3 Business Lessons Learned From Reading Moneyball By Michael Lewis

Just finished reading Michael Lewis' Moneyball. I believe a movie was made about this book starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill in the mid to later 2000s... I've never seen it though.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about my renewed passion for baseball and how I'm currently rooting for the Colorado Rockies. I was on one of my book buying trips and stumbled upon this one. Glad I did... I really enjoyed the story as well as learning more about the inner workings of pro baseball.

The story is about how Billy Beane and his assistant, Paul DePodesta, transformed the Oakland A's from a mediocre baseball team in the mid to late nineties into a powerhouse team in the early 2000s (at least in the regular season) with a bare minimum team payroll. How did they accomplish this? Well, Billy and Paul combined the power of their human intuition with the power of Big Data... these guys were WAY AHEAD of their time. I guess it's kind of how we're learning to use AI to help us do life better.

I got to thinking though... as much as this book was about how Billy and Paul built a winning baseball team with using technology along with human direction, it also served up several key business truths that I learned. So, without delay, here are my 3 business takeaways from Michael Lewis's Moneyball:

Building a Winning Business is a Team Sport

No truly successful business is an island. Even in today's high tech world, to which we can use so many different software and apps to run a one person business, you still need other people.

If anything, you need someone to tell you you're not thinking straight or to help you see another point of view. No doubt we all like to believe our own thoughts are THE BEST, but we need more times than we'd like to admit, some accountability and pushback. This, I believe, is where innovation and creativity thrives.

To Create and Sustain a Winning Business, You Must Develop a Competitive Advantage

This is where I believe we've missed it. What I mean is that owning and operating a small business isn't some cookie cutter way of doing things. It's messy and quite abstract. No two days are ever the same. The danger comes in when we attempt to standardize or make normal the operating of small businesses.

No two small businesses are ever run the same because quite simply, they're operated by people with different thoughts, perspectives, and experiences. What's the focus here? Find your 'it' and make 'it' work for you in your small business. Find comfort in your 'it' and thrive in what makes your small business unique and in demand.

Success In Business Can Be Reverse Engineered... Start With the End in Mind and Work Backwards

It's simple, yet everything in my opinion rides on it... You got to know where you want to go and what you want to accomplish in operating your small business. You gotta go beyond just making money or earning a living. Don't get me wrong, making money and earning a living are super important, but there's more left to be done.

Dial in on your vision and purpose. Don't lose sight (or the passion) for why you're doing what you're doing while operating the small business. The small business is just a vehicle to take you to where you want to go. So, the real question is, where do you want to go and why?