases this year are bigger, they're going from 15 inches by 15 inches to 18 inches by 18 inches. And those bigger bases, first and foremost, are actually in place because of safety. The bigger bases give the players both the runner and the defender, a little bit more room to work, especially at first base where you see a fair number of collisions. But while safety was the impetus for the bigger bases, the implications, of course, are that there's a shorter distance between first and second and second and third. And that has led to an increase in steal attempts and steal success rate, if you will. And the pirates, in fact, are the biggest recipients of that the pirates last night stole six bases. That's a lot of basis for Major League Baseball game, and the pirates are actually sitting atop all major league baseball teams in terms of steals. But so what's the relevance? Well, first and foremost, of course, the pirates who historically have not been very good are taking advantage of at least that new rule. But more importantly for you as a leader, how do you encourage more stealing within your organization? Not stealing, of course from an ethical standpoint, but stealing in terms of risk taking calculated risk taking, how do you encourage your teams to to move a little bit more, right? Obviously, from a baseball standpoint, you know, Major League Baseball wants to see more movement, they want to see more runners, they want to see more action they want to see, you know, maybe a little bit more. Again, people on the base path moving around taking risks. So how do you do the same thing in Europe? organization to, again, ensure sustainability. And one of the first things you could do is well, ask yourself how you can shorten that distance for people to take risks, to jump into new roles to try something new. What are you doing that's keeping them, you know, content standing on their current base, so to speak, instead of wanting to go and do something different, try something different. What are the ways that you can encourage people to go to a new part of your organization to get out of the current silo, that's the first thing you could do. The second thing you could do more generally, is ask yourself how you are artificially reducing people's ability or desire to take risks. Because in baseball, of course, in many cases, you know, the runner is has gotten some some green light, if you will, from, you know, the manager or the base coaches to say, hey, this might be a good pitch to steal on. So you know, that runner typically already has some knowledge combined with his own understanding of the game and ability to read the picture to know when he wants to steal a base. Well, what can you do in your organization to give people that green light, so to speak, to tell them it's okay to take a risk, so long as you're again, not doing it irresponsibly. We want you to go and try to steal second figuratively, we want you to go ahead and run and, and move things forward. That keeps things going. Right, that keeps things fresh and industry especially like oil and gas that, you know, at times feels threatened by you know, stagnation or other sexier things that are out there like you know, other sports like I don't know lacrosse, right? Competitor baseball, perhaps, you know, how does the energy industry, particularly oil and gas stay fresh? Well, it's by getting people in motion taking calculated risks. So ask yourself today, how can you be like Major League Baseball and encourage people to run a little bit more and take more risks. The other big thing beyond bigger bases, of course, perhaps the biggest thing is the pitch clock, and attempt by Major League Baseball to speed up the games. And boy, boy, they have succeeded. Major League Baseball games, I think are on average, about 30 minutes shorter this year than they've been historically. And I'll tell you what, for going into a gate day game that starts at 1230. And you're able to be back in home back home, before the kids even get home to realize that, you know, you may have taken one of their siblings to a to a ballgame, and they didn't get to go. That's a wonderful thing. And obviously wonderful for all kinds of other reasons. But the question for you, of course, is how do you speed things up? And in particular, how do you speed up your messaging? How do you speed up your conversations? How do you condense things? And of course, to bring in a pipeline analogy, how do you compress your message? And one way to do it one very simple way from a leadership standpoint, or really, anybody that's ever leading a meeting, is to ask yourself, what happens if that meeting was cut? 30 minutes short? What if you knew going in that you scheduled it for an hour, but now you only had 30 minutes? What would you do to hit the high points to get your point across and to wrap up with some sort of action item? Again, it's about the simplest possible thing you could do. But it's amazing how many organizations that I work with never do that. They never think about cutting their meetings from 30 minutes to 15 minutes, or at least run through the exercise of what that would look like. How would it feel if you did that, because nine times out of 10, it would feel pretty good. And it would be more productive, and people would have more time, more energy and be more engaged. Much like the fans here today at PNC Park will be more engaged because they don't have to fill extra time between pitches between batters. So ask yourself again, how can you shorten things up with their messaging with your meetings, and one anecdote, too, and I'll share a little bit of my own sort of personal background. One of the things I loved when it was time to give a presentation, especially to some senior leader to perhaps the CEO, or CEO of a company, is that my time was cut short, the people before me maybe ran a little bit long or the audience there was asking too many questions or not too many questions, but a lot of good questions. And my time was cut short. And I'll tell you what, I loved it. I loved it. Because again, it forced me to hone my game. My tendency is, you might be able to tell even in these episodes of the energy detoxes to go on and on. But when you have a clock in front of you need to shorten your message, guess what? It builds confidence, as long as you don't make excuses about why you have less time No, you don't make excuses. You say, Hey, I'm gonna hit the high points is what you need to know, this is what I need to know from you, you're gonna get out of there. And again, nine times out of 10, making up some statistics here.
09:01
It works out better, it makes you seem more confident, makes you seem like you know your stuff. And of course makes you seem like you don't need a script to go ahead and get those main points across. So that being said, let's move on to the next rule. And that is a limited number of disengagements. For pitchers. And again, this is related to speeding up the game. But in essence, for those of you who again may not be fans of baseball, a disengagement is essentially when the pitcher steps off the mound, steps off the mound to either one sort of catch his breath and regroup or stepped off the mound to try to pick a runner off who might be trying to steal as we talked about a little bit earlier. But in 2023, Major League Baseball, a pitcher is limited to two disengagements per batter. And if he chooses to step off a third time he's allowed to throw and try to pick somebody off. But if he's not successful, the runner who's on bass is able to advance to the next page. So there's a penalty for too many disengagements. And obviously for those of you who are in a leadership position, you probably see where I'm going with this but the question is, Are you dead? Engaging too often with the teams and with your key stakeholders? It's a simple question. But it's a question of focus. Where should your focus be on at large, the pitchers focus should be on the batter in front of him. And you'll see a lot of pitchers who quite frankly don't care about runners stealing. Some of the most confident pitchers worry about the thing that they can control more than anything, and that is the batter in front of them. So ask yourself again, in what ways are you disengaging from the people? Who should be in front of you? In what ways? are you stepping off the mat? And what ways are you distracted, because as we all know, especially from a safety standpoint, distractions can be catastrophic. So be mindful of your disengagements. Maybe don't set arbitrary rules, but by default, ask yourself if you're focusing on the person in front of you, who matters more than anybody else. And the final rule that we'll talk about today, there are some other small ones. But the final rule is related to defense again, and that is regarding the shift or limitations in the shift. And again, for those of you who don't follow baseball, the shift essentially is when a team says, Hey, a given batter is most likely to hit the ball to the left side of the field, for example. So we're going to put an extra infielder on the left side of the field and only leave one infielder on the right side of the field because, again, statistics governs baseball right? And the the impact of that over the years, of course, has been a reduced batting average for balls that were in play. And so Major League Baseball this year, and again, they've been experimenting with all of these in the minor leagues said, hey, you know what, you have to keep two infielders on either side of second base. And you can't bring any outfielders in to play the infield, either. And again, what's interesting about that is one of the excuses beyond having a more traditional game with more traditional statistics on on ball that were hit in play is that Major League Baseball said we want to modify the shift rules or actually instituted a shift rule to help defenders be able to showcase their athleticism. So think about that. They put rules in place to kind of keep things separate, not overload one side of the field, even though statistically it makes sense to do so because Major League Baseball wants players to showcase their abilities showcase their athleticism. So my question for you as a leader, especially a leader in this industry, who might be fighting to, you know, boost your team? Might you actually be able to take advantage of having less people in your side of the organization than you would like to have? Then you can justify through statistics? How might you take advantage of having less people and one of the best ways you could do it, of course, is to showcase the abilities of your existing staff. Sure, your staff might say they're overwhelmed. And again, in our industry, that's a common common refrain, of course, but hey, let's look at the opportunity for them to step up. So to speak, as cliche as that is Major League Baseball is doing that exact thing saying, Hey, you have talent? How can we allow these people to showcase that talent? Well, we're gonna say we're gonna balance our organization a little bit. And sure, a couple extra balls might scoot through the through the infield there. But you can also adjust right, you can also bring in an outfield and just to the edge of the grass and play a quasi infield, the rule. And some of the organizations here and baseball are taking advantage of that they're being creative. So the other side of the equation is even if you don't have as much people as you feel you need, and your side of the organization, how can you get creative and leverage people from other parts of the organization to come and backstop you, if you will, and still kind of played a statistics and stayed and will still move towards the ultimate goal, which of course, is victory. So that being said, and speaking of victory, I certainly hope that the pirates continue their their victorious March here towards the end of April. I hope that you continue your victorious march towards whatever goals you happen to have. And most importantly, I hope that you continue to ask which rules you happen to be following that aren't serving you and your team and your organization. Well, in particular, some of the unwritten rules, some of the rules that people are following, including yourself that, you know, have just been in place for years they've been tradition, so to speak, maybe you actually need to put a little firmness, you know, put a little put a little impetus and put some ramifications around those rules again, much as Major League Baseball finally decided to put some rules around the shift this year. So with that being said, I appreciate you joining this episode of the energy detox. Obviously, if you have any thoughts on leadership parallels to the new baseball rules if you have any thoughts on the baseball rules themselves, which you may have noted, I haven't exactly offer my own opinion on them. But certainly feel free to share your opinions, your thoughts and most importantly of course, Let's Go Bucs.