The Chicago Cubs have taken the country by storm with this season’s success. As someone who lives two blocks from Wrigley Field and has season tickets to sit with my “Cubbie family,” I’ve watched with no small amount of interest as the team was rebuilt. Even more than that, as an entrepreneur, it’s been fascinating to watch the business be rebuilt. I’ve learned at least four key lessons from this team that I’ll always remember professionally.
Talent trumps experience. This team is one of the youngest in baseball, with an average age of 28.3 years and many of its most important performers weren’t playing in the big leagues last year. Young guys like Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, Addison Russell are new to The Show and performing at an incredible level. They credit “playing dumb” and a willful unawareness that they are trying to achieve the impossible. Entrepreneurs are generally undermatched, underresourced, and less experienced but need to “play dumb” to achieve the impossible anyway.
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Keep grinding and the tides will turn. A lot of the other key contributors to the Cubs’ current success were given up on at various points in their career. Jake Arietta is having one of the greatest pitching seasons in history just a few years after he was traded from Baltimore for almost nothing. The Cubs are full of other players like Starlin Castro, Javier Baez, Trevor Cahill and even Anthony Rizzo who have risen to the occasion on the greatest stage after going through all kinds of trials and tribulations. You’ll rarely find an entrepreneur who hasn’t gone through those times when they felt like they didn’t belong in the Major League of business, but the key is to keep pushing through.
Focus on leading, not lagging indicators and ignore the critics. Over the past few years, as the Cubs rebuilt, management and ownership have been ridiculed by impatient fans. Management focused on the leading indicators, primarily the years of contractual control the team had over talented players, along with progress they made in the minors. It took time and courage, but by not abandoning the plan the team put itself in an incredible position. At a company it often seems darkest right before the dawn. Stay focused on the direction and leading indicators, don’t get sidetracked by games lost in the past and don’t second-guess yourself.
Don’t let the pressure exceed the pleasure. Since manager Joe Maddon was hired last winter, he has reminded the players that they are playing a “kid’s game,” and to have fun and play loose. He has preached that he doesn’t “vibrate at that frequency” when the media ask about the weight of history bearing down on his shoulders. By keeping his team loose, he has avoided the internal pressure many professional athletes feel and has put them in a position to succeed. Similarly, entrepreneurs tend to internalize tremendous amounts of pressure and forget that most of us are pursuing an opportunity that most of the world can only dream about.
It’s a blast watching these talented hitters knock home runs out of the park, but for me it’s even more amazing to view this team as the exciting embodiment of a variety of timeless management philosophies.
Erik Severinghaus is founder and CEO of Chicago-based SimpleRelevance, a modular, open, predictive learning platform that enables digital marketers to automatically communicate with customers through any channel.