I am not much for movies but today went to see Moneyball that just opened yesterday. It stars Brad Pitt, is produced by Brad Pitt, and is based on the book Moneyball:The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.
The story is relevant not just to baseball, but to safety, and to just about every business that there is. Everyone should see it.
The central concept of Moneyball is that the collective tacit knowledge of baseball insiders is subjective and no longer valid. The result is ever increasing costs and declining results. Recent studies have shown that empirical metrics such as on-base percentage and hitting percentage are more relevant than RBI, batting average and stolen bases.
Themes of the story are insiders vs outsiders, flattening of hierarchies, and a drive for efficiency.
The Oakland A's in 2002 with $41 million in salary were competitive with teams such as the NY Yankees who spent $125 million the same season.
The fundamentals of Moneyball apply to safety. Safety departments in most companies are vast hierarchies doing things that may have worked in the Industrial Age that today are redundant and produce no value. Lethargy and bureaucracy have taken hold. As the jobs base declines, total cost of safety grows by spending on things that have no real link to safety results. Not just employee safety is compromised. Performance of the company mission is threatened. Do you think this could not be? And do you think that safety departments are concerned with safety?
During the BP well problem in the Gulf of Mexico BP came close to going away due to safety lapses. We learned that BP and the other oil companies outsourced their safety plans to a two man boilerplate firm in Houston. No one at BP ever read the plans. No problem. No one in government read them either. It took a newspaper reporter to discover that the plan included provision to protect walruses and polar bears in the Gulf of Mexico.
Back to baseball.
Of the nine teams with the highest payrolls this season six will sit home in October. The Red Sox may make it seven.
Moneyball is good because it is based on a true story that is so relevant to the 21st century.
David Sneed
The story is relevant not just to baseball, but to safety, and to just about every business that there is. Everyone should see it.
The central concept of Moneyball is that the collective tacit knowledge of baseball insiders is subjective and no longer valid. The result is ever increasing costs and declining results. Recent studies have shown that empirical metrics such as on-base percentage and hitting percentage are more relevant than RBI, batting average and stolen bases.
Themes of the story are insiders vs outsiders, flattening of hierarchies, and a drive for efficiency.
The Oakland A's in 2002 with $41 million in salary were competitive with teams such as the NY Yankees who spent $125 million the same season.
The fundamentals of Moneyball apply to safety. Safety departments in most companies are vast hierarchies doing things that may have worked in the Industrial Age that today are redundant and produce no value. Lethargy and bureaucracy have taken hold. As the jobs base declines, total cost of safety grows by spending on things that have no real link to safety results. Not just employee safety is compromised. Performance of the company mission is threatened. Do you think this could not be? And do you think that safety departments are concerned with safety?
During the BP well problem in the Gulf of Mexico BP came close to going away due to safety lapses. We learned that BP and the other oil companies outsourced their safety plans to a two man boilerplate firm in Houston. No one at BP ever read the plans. No problem. No one in government read them either. It took a newspaper reporter to discover that the plan included provision to protect walruses and polar bears in the Gulf of Mexico.
Back to baseball.
Of the nine teams with the highest payrolls this season six will sit home in October. The Red Sox may make it seven.
Moneyball is good because it is based on a true story that is so relevant to the 21st century.
David Sneed
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